Sparkle

About the Book

This is my story: the story of an Ethiopian woman in conflict first with the grim feudal customs into which I was born, then with the anarchy of the revolutionary period, from which I escaped in 1991 in a brutal forced flight into Kenya with my six children, the youngest of whom was a year and four months old. From there, I was sponsored by a church group in Halifax and taken to a paradise of peace and water: Canada.

My story is one of horror and miraculous escapes. It is also a grim Ethiopian story: one told from a woman's point of view, in the awareness that of the problems with the society is its male chauvinist traditions. The book is also full of anecdotes and conversations: I reveal Ethiopia through the talk of others. One of the several climaxes of this story is the fact that I was rescued right off the street at one point by Emperor Haile Selassie personally, and taken to the imperial palace to be educated, an event which obviously changed my life.

At a very young age as a child of a rural landowner in Ethiopia, I became disturbed at the fate that awaited me: I had been betrothed while still in the womb (on the assumption that I would be a girl) to an Orthodox deacon 20 years my senior. I decided that I wanted an education instead. I was also increasingly disturbed, even at six or seven, at the condition of women, especially that of my mother, in the society around me.

At the age of 11 I faked an illness to get out of the impending marriage. A medicine man was brought in. His treatment made me unconscious for two weeks. I was not expected to live (many didn't survive this treatment).

Even my first menstruation was deeply traumatic. As I bled and was terrified, my mother, out of ignorance, accused me of having had sex - before I knew what this was. She informed me that, if so, I was a soiled goods and my father was entitled to kill us both. A medicine woman, in another horrible experience, was brought in to confirm my virginity.

Through luck, the marriage was postponed, during which time I managed to live with relatives in my big family and, with the kind help of strangers and my own determination, I managed to go to school for a while.

Finally, the marriage date was set when I was 14. I was with relatives in another town. My father came to get me. I escaped from the train on the way back. My father then disowned me for having dishonoured the family, wrote that my brothers (all older) would kill me if they saw me, and ordered all my relatives to not take care of me.

Just when I was about to be put out on the street, the Emperor was on an official visit to the town where I was. I believed he would take me. I tracked his motorcade amid thousands of people. He would give little gifts to children. Finally he called me over and offered me something.

I said I didn't want that.

He asked me what I wanted.

I said "an education. I want you to take me."

Miraculously, he did! I, a ragged street girl about to be without a home, was in the local palace that very night! I was taken to Addis Ababa, where I lived at the imperial palace in summer and attended the country's best school with the children of the aristocracy through high school. (There were several others - the Emperor picked up promising people occasionally). Among the highborn, my sense of what was wrong with the country deepened.

Another chapter began, just before my final graduation, when I became pregnant by the son of an aristocrat who had promised to marry me but then rejected me when I became pregnant.

A mere visit to a hospital to confirm the pregnancy turned into a nightmare that merely revealed how corrupt things were. The doctor pressured me into having an abortion - he did them on the side for money. I refused, wanting to keep my child - a decision that in itself would bring dangerous social rejection.

I got kicked out of the palace for being pregnant. But I had my diploma. Just as I tried to find a job and establish myself, my former fiancé and his landowner-mother kidnapped me. I was held in captivity until I gave birth - another near-death experience. Finally they took me to a hospital after the midwife couldn't induce labour. In a dirty waiting room with 20 screaming women, blood and afterbirth on the floor, and a dictatorial nurse, a doctor finally came and rushed me in for a caesarean - another angel had saved me.

With no choice, I had to return to my captors. While I was there the government of Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown. Then my ex-fiancé and his mother took my baby to give it away and threw me out of the house.

Outside, at their gate, I screamed for my baby. People gathered and police came. The new regime didn't protect landowners. My ex-fiancé and his mother were arrested and my baby returned. Saved again!

After that I joined a student corps that the government sent out to the countryside to teach literacy to peasants and prepare them for the coming land reforms, which involved nationalising land. With my baby on my back I travelled many miles. Landowners - including my brothers - took to the hills to fight back. Before long we were fleeing to Addis Ababa ahead of the insurgents, during which I was in a car accident in which a couple of people were killed. My baby and I were unharmed.

Back in the capital, students had already turned against the government, which was quickly becoming more authoritarian. They had demonstrated just before we arrived. Shortly, I was among many rounded up in a brutal way. My baby was taken away from me. We were driven away in military transports, to be killed - we thought. Girls and boys were kept in separate captivity. Hundreds of girls were locked into a house with the windows boarded over where we couldn't even all sit down at once, and without a bathroom. We were without food or water for days, and kept for two weeks. Some girls were taken away every night, and not seen again. Some died in the house.

Finally, in what again seems miraculous, a soldier entered one night and asked if there was a girl there who had left a baby behind. That was me. I was rescued! Not only that, but in getting my baby back, I met a couple who took me in and used their influence to get me a government job! My fortunes had turned around once again. At 19 I was hired as a nanny at a group home for troubled girls. I had a talent for social work. By involving them in the decisions of the home, and through contacts, I got the girls back in school or in jobs. I made progress within government. Meanwhile, despite everything and my father's hatred of students (his land was seized), I brought my aged parents to live with me, and they did until they died. Meanwhile, anarchy still reigned. I saw people shot in front of me on the street by revolutionary guards for no reason at all.

I also found a wonderful man who worked in government with me and we married and had two children. Then he was promoted - making him a target in the political unrest, which involved war on two fronts and tribal warfare internally. He was shot and killed in short order.

After a long struggle to come out of that, and many more ups and downs, I remarried and had three more children. At one point, for no reason, was fired from my government job - a catastrophe. I appealed to the courts and, amazingly, got the job back after six months. A Canadian Catholic priest I knew in the meantime, another angel, Father Gagnon, supported me.

Meanwhile, I arranged to switch jobs with someone and move to my old home area of Harare where I became head of a nursing home. Things went reasonably well for a while. Then anti-government insurgents attacked Harare as the socialist junta fell. We stayed in for days. When I finally ventured out in my car (with all my children aboard) I was stopped at a checkpoint and forced to drive towards the Kenyan border until we ran out of gas. A military truck took us

About the Author

FELEKECH METAFERIA WOLDEHANA left Ethiopia, with her six children in a forced flight from civil war. Felekech and her children who ranged in age from a baby of 28 months to her eldest of 16 years fled their homeland with only the clothes they were wearing. They stayed in a refugee camp in Kenya for two years. Felekech and her family came to Canada in 1993 and now live in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Today she has a very busy life: raising her children working at a long term care facility and studying social science and arts at Dalhousie university.

Mrs. Woldehana wrote this autobiography in hopes of enlightening the world to the struggles of women and children in Ethiopia.