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After we left Ethiopia, we went to beautiful Paris, the food culture of the world. How lucky were we? And I was lucky. If anything, I learned to savor the delectable, delicate croissants.
I spent my tenth birthday a few months after we left Addis Ababa, celebrated and surrounded by the magic of Paris.
But I grew up quickly, for a ten-year-old. I became my own judge: of character, of scenery, of beauty. Paris made me a critic, which England later helped me finetune.
We got used to the neighborhood boulangerie, where the kind shop lady called me “ma cherie” and my brothers “mon cheri” - a distinction we would learn with expertise. She would sell us her daily pains, bread that came as a stick - imagine! Soon after, we went to school in the lovely undulating valleys of southern England where we became boarders, inhabitants, of an exquisite English manor in southern Kent. The beauty of the English countryside taught me that nature too is beautiful, and has its own standards.
And in England, I experienced my very first contact with a harsh adult reality.
The school set up a "Starvation" Dinner, where each student reduced a day's worth of meals, and the school's savings was sent to some charity, to help those needy children. Those children were in Ethiopia. This was the devastating 1970s famine, in a land that was then filled with war, political instability, and constant regional conflicts.
Was that the real cause of this Biblical-scale famine?
How was I to know that?
But, these kind British were only interested in performing their well-intentioned deed. They had to feed the starving children, whom they, like all of us, watched so starkly projected on our TV screens.
One of my first memories I have of this time would instill these children into my being. As I write in my memoir, a draft in the making for a number of years and maybe it will see the light of day here in Addis:
The terrible famine of the early 1970s became a backdrop for my years in France and England, where I lived amidst so much beauty and bounty. Those infants lying listless in their emaciated mothers' laps became the icons of my childhood.
I am surprised that I wasn't much more affected by these images. But, I think my childish prism, my immature lens, helped me. I sensed, I understood, the Biblical scale of this famine, and metamorphosed those TV reflections into images of Mary and the Infant Jesus, those images that later I would so frequently visit, and that I loved, in Paris's great museums.
Perhaps I got this vision from a poem I wrote, and which won a place in the English School’s student annual report, just before we left Ethiopia. I called it the Raggle-Taggle Snake, about a snake’s poison speeding towards me. It ends:
I bow my head for the poison to pass over me
My heart stops thumping, and happiness falls over my face
It was 1972, and I was in Standard 3h. I am barely nine years old. And as I write elsewhere,
This is a snake I know from the Bible, which was in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve. I’m bowing my head mimicking what I’ve seen countless of times do those pious Christian Ethiopian women, who pray to God in great humility to deliver them from whatever evil is before them, with their kind heads bent in supplication.
And here I am, a year later in England, in a new country, and in a new school, silently supplicating again. And this time directly to Mary and to her Son, whose images I somehow conjured amidst these Ethiopian mothers and infants.
My young mind relinquished the horror to God, although I never prayed about it (how was a ten-year-old to do so!!). My silent supplication was enough, as I had found solace simply by bowing my head.
But I knew Ethiopia was different than that. We had lived nine years of my life there, after all. This must be an accident of God. My small mind would twist around, trying to understand. God must be telling us something. There WILL be a day of judgment soon. These Ethiopian children are our testament.
From England, I was admitted into an American college in rural Pennsylvania for my undergraduate studies.
And there began my long years of amending those errors, expiating those sins. Short-circuiting the day of judgment, to which surely I also belonged!
I began my long career in the sciences, first in Biology, then on to an Masters of Science in Nutrition Education, and into a Doctorate in Nutritional Sciences.
My MS thesis was on low-income Hispanic women in New Jersey, as though these women and their little children could bring me closer to those paintings of Madonna and Child, to those images from the TV screens that I had imbued my very soul.
And that wasn't enough!
I was accepted into the PhD program in the University of Connecticut, where I embarked on an ambitious journey of testing a new vitamin detection tool for rural field work.
Before starting my PhD program, my efforts to reconnect with Ethiopia had failed. A new set of circumstances had set in, and I was advised not to go to Ethiopia for my research, despite a visit to Addis in all the relevant institutions, where I was met with the beautiful hospitality of my zemed and all the professionals, where some of whom still tried to convince me to come and work with them.
Instead, my university sent me to Mexico. And there began a new life, a new frame of reference. I took time and learned to speak Spanish, despite the impatience of the teams in Mexico and America, who simply wanted another field hand to send out into the far-reaches of the Mexican study villages.
And my subjects (my study subjects, which is what research projects call them) were mothers and their small children, those incarnated images of that Madonna and her Child. They followed me even here! I became an expert in rural clinical work, measuring, weighing, cajoling, these little children, whose mothers brought to us so that we can help them grow up strong and healthy.
But I was too anxious for the children. Why should they wait?
2 years for research and development
2 years for data collection and analysis
1 year for program recommendations
An uncountable amount of time for program implementation
Insurmountable amount of energy convincing all the parties involved
And all they needed was good, nutritious, inexpensive food, familiar to their culture and their locale. Foods that didn’t have lists of unpronounceable words. Foods that didn’t come in hermetically sealed packages. Food that didn’t come from far, far away. Food that was incongruously cheap.
Food that was fresh, natural and homegrown. The Mexican countryside near this research center is a valley with lush cornfields, La Valle de Solís - the Solis Valley. These fields of maíz, these cornfields, became the subject of many of my photographs. If anything, there was enough, more than enough, for their inseparable tortilla, a staple of this crop. A nutritious, vitamin and mineral rich food.
Once again, the socio-political issues around real food scarcity (I emphasize: real food scarcity), were beyond my reach, although by the time I left Mexico, I had a pretty good understanding of things.
So, I left the program. But, this happened slowly: I would come back and forth to the rural center from my home base in metropolitan Mexico City, where I immersed myself in culture, language, literature and art.
I took a language, literature and culture program certificate from the city’s University - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. I became a folk dancer in the Language Students’ group, where the dance instructor would pick me out of the group to dance with him at end-of-term programs.
I explored the city: museums, cinemas, historical sites. I was insatiable, and could have written my own tour guide.
I traveled east, west, north and south, visiting small, and larger, places, town and rural landmarks. Staying in my student-guide multi-star recommendations. Taking roads less traveled. I was a bold traveler. But that was because the people accepted me. I blended in with my walk, my talk, and my appearance. Some would call me juera - fereng, a few morena - brown-skinned. Most would just treat me like any other Mexican. I spent two years this way, sustained by the research grant while I waited and waited to start the research project. This extension became my godsend, giving me time, and American cash. I was rich in Mexico!
I always say that I decided to be an artist in Mexico, which opened up my natural abilities, which I had suppressed in my quest to study science.
Then, I received another unexpected gift: a ticket to Canada, to become a landed immigrant, with a full path to citizenship.
I had done the best I could in Mexico but I didn’t belong there. I was still a foreigner. “De Etiopia,” I would tell the local villagers, who, in their wisdom could place Ethiopia through the parting Red Sea as Moses took the Israelites to their freedom: “Cerca del Mar Rojo,” I would tell them of my country of origin. “Near the Red Sea.” They took me in, adopted me, city and country folk alike, through my foreign Christianity, their Catholicism vs. my Orthodoxy. But still, I was their fellow-Christian, “de Etiopia, cerca del Mar Rojo!”
When my Canadian immigration papers were completed while I was still in Mexico, I traveled to the University of Connecticut to give my formal resignation to my department. I was quitting. A person has only so much patience, after all! Plus now, I was no longer some “foreign student” with an F-1 Visa, waiting, waiting, for graduation approval and my PhD ticket to convert into a life’s career in academia.
Canada saved me from that!
I never wrote my dissertation, although I had helped analyze the data, measured all the clinical samples, travelling to Los Angeles and Boston to get the most up-to-date vitamin and mineral measuring technology. And my department never published the final, important, article with my name as an author in any of the major scientific nutrition journals. But, they missed a publication, more widely read than the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and by a broader public, specialists and laymen alike.
“The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal..”
tells us Wikipedia.
I appear as primary author in the investigation of Vitamin B12 deficiency in The Lancet.
Vitamin B12 deficiency and malabsorption are prevalent in Mexican preschoolers
Author(s):
K Asrat; LH Allen; T Vu; G Tisman; E Muñoz; H Martinez; J Rosado
The proof is right there!
Fast forward some 25 years. Nations to Nations Networking, a United Nations-affiliated group, asked me to participate in the 61st NGO Commission on the Status of Women in the United Nations, which was held in New York in 2017. NNN’s workshop was described thus in the :
Empowering African Women to Lead in Economic Power with Renewable
Energy (Solar Thermal, Cooking and Water Pasteurization) Training for their
Home and Community- Based Enterprises
I agreed to prepare a presentation I titled:
Economic Self-Sufficiency of Young Ethiopian Women
I ignored all “solar thermal, cooking and water pasteurizing” issues, and left out grandiose words like “women’s empowerment,” and delveled right into the “Community-Based Enterprises.”
My 2017 NGO Commission on the Status of Women in the United Nations presentation centered around urban Ethiopian women. I discussed the potential of these urban, poor, women to engage in cooking enterprises. And I also presented a small Ethiopian cookbook as part of a means to fund these enterprises, but more importantly to document the information. I would locate particular women from these communities to assist in creating the recipes. And I would use my own photographs and imagery to illustrate the book.
My presentation simply recounted a "story" of a poor, Ethiopian woman from Addis Ababa, and how through her skills, she could start to become economically self-sufficient for herself and her family.
And that is when The Kidist Foods Project started. My website, after many trials, re-writies, and re-thinks says this about Kidist Foods:
The Kidist Foods Project is to provide employment to the Addis Ababa urban women with meaningful work, related to their own past experiences as cooks for their homes, families and relatives.
All Ethiopian women are taught at an early age to cook meals, some for day-to-day consumption, others for important festivities like Christmas and Easter.
These women can use the skills they already possess to generate income and funds for themselves and their families.
But, let us not forget about the men - the fathers, husbands, sons and grandsons, brothers, uncles, nephews, who will be the next phase of Kidist Foods.
And that’s it.
My years of study, my stubborn insistence to focus on my own ideas, my final refusal to play the “research and developing country” game, brought me to this beautiful idea. Kidist Foods.
Kidist means “blessed,” and it is my grandmother’s name. It is through my grandmothers, my mother, my aunts, that I learned to cook a mean Doro Wot. And I can outcook anyone with my shiro. And don’t mention my Gomen Besiga! All this with our limited spice ingredients in our post-Ethiopia homes.
If I can learn this, and make a meal to be proud of, how much more do these women know?
So this is it. Here I am. And here you are.
I challenge you to be part of Kidist Foods’ reality, and help me in my quest. Scientists, bankers, businessmen, teachers, doctors, nurses, and yes, nutritionists, and with my apology, all those I didn’t call out, come and join my team. Of course, we need money, but more than that, I need manpower, insights, and strategy. A way to go through this maze, which seemed overwhelming to me at first, but look how far I have already come. I am compiling agencies that can work with me. I have contacted banks - Enat Bank, for example. I’m familiarizing myself with community-based food businesses like Fresh Corner and Tenaye Market. I am in touch with Ethiopia’s health and nutrition agencies. I have easy access to research centers like the Addis Ababa University, and the libraries around the city. I can communicate with women - even small talk with those women who sit in the street selling us chewing gum. And I already know a few contenders for our Kidist Foods women.
And, above all, here I am in Addis!
My research background, my ability to tread into unfamiliar territory, and my boldness in going through obstacles, are my backbone.
Kidist Foods has come a long way.
Kidist Foods is becoming a reality.
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I have here a small flier with my Kidist Foods Project website with more detailed information and contact.
A copy of this presentation will be posted on Kidist Foods Project website.
Sandford students, this is for you too! Look up Kidist Foods!
And get in touch! Let’s work together!
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[All Photos by Kidist Paulos Asrat]
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