An Abstract of the Thesis Of

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Micknai Arefaine for the degree of Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology presented on June 6, 2019.

Title: Injera in the Kapitalocene: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Change in Mekelle, Ethiopia

Abstract approved: ______

Kenneth Maes

Women’s lives in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mekele, Ethiopia are very organized, systematic, and sophisticated. The women in this study model, express, and reflect the values of community, trust, care, stability, and futurity through their perceptions and sentiments regarding social and political change. I document how these values are reflected in their social reproduction and protection of injera as a staple of Ethiopian cuisine. The preparation of injera occurs in a sacred and gendered spatio-temporal location that is only accessible to women and children, and hopefully, in some small way, the readers of this thesis.

This research serves to examine the micropolitics of everyday life as it occurs between women.

Injera Epistemology is an emergent theoretical framework inspired in part by the work of

Meredith Abarca, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, and Shawn Wilson. I use this framework to situate three women’s stories within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment in Ethiopia and beyond.

Injera in the Kapitalocene: Understanding Women’s Perceptions of Change in Mekelle, Ethiopia

by Micknai Arefaine

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Presented June 6, 2019 Commencement June 2020

Master of Arts thesis of Micknai Arefaine presented on June 6, 2019.

APPROVED:

______Major Professor, representing Applied Anthropology

______Director of the School of Language, Culture, and Society

______Dean of the Graduate School

I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request.

______

Micknai Arefaine, Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the love, support, patience, and advice of the many beings who contributed to me reaching this milestone.

Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will, some were drawn to leave their distant homes in the hope of a better life, and some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. We are on the ancestral lands of the Ampinefu (or "Mary's River") band of the Kalapuya People. After the Kalapuya Treaty

(Treaty of Dayton) in 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to what are now the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations, and are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde

Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. We pay respects to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today.*

*Resources provided and collaborated with: Luhui Whitebear, Emily Bowling, Natchee Barnd, Micknai Arefaine, and the www.usdac.us (updated, October 2018)

CONTRIBUTION OF AUTHORS

I wrote this thesis with Tirhas, Lucy, Alem, Fana, and Samira. I also relied on the stories of my father,

Engdawork Arefaine, mother, Hamelmal Shiferaw, and the many ancestors living and past whose collective story this thesis belongs to.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Chapter 1: More Injera Please...…………………...... ……………………………………… 1

Chapter 2: Za Gualay……………………………………....…………………………………… 22

Chapter 3: Fikir Yelem …………..……………………………………………....……………....45

Chapter 4: Desta... …………………………………………….…………………………………55

Chapter 5: Selam ina Asphalt ………...... …………………………………………………….…64

Chapter 6: Discussion ……….………....………………………………………………………...70

Bibliography ……………………...………...…………………………………………….………81

Appendices …………………………....………………………..………………………………..87

LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page

1. Making injera………………………………...………...…………………..…….…3

2. Za Gualay…...………………….…………………………………………………..22

3. Circles and Spirals…………………….……………………………………….…...32

4. Map of Tigray Region……………………………………………………………....39

5. Mekele City…………………………….……………………………………..…....40

6. Mebrat Yelem…………………….………………………………………………...49

7. Prep Party……………………………….………………………..………….….….58

8. Christening Day…………………..…………………...…………………….….….. 59

9. Stone Homes….……………………………………………………………....…….66

10. Modern Dwellings………...….……………………………………………….…..67

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix Page

A. Food Prices ……………………………...……………..……….….……87

B. Women’s Policy Timeline…………………………………………….....89

DEDICATION

To Manale Abohay Zewdie, whom I lovingly called Tatye and who lovingly named me Zemen.

Chapter 1: More Injera Please

Introduction

With the help of Tirhas, Lucy, and Alem (all pseudonyms), the women with whom I resided in Mekele, Ethiopia, my research works to document how some Ethiopian women perceive and experience political and cultural change. I situate three women’s stories, perceptions and sentiments within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming in Ethiopia and beyond. These women model the values of love, relationality, trust, care, stability, self-determination, spirituality, and futurity. I echo Yaffa Truelove’s response to the call of scholars like J.K. Gibson-Graham and Richa Nagar to increase research into the informal spaces and practices of globalization, including household relations and the feminization of spaces and labor within communities in order to reveal how gender and women’s lives are shaped by larger economic forces (Truelove, 2011).

For the purposes of this thesis, I focus on making multi-scalar linkages and double down on Chandra Mohanty’s claim that the ‘‘micropolitics of context, subjectivity, and struggle’’ provide critical insights into the operation and consequences of global economic and political systems. Such analyses allow us to link ‘‘everyday life and local gendered contexts and ideologies to the larger, transnational political and economic structures and ideologies of capitalism’’ (Mohanty, 2003, pp. 225-226).

Women’s lives in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mekele, Ethiopia are very organized, systematic, and sophisticated. In writing about their lives, I wish to answer the calls of Tiina Seppälä, Gayarti Spivak, and Sara C. Motta to bring forward their voices in a way that does not disregard contextual differences, produce them as “a singular, monolithic subject,” or

2 overlook their concrete agency and experience (Seppälä, 2016).

This thesis and research do not “foreground men’s relationships to one another (which classical ethnography does quite well), or women’s relationships to men” (Visweswran, 1994, p.

20), but instead focus’ on women’s relationships to other women, to examine how lived experiences and practices are productive of, and produced through gendered ideologies, structural power relations, and processes of both local and global change. I also provide support from my own positionality as well as cultural, historical, economic, and political context while drawing from a rich tradition of feminist analyses of informal practices and the economies and micropolitics of everyday life.

Injera Epistemology is a theoretical framework that emerged from witnessing how these values are reflected in their social reproduction and protection of injera as one of the staples of

Ethiopian cuisine. The preparation of injera occurs in a sacred and gendered spatio-temporal location that is only accessible to women and children, and hopefully, in some small way, the readers of this thesis. I use Injera Epistemology to map out the ways in which the aforementioned values of love, relationality, trust, care, stability, self-determination, spirituality, and futurity, along with power, agency, resilience, and persistence, are reflections of the personal values and visions of what these three women see in the world. It serves as the grounding theoretical framework for my research as it de-centers Western epistemologies and ontology and moves towards a frame that centers Ethiopian women’s ways of knowing and being. It informs my research methods and I claim this as an indigenous research framework, as it emphasizes relationality and accountability (Wilson, 2008).

Figure 1. Making injera: (Above) An Ethiopian woman in Mekele pours injera batter onto an electric magogo. (Below) She is visiting her friends, who live on the compound and share the injera kitchen where she is cooking. They are socializing in the room while they work together to make injera. (Photos by author)

Broader Impact

This research and thesis contributes to a small but existing body of literature on women’s political lives in Ethiopia by documenting their perceptions of the appointment of women to the

Ethiopian presidency and to 50 percent of cabinet seats by the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, in 2018; the transition from communism to revolutionary democracy; the health extension program; and other government policies and practices related to women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming. This research is unique because it highlights the politics of knowledge production and emphasizes the importance of members of the diaspora, such as myself, doing this research and co-producing knowledge with other Ethiopian women. The holistic ethnographic data collected in this work will begin to shed light on the household level impacts of shifting preferences and perceptions of women on political and cultural change, and will allow a space for their narratives to be lifted and honored. Lastly, this thesis presents the emergent theoretical framework of Injera Epistemology.

The following is an overview of the chapters contained in this thesis.

Chapter 1, More Injera Please: This introductory chapter gives a broad overview of the main themes and frameworks of my thesis, including the broader impacts of this work. I provide cultural, historical, and political context on topics like injera, agriculture, and political transitions. I introduce the concept of the “Kapitalocene”, a periodization beginning with

Ethiopia’s violent shift in 1974 to African Socialism and continuing today in the form of the

Abyotawi (Revolutionary) Democracy.

Chapter 2, Za Gualay: This chapter features a section on my positionality, conceptual framework, methods, and methodology. First, I write about the ways in which my identity as an

Indigenous Ethiopian diasporic researcher affects my work. Next, I expand on the framework of

Injera Epistemology through a theoretical discussion of the experiences, methodologies and concepts that influenced it. Lastly, I give an overview of my research site, Mekele, Ethiopia, and the research methods used to collect data.

Chapter 3, Fikir Yelem: Chapters 3-5 feature women’s narratives. Chapter 3 foregrounds the voice of Tirhas, the matriarch and oldest resident of the three. Tirhas’ life history, perceptions, sentiments, and opinions touch on every aspect of this thesis. She is a mother, a widow, a college graduate, a homeowner, an educator, a sister to a diasporic brother, a landlord, a traveler, and a pious woman. I choose to focus on the themes of relationality, interconnectedness, love, and spirituality reflected in her story. The Amharic phrase, Fikir

Yelem, translates to “there is no love,” and refers to Tirhas’ complaint that there no longer seems to be love between the people. While this may be true, we also witness how Tirhas has and continues to, through acts such as making injera, consciously and unconsciously contradict her own claim that there is no longer love between people in her community.

Chapter 4, Desta: We hear from Alem, a mother in her early 30s, who represents to me traditional Ethiopian femininity. Alem is an exceptional mother, friend, tenant, neighbor, and wife. In this chapter, we explore themes of trust, care, and futurity through her story. We bear witness to the Christening of her son, her thoughts on Ethiopia’s new prime minister, and her hopes for the future of Ethiopian women. Desta translates to “happiness” and refers to her sentiment when asked how she feels about the newly appointed woman president, Sahle Work

Zewde.

Chapter 5, Selam ina Asphalt: Lucy’s story is that of a “modern” Ethiopian woman. We come to understand the importance of stability and self-determination through her story as a

6 transnational migrant, hotel manager, and young mother. When asked what she hopes for the future, she told me, “Selam ina Asphalt,” which translates to “peace and asphalt.” She wishes peace for her country and for the road in front of her home to be paved. This, along with her return from working in “Arab” locales (how Ethiopians typically refer to Arab countries, specifically gulf states), encapsulates the linkages between everyday micropolitics and larger structures.

Chapter 6, Discussion: In this final chapter, I revisit my thesis rationale and goals. I then focus on the differences and similarities between Tirhas, Alem, and Lucy, including their perceptions, sentiments, and lived experiences. I situate this research within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming, and show the linkages between the micropolitics of everyday life and large scale and generalized concepts of empowerment touted by the United Nations and operationalized in directives like the Millenium Development

Goals and the National Policy on Ethiopian Women. Lastly, I use Injera Epistemology to weave together the common threads of power, agency, self-determination, resilience, and persistence that unite these three women.

The Cultural and Political Significance of Teff and Injera: A Brief Overview of an

Ethiopian Staple Crop and Food

“Even if you eat something, unless you eat Injera, you will not feel that you ate

something.” - Hamelmal Shiferaw (my mother)

In this section, I give a brief overview of the cultural, historical, and political significance of teff and injera to provide context and lay a foundation for the chapters that follow. I organize this section based on the categories used in Chapter Two (Rice and Rice Agriculture Today) of

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney’s 1993 book, Rice as Self : Japanese Identities Through Time.

Why Injera?

I suppose I could have titled this thesis Buna in the Kapitalocene, since buna (coffee) is just as much as injera a part of daily life for Habesha (people of Northern Ethiopia). Like injera, buna originated in what is now Ethiopia, its preparation is unique to the region, and the Ethiopian

Coffee Ceremony is exclusively the domain of women. Still, I chose injera, a dominant symbol that occurs frequently and conspicuously and that reveals something important about the culture

(Ohnuki-Tierney, 1993). Injera, unlike buna, did not spread to other cultures. It is uniquely

Habesha. Injera and its primary ingredient, a grass seed known as teff, are the threads that weave our diaspora and our stories into a multicolored, multi-fiber tilet (the shiny threads woven into white cotton to create elaborate designs in Habesha clothing). The spirits of the grain, the food, and people are intimately linked, as they are with many indigenous societies. For those who have not been to Ethiopia, I hope that one day you will be able to witness the sublime emerald highland landscapes of pre-harvested Lovegrass (teff) that carpet the impossibly terraced

8 farmlands that serve as stairs up to what I imagine to be ancient and mysterious cloud kingdoms.

I cherish the memory of a lone farmer leaning on his staff, gazing into the shrouded and lush town of Zufan, which at almost 7000 ft above sea level, aptly translates to “throne.”

Teff in Today’s World

Teff (Eragrostis tef) is the staple crop and pride of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and has been cultivated there for at least 2000 years (D’Andrea 2008), with more recent research asserting that teff has been domesticated for approximately 6000 years (Cheng et al., 2015). Teff is a cereal grain in the Lovegrass genus that grows as a grass and is used as a forage crop in Kenya,

Australia, India, South Africa, and South America. Teff is native to Ethiopia, where it is used as a fodder crop, food, and construction materials to reinforce houses built from mud or plaster

(Stallknecht, Gilbertson & Eckoff, 1993; Ketema, 1997; Staniar et al., 2010). The etymology of teff is unknown but the most accepted theory is that teff comes from the Amharic word teffa, which means lost. Teff grains are roughly the size of poppy seeds and are easily blown away or spilled. It is the smallest grain in the world, and the cereal is consumed as a whole grain because decortication is difficult with such a tiny vessel. This is also an issue for farmers, as a significant percentage of teff is lost during sowing.

Teff is mass produced by approximately 50 commercial farms throughout the country, which aim to exploit Ethiopia’s “comparative advantage” in the international market, given the special flavor and taste of Ethiopia-grown teff, according to Khalid Bomba (PhD), the Ethiopian

Agricultural Transformation Agency’s chief executive officer (Geeksa 2015). In 2003–2004, this grass was planted on around 2 million hectares, accounting for 28% of the 8 cereal crops grown in Ethiopia, and yielded more than 1.5 million metric tons. Today, It is grown annually

9 by more than 6 million farmers on nearly 3 million hectares of land in Ethiopia (Cheng et al.,

2015; Minten et al., 2013).

Types of Teff

Ethiopia grows three main categories of teff: white (nech), red/brown (quey), and mixed red/white/brown (sergegna). Red/brown teff is now grown in Ethiopia, Idaho, and more recently

Canada, and can even be purchased online and from Habesha and American grocery stores from brands like Maskal Teff and Bob’s Red Mill. White teff grows only in the Ethiopian highlands and is more difficult and expensive to procure without reliable and generous networks of kin to send and deliver it from “adi” (beloved term for homeland).

Ethiopian Government Intervention in Teff Agriculture

In 2006, the Ethiopian government interpreted rising grain prices as an imminent threat to food security in Ethiopia and banned the export of teff almost completely. It was only allowed to be exported in the form of injera. In 2015, the ban was lifted and the government hired a foreign marketing firm to promote the brand “Ethiopian Teff.” A new national committee was formed to manage the supply chain and monitor farmers, as export quality teff production is set to eventually include smallholder farms. This policy has the potential to make a large impact on the world teff market due to the level of production the Ethiopian government would like to achieve. The quinoa debacle, which resulted in the “pricing out” of many South Americans

(Bedoya-Perales et al., 2018), looms heavily over countries like Ethiopia, who want to promote and export their precious supergrain. The government has made it very clear that teff will not be the next quinoa, but this is yet to be seen. The full impact of teff production and consumption in

10 the global marketplace is also yet to be seen. In Ethiopia, infrastructure and policy seem to be limiting the teff supply chain (Minten et al., 2015).

According to a 2015 paper by Annette Crymes, the transformation of teff from an

Ethiopian staple crop into an international specialty commodity can be attributed to several independent and concurrent events: government food policies, famine and drought, Ethiopian population growth, international food aid, Ethiopian diasporic communities, and western demand. As Ethiopia continues to develop and large mechanized farms become more common, the country’s comparative advantage could easily change the fate of teff for the better, but we have yet to see the type of demand that there is for quinoa. Teff is considered a specialty grain and is marketed mostly to gluten free and health conscious Westerners, and to the Habesha diaspora. This last group of people may have the largest impact on the teff market of all.

Millions of Habeshas have migrated to countries all over the globe and have spread their cultural foods through restaurants, community events, and procreation.

Ethiopia and the Global Food Market

Ethiopia is one of the ten poorest countries in the world, with an estimated annual per capita income of $590 in 2015 (World Bank, 2016). Roughly 30 percent of Ethiopians live below the poverty line and are vulnerable to food insecurity, and about 75 percent depend on subsistence agriculture (Dorosh et al., 2012). The world experienced a steady increase in food prices since 2004, which culminated in the 2007–08 global food crisis. This was a result of what some call a perfect global storm of poor harvest, drought, increased demand for grain-fed meat, and increased cost of fertilizer (Hadley et al., 2009). Pressure on developing nations to liberalize trade in the form of structural adjustment programs by the IMF and World bank, speculation on

11 future markets by hedge funds, and increased reliance on global food markets are also cited as contributing factors (Khor, 2009). Wealthier countries, like the United States, were able to shield themselves from some of the more devastating effects of the global food crisis while poorer countries, like Ethiopia and Bangladesh, were more vulnerable to hunger and precarity-fueled civil unrest. During this time, the World Food Programme began rationing food aid in Ethiopia due to high prices worldwide.

After the 2008 food crisis, the Ethiopain government implemented new policies to combat food insecurity and possible effects of rising food prices on vulnerable populations within Ethiopia. These include the Agriculture Development Led Industrialization Strategy, which includes the Participatory Demonstration and Extension Training System (PADETS),

Food Security Package (FSP), Food for Work (FFW), and the Women’s Development Army

(Dorosh & Rashid, 2012).

Agricultural intensification has been a priority for the Ethiopian government since the

1990s, and with the help of foreign entities like the World Bank and the United Nations, the country has seen a significant increase in large farming projects. A 2012 report by the

International Food Policy Research Institute projects that hitting agricultural growth goals by

2015 will have reduced food insecurity and delivered 3.7 million people from poverty in

Ethiopia. According to the World Bank, poverty in Ethiopia fell from 44 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2011 and is still on the decline, which they attribute to growth in the agricultural sector. The 2018 update to the 2014 United Nations Human Development Report shows Ethiopia is still ranked 173 out of 189 countries worldwide.

A Brief Geo-political History of Imperial, Socialist, and Democratic Ethiopia

This section covers relevant Ethiopian history starting in pre-colonial Africa, but focuses on Ethiopia’s geo-political history from the 1960s to the present. I begin by expanding on my theory of the Kapitalocene, then give a brief political history of Ethiopia starting with ancient references. I take us through the Imperial period (before and during the transition to the

Kapitalocene), then the Socialist period, where I cover the radicalization of Ethiopian students and the Derg (the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia 1974 to 1987). I finish with an overview of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF, 1991- present), their approach to abiyotawi (revolutionary) democracy, and the current state of

Ethiopian politics.

The story of our people is predominantly passed down to us through oral, written, musical, artistic, dance, astral, agrarian, culinary, spiritual, and healing traditions that span

13,000+ years, hundreds of languages, and a trillion cubic kilometers. It is embodied, remembered, and ritualized through everyday living and formalized in social, political, educational, and religious institutions in Ethiopia and throughout the diaspora. This section is written in the Western epistemological tradition. Therefore, I mostly rely on written, peer- reviewed selections, which offer an important but limited history of Ethiopia.

Why Kapitalocene?

Most common approaches within historicized anthropology are studies of either a middle-range or short period. They enable the examination of vivid cultural dynamics in which actions and roles of individual agents can be identified. One can examine the role of agents whose interests conflict with those of others, use of the past for the present or for the future, and various “dynamics” between agents and cultural forces.

-Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice As Self, 1993

The term “Kapitalocene” is one that I playfully coined/adapted when trying, in a pinch, to come up with a title for a presentation on my first round of research. It has three main influences. Jason W. Moore and Donna Haraway argue against the notion of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch and framework said to have begun with the industrial revolution.

The Anthropocene is associated with human dominance over the Earth and attempts to make sense of climate change, species extinction, and widespread degradation of the Earth’s ecology

(Ogden et al., 2013). Moore (2017) claims that the periodization that begins in 1800 with the onset of the Industrial Revolution sterilizes the impact of Capitalism and its associated forms of oppression. He makes the case for a periodization that begins in 1450, which he identifies as the beginning of capitalism. He writes in response to Haraway, “The Capitalocene argues for situating the rise of capitalism, historically and geographically, within the web of life. This is capitalism not as economic system but as a situated and multispecies world-ecology of capital, power and re/production” (Moore, 2017, pp. 608-609). It was Haraway who gave me the idea to add my own version of “____-ocene” to the names listed in her 2015 essay titled, Anthropocene,

Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.

“Kapital” comes from Karl Marx’s 19th century, four volume work, Das Kapital. I wish to make reference to Marx and Friedrich Engels’ concept of dialectical or historical materialism, which Marx described as the “materialist conception of history”. This analysis emphasizes the

14 importance of material conditions shaped by class and labor (socioeconomic status). This calls attention to Ethiopia’s not so distant revolutionary transition from feudalism to “Marxist

Modernism” (Donham, 1999) via African Socialism in 1974, as the beginning of the period of the Kapitalocene, which extends into the current day in the form of abyotawi (revolutionary) democracy, introduced in 1991 by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front

(EPRDF), the party that continues to hold power in Ethiopia.

The Kapitalocene emerged out of a need to situate my research in a multi-layered spatio- temporality that allows for a cross-cultural comparison that “neither denies the specificity of a particular culture under the rubric of cultural universals nor examines culture in isolation to herald its uniqueness” (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1993, p. 10). Ethiopia is often relegated to the realm of universal analysis reserved for “developing” or “third world” nations. I do not wish to level a singular critique at this field of research and inquiry but do wish to complicate it by emphasizing

Ethiopia’s influential linkages to African Socialism and economic development strategies while honoring its unique story as the only country in Africa to resist colonization. Additionally, its staple food (injera) and indigenous crop (teff), and it’s religious significance to “people of the book” (Jews, Christians, and Muslims), are just a few of the characteristics that make Ethiopia unique.

Ancient Empires

But now Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away, Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind, a people split in two, one part where the Sungod sets and part where the Sungod rises. There Poseidon went to receive an offering, bulls and rams by the hundred— far away at the feast the Sea-lord sat and took his pleasure. -Homer, The Odyssey 1.21-25

The geo-political region now known as Ethiopia has loomed in the imagination of the ferenge (Amharic for foreigner) for several millennia. Many have traveled to and written of this mysterious place, which is believed by some to house the Ark of the Covenant. Historical, literary, and religious texts tell complicated and contradictory stories of a people and place that have existed from the beginning of time. The Hebrew Torah and Old Testament of the Bible make references to the Kingdom of Kush from which one of the first names for the people,

Cushites, comes. In Genesis 2:10 (King James Version) we read, “10 And a river went out of

Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads...13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of

Ethiopia”. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I (1892-1975) traced his divine right to rule using the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of Kings). The original date of this text is unknown but according to scholars “the complete Ethiopic version is believed to have existed since the 14th century

A.D.” (Tiruneh, 2014, pp. 51). This Judeo-Christian text is written in Ethiopic language, Ge’ez, and traces the Solomonic lineage and dynasty of Ethiopia to Makeda, also known as the Queen of Sheba. Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia in the 1st century AD and was the state religion by the 4th century AD (Marcus, 1994).

The Axumite Empire spanned the Red Sea to encompass modern day Ethiopia, Eritrea, and parts of Yemen. It existed from approximately 100-1000 AD and was an international

16 kingdom with pagan, Judaic, and Islamic religions (Marcus, 1994). The present day town of

Aksum is located in Tigray and is considered an important archeological, cultural, and holy site by people the world over.

The land known today as Ethiopia was not always one nation. Historical differences in culture, religion, language, and political systems were among some of the reasons. The Northern people were primarily ruled by feudal monarchies, whose violence peaked from 1769 to 1855 in age known as Zamana Masafent (Age of Princes).

Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855-1868) was not a Lion of Judah (name for Ethiopian emperors who claim the Solomonic divine right of kings recorded in the Kebra Nagast). He started as a general of Queen Menen, whom he eventually defeated to end the Zamana Masafent and become King of Kings (Emperor) of Abyssinia (another name for Ethiopia). Tewodros is mostly remembered and revered for uniting Ethiopia under one crown. He defeated the rulers of other parts of the country, crowned himself Emperor and worked to begin modernizing the country. For example, with the help of the British, he built a cannon. Tewodros committed suicide fighting the British Army in Mekdela when he realized he would lose. Tewodros was later used as propaganda by Derg because he subverted the divine right of kings and united

Ethiopia.

Menelik II (r.1889-1927) became Emperor of Ethiopia after Tewodros died fighting the

British and Yohannes fighting the Durbish. Menelik’s third wife, Taytu, founded and named

Addis Ababa as the capital city of Ethiopia. Menelik is celebrated for his role in the Battle of

Adwa (1890), when Italy marched across the Mereb river from Eritrea to Adwa. Menelik’s troops beat them and sent them back across the river to Eritrea, essentially stopping Ethiopia from being colonized by a European nation.

Efforts to modernize the unified country continued under the rule of Emperor Haile

Selassie I (r. 1930-1974). During his reign, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United

Nations and endured an occupation by Benito Mussolini’s Italian forces from 1936-1941. In

1974, Haile Selassie was deposed by Derg and died the next year. This transition is not unique to Ethiopia and fits into the greater historical narrative mentioned by Linda Tuhiwai-Smith in her book Decolonizing Methodologies. “The project of modernity signalled the end of feudalism and absolutist authority, legitimated by divine rule, and announced the beginning of the modern state.

The new state formation had to meet the requirements of an expanding economy based on major improvements in production.” (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 62) Haile Selassie’s reign came to an end amidst a perfect storm of destabilizing events. The 1972 famine, war with Somalia, peasant revolutions, taxi driver strike, radicalization of students, and the cold war were just some of these factors.

Transition to Socialism

Ethiopian students were radicalized in the 1960s by reading and copying smuggled texts by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Enver Hoxha.

Communist works were banned under Haile Selassie’s regime. Student activists were inflamed and began organizing underground after the severity of the 1972 famine was exposed by a

British documentary entitled, The Unknown Famine, in October 1973. Presented by Jonathan

Dimbleby, The Unknown Famine consisted of graphic images of Ethiopian suffering (Jones,

2019).

In an interview with my father, Engdawork Arefaine, I learned a little about what it felt like to be a student activist at this time. He explained that there was a voracious need to learn as

18 much as possible. He and his comrades were reading many books and pamphlets, especially one by Mao Zedong on organizing peasants. He admitted that it was very difficult to fit the ideology to Ethiopia and there was a lot of confusion since people did not fully understand the literature.

The labor movement was very big at this time and many labor unions emerged. There was not much interest in Pan-Africanism or independence other than Julius Nyerere’s ujamaa (socialism) plan for Tanzania and apartheid in South Africa. “Communist movement kind of made you ignore everything else and focus on the proletariat and labor movement” (Arefaine, 2019).

One of the slogans of the student movement was “mereyt larashu” (land to the farmer).

On March 4, 1975, the Derg implemented its land reform program. Rural land was nationalized without compensation and each peasant family was given "possessing rights" to a plot of land.

Tenancy and the hiring of wage labor on private farms was forbidden and all commercial farms came under state control. The Ethiopian Church lost all its land, and its clergy and staff were given stipends from the government (Ofcansky and Berry, 1991). Thus, the paternalistic modern state is born, and the age of the Kapitalocene commences.

Democracy

The question of what makes a democracy is a longstanding debate on the African continent, where colonial and post-colonial histories are short lived compared to the thousands of years of precolonial Africa, during which styles of governance varied widely across the continent. Ethiopia is a country that was never colonized by a European nation (Italy occupied it briefly during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War from 1936-1941). Emperor Haile Selassie ruled

Ethiopia until 1974, under the divine right of kings. From 1974 to 1991, Ethiopia was ruled by the Socialist/Communist Derg. In 1991, the Derg was overthrown by the EPRDF (Ethiopian

People's Revolutionary Democratic Front), which has ruled since then. EPRDF, as its name entails, promotes a revolutionary kind of democracy.

In a 2011 article, Sarah Vaughan explains how abyotawi (revolutionary) democracy has transitioned from Leninist interpretation of a “proletarian democracy” to a “development capitalism” similar to that of China. The abyotawi democracy is able to render itself legible to global capitalist entities while maintaining syncretic and flexible political ideologies and practices rooted in Marxist and Leninist works. Prime Ministers Meles Zenawi served from

1991 to his death in 2012, Hailemariam Desalegn from 2012 to 2018, and Abiy Ahmed Ali from

2018 to present. People’s current understandings of what makes a democracy are shaped by what they know and have experienced within these various historical regimes. For some, Dr. Abiy may be an autocrat; for others, he may be seen as a much more democratic leader.

Ethiopia has never fully implemented Marxist-Leninist praxis in governance. Following the military coup led by the Derg in 1974, a “homespun” socialism started as “a kind of

Ethiopian communalism” which “emphasized themes of equality, self-reliance, the indivisibility of the nation, state control of the economy, and the elimination of landlordism” (Donham, 1999).

In 1991, Woyene, also known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), led by Meles

Zenawi, wrested the country away from the Derg. The TPLF doubled down on their ideological campaign for an abyotawi democracy rooted in Marxist-Leninist ideals. This strategy had worked well to gain the support of peasants and recruit fighters to their armed struggle against the Derg. Under the EPRDF, governance looked more like a hybrid of liberal policies in favor of economic development and foreign investors.

This hybridization and ambiguity offers the ruling party flexibility in how they market and implement countrywide goals like economic development, poverty reduction, women’s

20 empowerment, gender mainstreaming, and foreign relations. The Derg and Woyane experimented with strategies that tout modernist solutions while utilizing and/or subverting traditional cooperative institutions like iqubs (credit unions), iddirs (insurance cooperatives), and mahabers (social networks), such as Gebere mahabers (peasants associations), which they created to help implement land reforms and to administer and police the rural areas (Mequanent,

1996). The EPRDF’s hybrid style of governance also allows the state to monitor, regulate, and mitigate the negative effects of capitalism and free markets.

TPLF-EPRDF’s conception of abyotawi democracy is thus an articulation between an ideological strategy inherited from the armed struggle of the 1970s and 1980s, and a codified discursive strategy that has to coexist with the liberal dominant model. The ambiguity of this ideology is a result of the bricolage that refers to two conflicting models. The TPLF-EPRDF’s economic policy inspired by the concept of abyotawi democracy also illustrates these ambiguities. In fact, the economy is often considered by the EPRDF as the main revolutionary democratic achievement (Bach, 2012).

Feminizing the Discourse

“Yo fuck a story arc if it don’t involve no matriarchs

Our mothers work from the ground up” - Ruby Ibarra

The title of this thesis, Injera in the Kapitalocene, can be read literally and metaphorically. For me, Kapitalocene signals an analysis in the Marxist tradition of dialectical materialism to which the political, ecological, and economic analyses of growing, harvesting, selling, and making teff and injera easily contribute. Metaphorically speaking, Injera represents the Ethiopian feminine realm of socio-cultural reproduction, and Kapitalocene represents the masculine realm to which politics, economics, and philosophy belong. I do not wish to create a false binary by essentializing women’s lived experiences and then putting them in opposition to men. I do wish, in the feminist Marxist tradition, to complicate the historical narrative by calling attention to that which is missing: a feminist analysis and voice. I alone am not this voice. I am one of millions and we are powerful, persistent, and resilient agents of change and hope in our lives, communities, and nations.

This introductory chapter gave a broad overview of the main themes and frameworks of my thesis, including the broader impacts of this work. I explored the cultural and economic significance of injera and teff in order to give context to the title of my thesis. I then introduced the concept of the “Kapitalocene”, a periodization beginning with Ethiopia’s violent shift in 1974 to African Socialism and continuing today in the form of the Abyotawi (revolutionary)

Democracy. The brief historical background of Ethiopia served to illustrate the short period of what I refer to as the Kapitalocene in relation to the history of the country and its people. In the forthcoming chapters, I delve into my positionality, methods and methodologies, and the narratives of three Ethiopian women: Tirhas, Alem, and Lucy.

Chapter 2: Za Gualay

Figure 2. Za Gualay: A photo of the author from 2005 taken in Gondar, Ethiopia. She is wearing her grandmother’s werq (gold) jewelry and a tilfi (type of traditional dress) purchased for her in Mekele as gift by Tirhas. Her hair was braided in the style of sheruba by her uncle’s wife.

Positionality

I see this research project as a collaboration between me and the Ethiopian women in my life, past, present, and future. I came with questions and a longing to be together while we looked for answers or uncovered more questions. The Tigrinya term, Za Gualay, translates directly to “my daughter” and is a term of endearment. I struggle to put into words the feelings of pride, warmth, and unabiding love that wash over me when I am called this, especially by women elders in my communities. Za Gualay encompasses many of the reasons I chose this research and shapes the methods that I employed to carry it out. As you will read in the pages ahead, relationality, accountability, and greatest of all, love, are at the heart of my work.

Tell me/ Whom you love, and I'll tell/ You who you are

-Creole saying, in Jane Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons (1996)

My parents did not teach us our “mother” tongues. When we were old enough to both ask and hear the reason why, they told us: “We knew we were never going back.” For my sisters, this was permission to be fully American. To continue to be carried forward by the inertia that is “The West”. For me, this was a call to retrieve what had been hidden from me in plain sight. My name is a constant reminder of my parents story of survival. Micknai, in

Tigrinya, means to “survive a struggle” and “to stay/live long”. For most of my life, I have gone by the nickname given to me by my parents, Mickey. Growing up in up in the Shenandoah

Valley meant that to me and my peers, Mickey was primary and Micknai was buried. My mother, spoke to me in Tigrinya when I was a child and my parents still speak to each other, almost exclusively, in this language but to my sisters and I in English. Many diasporic children

24 experience this strange sensation of knowing and perceiving deeply, exactly what it is that we have lost and longing for it while also desperately wanting to assimilate to our adopted cultures.

When I was 16, I traveled to Ethiopia for the first time with my parents and my sisters.

My mother and father began saving for this trip as soon as the Red Terror ended in 1991. Seven years later, they were reunited with the family they had given up on ever meeting on the homeland. We arrived at Atse Tewodros Airport in Gondar, Ethiopia on a 50 seater turbo-prop in mid July. My sisters and I were silly with the mixed emotions that came from the terror of turbulence and euphoria of viewing the Nile Gorge and Simien Mountains from 18,000 feet.

When we finally exited the one runway airport with our collective 600 lbs of luggage, we were greeted by over 50 family members, all of whom had piled into my uncles bus to serve as an official welcoming party. Whenever I remember this moment, I am overcome with waves of emotion that immediately manifest in tears. I can say, with full conviction, that I know love. I was born into fugitivity. I am a product of war. I am also the product of revolutionary and radical love.

We danced, sang, cried, clapped, hugged, laughed, cheered, ululated, swayed and kissed all the way back to my grandparents house in Gondar’s historic Kebele 15. Upon our arrival, clusters of family and neighbors greeted us and the celebration continued into the wee hours.

My aunt drummed on a 5 gallon bucket and the neighborhood azmaree (traditional musician) sang and played the Masenko, making up lyrics on the spot that told an epic tale of war, dispossession, and homecoming and poked fun at the kebele elders. My sisters and I felt as if we had known these people, our kin, our whole lives. My teenage disdain and embarrassment of my

“fresh off the boat”parents dissolved into pride, admiration, gratitude, and even solidarity. In some ways, I forgave them a little bit that day, for all the years I was forced to live away from

25 this.

This is not a fairy tale of a lost princess returning back to her African kingdom and living happily ever after. Initially, the fantasy of Africa was what brought me so much comfort and hope but eventually, over the course of several journeys to my mother, Ethiopia, I experienced soul aches as, what Saiyda Hartman calls, a “come, go back, child”. In Lose Your Mother: A

Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Hartman writes these children, “brave the wreckage of history and bear the burdens that others refuse” (Hartman, 2007, p. 86). I used to ask myself why I chose to break my own heart by disrupting this fantastic embrace by being a “come, go back, child?” I went “in search of my mother’s garden” (Walker, 1972) over and over, as if being pulled by a cosmic magnet. I would come to learn later, that this magnet was in fact longing. A fugitive and her home longing for one another.

More than a dozen trips later, I have learned to hold a place for the tension: it makes me sharp. This discomfort keeps feelings of complacency at bay and reminds me that belonging is not a place I can escape to. In Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation, Aimee

Carrillo Rowe writes of a “sense of ‘self’ that is radically inclined toward others, toward the communities to which we belong, with whom we long to be, and to whom we feel accountable.”

Rowe further observes that “we tend to overlook the ways that power is transmitted through our affective ties. Who we love, the communities that we live in, who we expend our emotional energies building ties with-these connections are all functions of power” (Rowe, 2005, p. 16).

My dreams of running away from the US to start again in Ethiopia started to fade into a transnational, Afro-diasporic identity crisis. As I “braved the wreckage” of dispossession, war, loss, and forgotten mother tongues, I could not simply hand in my “Africa card” in exchange for unconditional belonging. I would be forced, again, to do the difficult and ongoing identity work

I thought I had left behind in the US. This process proved to be one of the most difficult and replenishing experiences of my life thus far. I have grieved the loss of the mythical mother,

Ethiopia, and developed a “sense of self that is radically inclined towards others” by choosing whom I am accountable to, whom I love, and where I want to situate my power and in the process, I have found “my own” garden.

My ethnographic work over the last two years has intensified and imbued my critique with complexity rooted in trying to understand the ways in which my intersecting identities and privileged positions influence my research and career goals. In a 2003 article, “Contract of

Mutual (In)Difference: Governance and the Humanitarian Apparatus in Contemporary Albania and Kosovo,” Mariella Pandolfi writes,

The entire humanitarian apparatus legitimizes its presence in the name of an ethical and temporal rule that may be defined as the "culture of emergency... the humanitarian industry has emerged as an immensely powerful biopolitical force, effectively having power of life and death over millions the world over. It is time for this industry to be subjected to critical scrutiny. (Pandolfi, 2003, p. 373)

I found that my own research project fell into this sphere of circular logic that required me to create a “crisis niche” within the Ethiopian landscape by painting the women in Mekele as needing my expertise to become empowered, and then occupying this niche in order to sustain my career as an anthropologist. I do not wish to further enclose my research within an already enclosed colonial discipline and reproduce the separation and privileging of knowledge rendered above the people (Smith, 2012; Khasnabish & Haiven, 2014; Foucault, 1975).

This realization was not the product of an epiphany but developed during several research trips to Ethiopia overlaying my first year and a half of graduate school. It was fully realized through long conversations with friends, colleagues, family, professors, and peers.

“[A]s feminist anthropology continues to explore how unequal power relations are

27 created in the dynamics of anthropological research, women anthropologists can no longer afford to ignore the differences of education, resources, and mobility between themselves and their women subjects” (Simmons, 2001, p. 79; Moore, 1994). Through close study of social justice and transnational feminist frameworks and my experiences as a result of my interlocking identities, I came to know that I could not perpetuate the fetishization of brown women’s suffering, especially in the name of “filling a gap in the knowledge.” This ties into a dimension of my earlier critique that lies in the ways in which humanitarian efforts and critical research projects, even by well meaning diasporic feminists, are operationalized. Operationalization can happen through what Tania Li refers to as, “Rendering technical: extracting from the messiness of the social world, with all the processes that run through it, a set of relations that can be formulated as a diagram in which problem (a) plus intervention (b) will produce (c), a beneficial result” (Li, 2007, p. 3).

Originally, my goal in examining the cooperative networks of women in Ethiopia was to expand the “institution” to include the social and cultural norms that give rise to linkages among women who facilitate resource management, cooperation, conflict resolution, and (re)production.

The danger is in the operationalization of this analysis, which involves the rendering technical of these practices in order to plan interventions that address problems (as defined by external and internal actors) or design co-management plans. My power lies in the ability to count as one of these actors. I can define problems as I see fit and mobilize the global humanitarian apparatus to act on my behalf as the expert on the issue at hand.

This scenario may seem vague and hyperbolic but I feel that thinking in terms of

Institutional Review Board (IRB) risk assessments that define harm in narrow biomedical ethical terms, obscures the ripple effects and potentially harmful global linkages of my study results. In

Luz En Lo Oscuro, Gloria Anzaldua grapples with, “how to write (produce) without being inscribed (reproduced) in the dominant white structure and how to write without reinscribing and reproducing what we rebel against.” (Anzaldua, 2015, p. 7) In short, I am uneasy with the idea of my research and the lived experiences of the women I work with being used to further justification, through scholarly channels, of the problematic and violent “development” that I have set out to critique. As Tuhiwai Smith argues, “Writing can also be dangerous because we reinforce and maintain a style of discourse which is never innocent.” (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p.

37) This cannot be avoided entirely but I can challenge myself and others to explore methods that critically examine and, if necessary, challenge the forms of power that are generated through the transnational research processes.

My vision for my current ethnographic work is that it will open a door for people who are interested in reframing the ways in which Ethiopian women are studied, presented, and intervened on behalf of. My research, analysis, methods, perspectives, experiences, and disciplinary lenses are limited and leave much to be desired. It is my hope that others, especially womxn of the Ethiopian Diaspora, will build upon and critique it in order to move towards a deeply personal, holistic, and radical body of knowledge for and by those in solidarity with

Ethiopian women and, more importantly, Ethiopian women themselves. This may be through art, storytelling, film, scholarship, photography, gardening, and much more. I call on us to ask

Ethiopian women how they are doing and what they need; to embrace the contradictions and tensions that arise during our inquiry; to explore and celebrate difference, disagreement, and pluralism and follow what emerges from our relationships with Ethiopian women no matter where it takes us; and to move “Towards a Feminist Politics of Relation” (Carillo Rowe, 2005).

Conceptual Framework

“Kitchens and cooking, a place and activity that most women engage in regardless of educational level, ethnicity, or class status, form the praxis to bridge the gap between academic theoretical discourses about female subjectivity and quotidian working-class practices of female agency.” -Meredith Abarca

Several sources influenced my research and writing. I found indigenous research methods, especially those outlined by Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Shawn Wilson, to be invaluable.

They helped me to make meaning of and articulate my experiences as a diasporic Indigenous

Ethiopian researcher in Mekele. Wilson’s relentless emphasis on relationality and the interconnectedness of axiology, epistemology, ontology, and methodology served as a grounding theoretical framework for my research. He argues,

From an epistemology and ontology based upon relationships, an Indigenous methodology and axiology emerge. An Indigenous axiology is built upon the concept of relational accountability. Right or wrong; validity; statistically significant; worthy or unworthy: value judgements lose their meaning. What is more important--that is, being accountable to your relations (Wilson, 2008).

To help the reader understand Shawn Wilson’s meaning, I provide here the following definitions from Wilson’s 2008 book, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods.

Italics and boldface are added for emphasis and clarity.

Research paradigms are labels that are used to identify sets of underlying beliefs or assumptions upon which research is based. These sets of beliefs go together to guide researchers’ actions. Any research represents the paradigm used by the researcher, whether the researcher is conscious of their choice of paradigm or not.

Ontology is the theory of the nature of existence, or the nature of reality.

Epistemology is the study of the nature of thinking or knowing. It involves the theory of how we come to have knowledge, or how we know that we know something. It includes entire systems of thinking or styles of cognitive functioning that are built upon specific ontologies.

Methodology refers to the theory of how knowledge is gained, or in other words the

science of finding things out… Methodology is thus asking ‘How do I find out more about this reality?’.

Axiology is the ethics of morals that guide the search or knowledge and judge which information is worthy of searching for… In addition to judging the worthiness of the pursuit of certain types of knowledge, axiology also concerns itself with the ethics of how that knowledge is gained.

The 2001 edited volume, Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and

Poetics, was key to helping me make meaning of many of my experiences not only in the field, but in the discipline as well. My work is about Black women and I am a Black woman. The following excerpt attends to where I situate my work conceptually within the wider fields of

Black feminist and activist theory and praxis. Here, anthropologist, Irma McClaurin attends to the to the principles and tenets of black feminism that weave together mine and the lives of my interlocutors in my research and beyond.

Acknowledging that Black feminism has an epistemological basis as well as an ontological dimension, I define it as an embodied, positioned, ideological standpoint perspective that holds Black women’s experiences of simultaneous and multiple oppressions as the epistemological and theoretical basis of a “pragmatic activism” directed at combating those social and personal, individual and structural, local and global forces that pose harm to Black (in the widest geopolitical sense) women’s well being. (McClaurin, 2001, p. 63)

This next excerpt speaks specifically to my research methods and methodology. I am a Black feminist anthropologist not only because of the identies I hold. I also conduct my work using the theory and praxis of black feminist anthropology. As Simmons contends,

Black feminist anthropology moves beyond an interest in merely compiling data to confirm the existence of gender, racial, and class oppressions to a position that highlights Black women’s testimonials, the life lessons that have emerged in the context of oppressive religious, economic, political, and social conditions, and their varied strategies of survival and resistance. With such focus, Black women’s experiences and voices become central to the construction of a theory of Black feminist anthropological inquiry and analysis. (Simmons, 2001, p. 80)

Injera Epistemology builds heavily upon Meredith Abarca’s Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women. Abarca’s decolonizing methodology of Charlas Culinarias is an ethnographic approach of gathering women's culinary stories via the exchange of free-flowing conversations (Abarca, 2007). Like

Abarca, I also learned about the social meaning women give to their work by using the kitchen as a “borderless boundary zone”. In Abarca’s formulation,

Borderless is meant to represent the many types of social relations women can create from within their kitchen. By boundary I refer to the economic and cultural power relations that do affect the flow of women’s spatial mobility, regardless of their economic or marital status, age, or ethnicity. These two spatial concepts, borderless as space and boundary as place overlap to form the zone where all of us carry out our daily social life. (Abarca, 2006, p. 36).

Injera epistemology can be understood literally as the site of injera production. The injera kitchen is not only a fixed location but goes wherever Habesha women go. This gendered domestic space might be a converted suburban garage in Ohio, a small apartment kitchen in

Germany, or like in the case of my collaborators, a room on their compound dedicated to injera.

Metaphorically, the space where Injera is made is a type of “borderless boundary zone”. It represents “a site of multiple changing levels and degrees of freedom, self-awareness, subjectivity, and agency. The social interactions of daily life that unfold within a given space define its significance” (Abarca, 2006, p. 19).

Figure 3. Circles and Spirals: Alem places a fresh injera on the pile after cooking it on the electric magogo in the outdoor kitchen shared by all members of the compound. To her right, is placed a blue bucket with injera batter and a green pitcher, which is used to pour it in a spiral directly on the magogo. (photo by author)

Injera Epistemology builds on the concepts outlined in Rice As Self by Emiko Ohnuki-

Tierney. “Food tells not only how people live but also how they think of themselves in relation to others. A people’s cuisine, or a particular food, often marks the boundary between the collective self and the other” (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1993, p. 4). She uses rice as metaphor to understand aspects of Japanese culture and I use injera as a metaphor to understand and convey aspects of Ethiopian women’s lives. I also rely on her analysis of the importance of commensality, “Rather than a quantitative value simply as food to fill the stomach, the symbolic meaning of staple foods often derives from their roles in commensality.” (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1993, p. 119) Injera is eaten with others, in a circle, from one plate. It is the definition of commensality, the practice of eating together.

Injera is at the center of Ethiopian socio-culture and identity. It is traditionally made from teff, “the Lovegrass the Ethiopians have never done without” (Mesfin, 1986, p. liii) and the grain with which most Ethiopians have an epic love affair, myself included. It is a spongy sourdough made from fermented teff grain, water, and yeast on a mogogo (a round flat griddle used almost exclusively to make injera). It is literally the basis of most Ethiopian meals and is traditionally eaten from a shared plate using the right hand. When an Ethiopian sits down to eat at an individual plate, they will invite anyone nearby to eat with them by saying (in Amharic, the lingua franca in much of Ethiopia), “enbila,” which translates to “let us eat”. Feeding a guest by placing a large, perfectly formed bite of injera and wat (stew) called a gursha in their mouth is a sign of honor and affection. Traditionally, you must do this twice or else there will be a disagreement between you and the recipient sometime in the future (Mesfin, 1986).

I have spent thousands of hours over my lifetime watching, making, and stealing fresh injera, or waiting for my mother or aunties to make katenga, injera made crispy then smeared

34 with a mixture of kibay (clarified butter) and berbere (hot pepper spice mix). This is a sacred and gendered spatio-temporal location that is only accessible to women and children and maybe in some small way, to the readers of this thesis. Ethiopian and Eritrean women of the diaspora make injera often and with whatever ingredients are available. As a child in the 1980s, I ate my mother’s square shaped, white injera which, because of her limited-to-no access to teff flour and a magogo, was made from wheat flour in a 12 x 12 inch, deep dish electric skillet. I can still see her lift the white lid to check the “eyes” on the top of the injera and reach in to test the edges, which start to curl up if the injera is overcooked.

The concept of Injera Epistemology emerged easily once I rooted myself in my own indigenous identity and let go of rigid disciplinary ontological and epistemological norms.

Instead of using a Western lens to scan for pieces of my own culture that could be made visible and rendered legible to the dominant Western gaze, I shifted to a FUBU (For Us By Us) strategy that centered Ethiopian women as the experts, producers, and consumers of our knowledge.

When I was finally able to fully trust and embrace our ways of knowing and being, I found that making Injera served as a profoundly beautiful metaphor for how I know myself and the

Ethiopian woman in my life to be.

Embeddedness Theory

Women are “embedded” into their communities and often have their own strategies for common pool resource management (if not their own definitions of what counts as common pool resources). In “Market or Community Failure? Critical Perspectives on Common Property

Research”, ecological anthropologists Bonnie McKay and Svein Jentoft write of the concepts of embeddedness and disembeddedness,

The embeddedness position is appropriate as an analytical perspective for a "thicker" study of environmental problems. It brings dimensions of social life and community into the analytic framework concerned with both causes and consequences of problems in the use and management of common resources. (McCay & Jentoft, 1998, p. 24) and

It also requires understanding, respecting, and building upon the social and political capacities of local communities, but also of the disembedding forces of modem society. (McCay & Jentoft, 1998, p. 27)

Ecological anthropology frameworks examine and analyze how traditional institutions in

Ethiopia interact with government and NGO development and conservation projects. I have encountered very little data on how women factor into resource management, since most of the studies focus on patriarchal, formal, traditional institutions, whose administrative powers are slowly being phased out by the national government. By focusing on the degradation of traditional institutions and their indigenous local knowledge (ILK), these studies ignore the resilient forms of cultural transmission and resource management carried out by women. One way to reconceptualize the institution so that we might analyze women’s networks of cooperation, resource management, conflict resolution, and (re)production of culture, is to use the idea of assemblages.

The conceptual framework of assemblages has been discussed by Foucault, Deleuze, and

Guattari to understand the ways in which heterogeneous elements are assembled to address urgent need and invested with strategic purpose and to reframe the way we consider institutions, power, governmentality, and transnational networks of influence (Foucault, 1980). Tania M. Li applies this framework to her analysis of community forest management, “assemblage links directly to a practice, to assemble… Assemblage flags agency, the hard work required to draw heterogeneous elements together, forge connections between them and sustain these connections in the face of tension” and “[a]feature of assemblage is its potential to finesse questions of agency by recognizing the situated subjects who do the work of pulling together disparate elements without attributing to them a master-mind or a totalizing plan” (Li, 2007, p. 3).

My goal in using assemblage theory to examine the cooperative networks of the women

I work with is to expand the “institution” to include the social and cultural norms that give rise to these linkages among women, and that facilitate resource management, cooperation, conflict resolution, and (re)production.

Methods and Methodology

Research Site

Ethiopia has a rich history of agriculture and meal preparation reaching back to the origins of domestication (McCann 1995). The rise of the Axumite Kingdom in 100 A.D. saw the expansion of one of the greatest and farthest reaching empires of Africa, with trade routes throughout the Arabian Peninsula and India (Martin et al, 1995). There is evidence for maize cultivation in Ethiopia as a garden crop and by the 19th century, several varieties of maize were being cultivated. The archeological record shows that farmers used oxen pulled plows to farm

37 the highlands during 1000 B.C., a practice that can still be witnessed today.

“Africa’s cookery... evolved historically as the product of a lively stew of culture, place, and migration within a wider world of politics, power, and human interaction” (McCann, 2009, p. 31). Having never been colonized, many traditional ingredients like teff, turmeric, and cardamon are still the primary sources of nutrition in staple foods like injera, shiro, and wat. A brief occupation by Italy in the 1940’s brought new cuisines into modern day Abyssinia. Meal preparation is still almost exclusively the domain of women, who for centuries have served as

“custodians of oral cultures” despite being marginalized from formal politics (McCann, 2009).

Women learn meal preparation from their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters through watching, helping, and conversing. Written recipes are rarely seen outside the realm of the elites and foreigners.

Meal preparation and practice cannot be understood without considering Ethiopian rural- urban migration. Though approximately 80% of Ethiopians live in rural areas of the country

(World Bank, 2017), increasing migration to urban areas, brings newly imported foods like sunflower oil, volatile food prices, and newly developing tastes. Migration may alter and/or produce new preferences that influence meal preparation and the lives of the women who are responsible for this essential task. Harvest yields, micro and macro economy, policy, health issues, community norms, and other factors outside women’s immediate control can impact their ability to procure (nutritionally and culturally important) food stuffs. Women are taught about nutrition through extension services and projects like the Women’s Development Army and

Health Extension Program, which relies on clustering women into 1 to 5 networks to efficiently disseminate information, resources, and desired behavior changes (Maes et al, 2015).

Ethiopia ranks very low among world countries on measures of women’s empowerment

(Global Gender Gap Report, 2015), which is likely unevenly distributed across the country.

Ethiopia is 85% agrarian (World Bank, 2017). Most of the country’s urbanization occurs around it’s largest city, the capital, Addis Ababa. Mekele is an urban area located in the northern highlands of Ethiopia with an estimated population of just over 200,000. It has an airport, public and private universities, and hospitals. It is located in Tigray, the region from which the current ruling political party hails; it was formerly part of the Axumite Kingdom. Mekele offers an ideal arena in which to explore the ways macro level policies affect household level cooking and women’s production. Current policies include Agriculture Development Led Industrialization

(ADLI) Strategy, Participatory Demonstration and Extension Training System (PADETS), Food

Security Package (FSP), and Food for Work (FFW).

I conducted this research for approximately 10 weeks total over three trips to Mekele,

Tigray, Ethiopia between August 2017 and December 2018. Tigrinya is the main language of the region and taught alongside Amharic in schools.

Mekele is the capital of Tigray State, located in the northern highlands of Ethiopia. It is the third largest city in Ethiopia (215,546 per 2009 census data) after the capital Addis Ababa

(4.4 million) and Nazret (213,000)* Women make up 51.4% of the total population and 63% of the total population is under 25, per 2009 census data. It has an airport, public and private universities, and hospitals. At over 7000 ft above sea level, it is one of the highest major cities in

Ethiopia.

* Data from CIA factbook and Ethiopian census data. These numbers are generally accepted as approximations and the population of Addis Ababa is sometimes reported as being as high as 7 million.

Figure 4. Map of Tigray Region: Map of Tigray State Administrative Boundaries. Mekele is located in Enderta and can be found in the middle of the right side of the map. Eritrea is to the north of Tigray and share culture, language, food, and several millennia of history. These borders and boundaries have been heavily shaped by Eritrean-Ethiopian war and the implementation of the kilil system by the Zenawi regime. (Map Created by Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission Information Centre, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs-Ethiopia)

Figure 5. Mekele City: Map showing the administrative boundaries within Mekele City. The red line denotes the original city limits, which is where my research was conducted. In the center, we see the section named Kedamay Weyane. (Source: Millennium Cities Initiative)

Mekele was declared the capital city of Tigray by Atse (Emperor) Yohannes (lived 1837-1889).

It has great importance in the history of Ethiopia and the legacy of Atse Yohannes can still be seen in Mekele from the name of the local school, his castle in the city’s center, and the claims to his lineage made by many locals. In A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855-1991, Bahru Zewde writes,

The Semites have played the most dominant role in the country’s history… The oldest of the Semitic languages, Ge’ez, now confined to ecclesiastical use, has served as a sort of lingua franca of the Semitic-speaking peoples. The most akin to Ge’ez is Tegra... The Tegregna speakers are found in highland Eritrea and in Tegray. Amharic, which is the official language of the country, is the native tongue of most of the inhabitants of the north central and central highlands. (Zewde, 1991, p. 7)

Tigray is also the region of origin of the previous Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles

Zenawi, and home to the once vast Axumite Empire (100 AD-940 AD). The current ruling political party, Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) are from Tigray, although not all their members are Tigryan. The following is from an interview I conducted with

Engdawork Arefaine, an Ethiopian teacher, historian, and my father. He offers historical context on the area of Mekele named Kedemay Weyane. This is important because it highlights and connects the role of Mekele in the political struggles of Ethiopians under Haile Selassie and

EPRDF. MA are my initials, and EA are his.

MA: I see here on the map that the city center is named Kedemay Weyane, which is similar to the nickname TPLF gave itself. Is this connected?

EA: Yes. Several districts in Tigray rebelled against the Haile Selassie government. At that time they created a militia, it was after the Italo-Ethiopian war so there were guns, and the action called Weyane which means, revolution. They were saying, NO! We will not be ruled and we will not be taxed. They fought with Haile Selassie until finally, he asked the British Royal Air Force to bomb the Hedgaga Soni (Monday Market). This was the open air market, at that time no

42 buildings, that every peasant for miles brings their product to be sold. They come with donkeys, mules, horses, goats, sheep, camels, chickens, and more. They bombed the market on Monday (market day) to crush the revolt by shocking the people. After the bombing, many people and animals died and were buried right there in that market. In the modern days, when they were building there, they found remains while digging for the foundation.

The name Kedamy Weyane means ‘the first Weyane’ and was given to that place by TPLF sometime after they came into power (1991). They call themselves, as a nickname, Weyane because of this.

MA: How did this change people’s feeling toward Haile Selassie?

EA: It took a long time for people to forget this. People had a lot of resentment towards Haile Selassie. This is probably one of the reasons that Haile Selassie gave his granddaughter, Lilt (princess) Ida to, be the wife of Lul (prince) Mengesha, one of the descendants of Atse Yohannes. Prince Mengesha is still alive and in his 80s and lives between Addis Ababa and Northern Virginia.

Methods

My research assistant, Fana Gidey, and I used local connections to identify one kebele

(neighborhood) in which to conduct all recruitment, relying on voluntary and snowball sampling methods to recruit women who were eligible to participate. Fana grew up in the neighborhood, worked as a health officer locally and nationally, and at the time of data collection, was in her

2nd year of a Masters in Sociology program at Mekelle University. We ended up with 5 women total, 3 of whom we were able to work with more closely. I decided not to write about 2 of the women since were unable to do follow up interviews with them. We engaged in participant observation along with semi-structured interviews to gather research context, personal data and narratives of participants. Participant observation included focal follows in order to see how much time women were spending on food acquisition and meal preparation, and other tasks. We used a focus on food acquisition and meal preparation as a 'springboard' to understanding women's perspectives and experiences on "women's empowerment" and "gender mainstreaming," and whatever most concerned them at the time of our research. We collected

43 data by extensive note taking and voice recorded interviews. Photographs were taken with verbal consent to use for my research, which could potentially be published. Recruitment, data collection, and documentation took place in English, Amharic, and Tigrinya and was translated to English for data analysis by Fana and myself.

For semi-structured interviews, Fana and I asked the women to identify a location to be interviewed. This was to ensure that the participants felt comfortable at all times. They were able to have people of their choosing present at all interviews. Participants were asked questions about life history, food security, daily food acquisition and preparation, and perceptions of change, politics, and anything else that they wanted to discuss. Interviews lasted from 60-120 minutes each and were followed up as necessary during the remaining research period with permission from the participants. Interviews were digitally recorded with consent of each participant.

Fana and I also observed the women in the household, market, community, and other locations relevant to this study. Participants were asked permission each time and were able to have people of their choosing with them at all times to ensure they were comfortable. We documented things like the functional setup of the kitchen and household, procedure of meal preparation, purchasing choices and patterns at market, prices and availability of foods at the market, comments made by participants, and topics of conversations carried out in front of and with the researchers. These observations lasted 1-6 hours each. Oregon State University

Institutional Review Board reviewed and approved my research protocol.

This chapter featured sections on my positionality, conceptual framework, methods, and methodology. I covered the ways in which my identity as an Indigenous Ethiopian diasporic researcher affects my work and my relationship to the humanitarian apparatus. I introduced my

44 framework of Injera Epistemology through a theoretical discussion of the experiences, methodologies and concepts that influenced it. Lastly, I gave an overview of my research site,

Mekele, Ethiopia, and the research methods used to collect data. The next chapter begins the sections on the women I worked with to conduct my research. It tells the story of Tirhas and why she feels there is no longer love.

Chapter 3: ፍቅር የለም Fikir Yelem (Tirhas)

This chapter foregrounds the voice of Tirhas, the matriarch and oldest resident of the three. Tirhas’ life history, perceptions, sentiments, and opinions touch on every aspect of this thesis. She is a mother, a widow, a college graduate, a homeowner, an educator, a sister to a diasporic brother, a landlord, a traveler, and a pious woman. I choose to focus on the themes of relationality, interconnectedness, love, and spirituality reflected in her story. The Amharic phrase, Fikir Yelem translates to, “there is no love” and refers to Tirhas’ complaint that there now longer seems to be love between the people. While this may be true, we also witness how

Tirhas has and continues to, through acts such as making injera, consciously and unconsciously contradicts her own claim that there is no longer love.

Tirhas squints in the afternoon sun and smiles as she moves her three legged wooden stool into the shade of the avocado tree in the courtyard. We settle in to begin the interview and

I send her daughter to fetch her sister for help with translation. Around us, birds chirp, children play, women work on household tasks at a more hurried pace because it is the 2017 (2009 Julian) rainy season and the rain storms will roll in by early evening. Serene doesn’t feel like the right word but it comes close. Tirhas is 55 at the time of this interview and has raised 5 children, 1 grandchild, and buried her husband. Tirhas, embodies every bit of the word matriarch. She is a mother, a widow, a college graduate, a homeowner, an educator, a sister to a diasporic brother, a landlord, a traveler, and a pious woman. Tirhas graduated with a teaching degree in the late 70’s and taught children for 30 years. She has traveled the country and loves to tell stories of teaching in Asmara, Eritrea before the war with Ethiopia, which lasted from 1998-2018. When her husband became sick with cancer, she traveled with him to Thailand to seek treatment.

Tirhas has lived in this home since she was born. It is part of a larger property that belonged to her parents, who were among the first to build in this kebele (neighborhood). The property has been in their family since 1968 (1960 Ethiopian Calendar) and was divided between

Tirhas and her 4 siblings. It now belongs to Tirhas and her older brother, who lives in the United

States. With Tirhas’ as the project manager, he recently built a two story apartment building on his section. Tirhas is a master record keeper and she has receipts from the 1960’s to the present, including most transactions related to the properties and buildings. Tirhas explains that she didn’t move to the home of her husband when they were married, as is customary, “Because he lived in

‘guter’ (rural area) with no [clean] water, no hospital, no high school, no university, no quality shopping. There was no problem. My husband wanted to live here. He was a teacher as well”.

We began our first informal interview by quickly covering questions on her life history.

We then cruised through the questions about food insecurity and determined that based on her answers, she is not food or water insecure. Tirhas has had running water at her property since

1974 (1966 Ethiopian calendar) when her father put in his order for a bomba (plumbed water spigot). “We were the first customers in Mekelle. The water comes from the village of Ayen

Alem. The reservoir is there.” The water has a high concentration of salts, which make it undrinkable but usable for cooking and washing. The bomba is in the courtyard and available to all members of the compound. It often runs dry so they make sure to fill 50 gallon drums for backup and catch rainwater during the rainy season. Tirhas can afford to regularly buy drinking water (65 birr for 20 liter jug) for her household. They have had electricity at the compound since 1974 as well and like the water, it often goes out, leaving them without power for minutes, hours, or even days.

We then move into questions on food purchases and preparation. Tirhas shops for most

47 of her food from the nearby open market, Ada Haki (Place of the Truth), on Mondays and

Tuesdays. She also purchases government subsidized palm oil, wheat flour, and sugar from the kebele suk (government store). I learn later that Tirhas, her daughter-in-law, Alem, and Lucy (4 women) coordinate to purchase subsidized items together then divide them evenly between this.

I cover this more in Chapter 6.

Participant observation notes:

I went to Ada Haki with Tirhas and bought tomato, lettuce, onion, lemon, carrot, collard greens, and garlic. I splurged on some apples for the girls. We stopped in the some shops downtown for items like soap and toothpaste. Outside one of the shops, there was an elderly man sitting on the curb selling eggs on a bed of straw in a homemade basket. It is fasting time right now so no animal products until Gena (Christmas is January 7). So I surprised when my aunt inquired about the price of eggs. The man says 3 birr per egg, which I notice is half a birr cheaper than it was right before Ashenda. It is right after 6pm, so the equatorial sun has already gone down. The man uses the flashlight from his brick shaped Nokia non-smartphone to shine a light through the eggs to prove they are ready to eat. Tsega buys a few eggs and excitedly declares, “for you!” I am not fasting and not only is this not taboo, it is expected that I won’t fast because I have come from abroad. She always jokes that my father doesn’t fast either when he comes but she knows that my mom always fasts, even in the US. Tirhas takes personal pride in not letting her guests go hungry and spends extra money to buy eggs and fresh milk from her neighbors to make yogurt for me. She does not every cook meat for me though and I would never allow her too. There is an unspoken agreement that this would be too far.

It is taboo for women to purchase meat other than chicken and Tirhas did not remarry after her husband died. Instead of her son, she sends her tenant, Alem’s husband, to the market on Fridays (only in non-fasting times) to buy an animal to slaughter. This is a point of contention since she does not see him as someone who is properly acting in his role as the eldest child and only son. Still, she is very proud that he was already a medical doctor at 25 and was top of his class most of his life. Tirhas’ sentiments about her only son reveal tensions between traditional and modern expectations. Her son is an example of the success one can gain by following the prescriptive state route. He is an excellent student and his hard work is rewarded with praise, a free medical degree, and a modest salary. His duty is to his nation first and his

48 family second.

A few days later, on the eve of Ashenda (women’s religious festival in Mekele), Tirhas’ house is a flurry of work. The power is out for the second day in a row. Our Ashenda clothes are not ready and Tirhas is not happy about this. The lamb her son purchased for us was butchered at 5am by a man Tirhas hired. He also butchered a chicken for Alem. When Tirhas saw the lamb she laughed and joked about her son’s incompetence. “For this price he should have bought something bigger! This is a cat!” Alem is cooking fresh doro wat (chicken stew) right now and Tirhas is making beg wat (lamb stew). Her cousin arrived with a gift of eggs from

Nazret and one quintan of charcoal. Tirhas shared eggs with Alem right away. He came with

420 quintans of white teff from Nazret to be sold to local merchants. It takes him a day and a half to travel the almost 900 km route. He usually loads the truck with cement from the local

Messebo factory and travels back to Nazret. Depending on business, he makes the trek once every two weeks. Otherwise, he travels to Port of Djibouti.

Figure 6. Mebrat Yelem: Tirhas cooks injera on an earthen magogo (photo by author)

“Mebrat yelem”, the power was out, again. Tsega went to use the old, earthen magogo at

Lucy’s home. Tsega’s traditional magogo was broken by the maid of one of her tenants 5 years ago and she has used an electric since then. She tells me that every home in this neighborhood has an old style “magogo” or “injera magager” which roughly translates to “injera maker”. I oscillated between helping and documenting her prepare to make injera for 2 hours. We had to go into the barn cum storage shed and pick out firewood. The barn still smells of the livestock that lived there for 30+ years and she reminds me that she misses her cows.

When I first visited in 2006, her eldest son, just a boy at the time, asked me about our family livestock in America. I explained that the only animals we had were pets. He looked at me in disbelief and asked, “How do you eat? How do you survive without livestock?” Now, we

50 are rummaging through a lifeless barn searching for wood dry enough to burn in the rainy season. We then proceed to break the branches by propping the ends on a hard cement surface and stomping on the vulnerable middle part. We carry them over to Lucy’s house and she works to prepare the room for Tirhas. Starting the fire is a feat and Tirhas sits patiently and stokes the fledgling flame while adding scrap paper as kindling. She alternates between fanning the square mud opening and curing the surface to prepare it for injera batter. This involves rubbing it with a chunk of pressed flax seed paste. This works to “moisturize”, smooth, and clean the perfectly level and flush, metal plate embedded in the mud hearth. Once the fire really gets going, Tirhas shoos me out of the room because the smoke is filling up the small stone walled three sided hut, which is situated next to the main gate to Lucy’s home. I have walked right by it many times but never ducked in to observe this “third” kitchen.

Today, I watch Tirhas squint and cough while she labors for hours to make fresh injera, a testament to how important this task is to Ethiopian women. This image of an African woman cooking in this rustic setting could easily end up on a travel blog with a cute story about local cuisine. Photos of women as modern urban dweller using electric kitchen appliances and smartphones in outdoor shed/pantry/kitchen littered with household goods, toys, and people, might not be as desirable

Spirituality

Tirhas, along with almost half of her country, is a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox

Tewahedo Church. The church and religion are deeply intertwined with the culture and history of Ethiopia. Tirhas is a strict observer of the tsom (fasting days), which can add up to almost 200 days a year for some practitioners. Observers do not consume animal products (vegan) or

51 partake in sexual intercourse. Alcohol and fish are to be avoided but there are differing opinions on this. Ethiopian cuisine has many highly nutritious vegan dishes, most of which are eaten with injera.

Today is December 21 (Gregorian Calendar) which falls within the 40 day tsom (fasting) window prior to Ethiopian Christmas, January 7th. Tirhas has returned home on foot from her daily visit to the nearby Mariam church. I ask if she meets women at church. “Ma’at! (lots),” she exclaims. Do you talk to them? “It’s nooree (taboo) to do so inside.” How about outside?

“Yes, of course.” What do you talk about? “House talk.” Later that day, the local priest stopped by for a meal, as he often does.

Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity is a large part of the dominant culture of Ethiopia.

Religious holidays and mandates shape much of people’s lives there, whether they are Orthodox or not. This is can easily be witnessed during morning public calls to prayer, holidays, weddings, funerals, christenings, saint’s days, and more. The Holy Trinity of the father, son, and holy spirit are sacred and it is customary to stop when passing a church to “cross oneself” and kiss the walls of the church. Mariam (Mary) is revered as the “Mother of God” and some of the most important churches in the country, including the one that Tirhas frequents, are named after her. We believe that she has a direct line to God so we ask favors of and give offerings to

Mariam directly

In my observations and experiences before and during my research, I find that women like Tirhas serve as the spiritual backbones to their communities. This extends beyond the dutiful and zealous observation of religious laws and codes to the cosmological and spiritual

(Wilson, 2008). Tirhas makes meaning of everything through her spiritual relationships to the cosmos, which she often accesses through her religious and cultural practices. She spends

52 upwards of 10 hours a week at church, where she is able to reflect, pray, and heal. She tithes regularly and is often entrusted by diasporic women to tithe at the appropriate time on their behalf. The younger women of the household and compound do not spend as much time at church and often default to Tirhas on religious matters.

I cannot say whether the difference between younger and older women’s relationship to religion and spirituality are indicative of cultural change. I do feel that it points to the importance of intergenerational relationships among women. As Tirhas ages, her roles and responsibilities change in relation to her children, family, community, and society. This is not only accepted but expected in our culture. She is a widow and all of her children are over the age of twelve. This is a time when many women, my mother and grandmothers included, become more spiritual and help to guide the younger generations of women. Widows often become menekusit (nuns) once they reach a certain age. This is an important spiritual and cultural milestone in that it signals a time when a woman's secular responsibilities are done. It is now the task of her community to attend to her EVERY need. Earning a blessing from an elderly nun is very special. It has yet to be seen whether Tirhas will become a menekusit.

During our time together, I watched her play an important role in the social reproduction of religious and spiritual practices.

Love (Fikir)

Tirhas has lived in Tigray through the transitions from Haile Selassie to Derg to Weyane.

In one interview, she said that the main difference between the time before and after the Derg was ousted was that more recently, “fikir yelem” or “there is no love”. She believes that after the transitional government and still-ruling party (EPRDF) came into power, the priorities of her

53 fellow citizens changed. There was no longer love between people now that competition and security were deemed important by the government.

A year later, I asked Tirhas about what foods her neighbors borrowed from one another.

She began to answer by listing off the items salt, berebere, jalapeno, injera, onion, palm oil, and charcoal but then suddenly, “40 years ago, everyone would share. All the neighborhood women would share. It changed because of Weyane”. Alem, who is sitting with us, hears this, jumps up and runs to her home. Tirhas continues, “There is no love among neighbors because of the government. Weyane is aggressive (she says in English for emphasis). Be careful. We shared in DERG time very much. 20 years ago we could speak openly but now if we talk, we will be arrested.

Six months later, I returned for my last round of data collection. Tirhas mentions fikir yelem again. “Before, there were not separate compounds. People were free. The houses were not closed. It changed 25 years ago. There was no love. People sat alone in their homes.” I asked her what changed but she just repeated, no love, “fikir yelem.” As Tirhas spoke this, Lucy walked in, her baby swaddled to her back in a netela (white cotton scarf with embroidered border). Tirhas prompted her daughter to pour tela (homemade beer) for Lucy as soon as she sat down. She fed a little bit of tela to her baby, which made Tirhas smile and say, “tsebel no” (it’s holy water).

Time and again, I witnessed Tirhas personally contradict the concept of “fikir yelem.”

Ethiopian mothers often teach us about what should be by consistently reminding us of what should not be. Many of the lessons I learned from my own mother were through her corrections of my mistakes instead of praise my achievements. While I trust her memories of pre-Weyane

Mekele, I also suspect that her role as an elder may have something to do with her sentiments.

Tirhas embodies so much of what I hope to convey through my framework of Injera

Epistemology. I chose to focus on the themes of relationality, interconnectedness, love, and spirituality reflected in her story and through her connection to her kin, community, God, and country. We also witness her power, agency, resilience, and persistence as she makes injera, manages her diasporic brother’s projects, mentors her tenant, and deals with precarity on a daily basis.

In the next chapter, we shift to the story of Alem, where we hear about her feelings of desta (happiness) about the newly appointed woman president, Sahle-Work Zewde.

Chapter 4: Desta (Alem)

In this chapter, we hear from Alem, a mother in her early 30s, who to me represents traditional Ethiopian femininity. Alem is an exceptional mother, friend, tennant, neighbor, and wife. In her chapter, we explore themes of trust, care, and futurity through her story. We bear witness to the Christening of her son, her thoughts on Ethiopia’s new prime minister, and her hopes for the future of Ethiopian women. Desta translates to “happiness” and refers to her sentiment when asked how she feels about the newly appointed, woman president, Sahle Work

Zewde.

In April 2018, Abiy Ahmed, an ethnic Oromo, became the leader of the ruling EPRDF and prime minister of Ethiopia. He immediately launched a plan for political and diplomatic reform. The following month, thousands of political prisoners were released and the state of emergency was lifted. July 2018 saw the official end of the 20 year war between Ethiopia and

Eritrea, with Ethiopia leaving the disputed territory of Badme. In October the government signed a peace deal with the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), ending a 34- year armed rebellion. October 16, Dr. Ahmed reduced the number of cabinet posts to 20 and appointed 10 women to cabinet positions, including including Ethiopia's first female Defense

Minister, Aisha Mohammed. On October 25, 2018, Sahle-Work Zewde, through unanimous parliamentary vote, became the first woman president in Ethiopia’s history and the first female head of state since Empress Zawditu (1928-1930).

Life History

Alem is 31 years old and a mother to one girl and two boys. She lives with her husband and three children in a one room apartment. She is also an adopted daughter to Tirhas, although

Tirhas would scoff at this. She has lived as one of her tenants for 8 years now. All of her children were born while living there and to an outsider, they appear to be close family. Alem grew up in a small town outside Mekele where she completed grade 8. She moved to Mekelle for grades 9-10 but did not finish high school. She was married in 1994 (2002 Gregorian calendar) at the age of 18 and had her first child at the age of 24. 9 years ago, Alem worked outside the home in a juice cafe as a juicer and server. Now she is only a housewife. She misses working very much because of the money and she hates being home all day. She relies on the income of her husband who is a building contractor and broker.

Our initial round of interviews took place in 2017 kremt (winter in Ethiopia and summer in the US). Alem worries daily that her family will not have enough food. She would prefer to shop for food once a week but her budget only allows her to shop once every two weeks for a limited variety of foods. She travels by foot to shop for food at Ada Haki and in downtown

Mekele. A year later, she complains that in the last 2 years the price of every food has increased and just this past year has doubled. There is little change in the variety of foods but much change in the cost. She copes with the higher prices by eating cheaper foods and less variety.

She mostly buys and cooks shiro (vegan chickpea based dish often associated with poverty).

Christening

Alem’s newborn son is almost 40 days old so the household was busy preparing for his christening. Alem prepares most of the food for her house herself but for the christening, she will have a lot of help from the women in her community. In the days leading up to the christening, women stopped by to discuss logistics and 2 days before the gathering, several women came over to the compound to help prepare food and homemade beer. We stayed up into the wee hours of the night dancing to Tigrinya music, the drum at the heart beat of our culture.

Women worked together to prepare food (hilbet, gomen, kik, sils, tela, injera, himbasha, kita, buna, berebere, fendesha) while children of all ages played, danced, sang, laughed, and helped out. This did not feel like work at all and it was joyful. There were no men present at all. In fact, no men appeared during the several hours of our work party.

The day of the christening, Alem dressed up in her best clothes. Her hair was done in our traditional style, sheruba, and her gold jewelry glimmered in the sunlight. Neighbors and relatives, including her mother and sister, filled the venue. Tirhas allowed her brother’s next door, newly built apartment to be transformed into a gathering space enough for at least 40 people. The ceremony started with the local priest blessing and breaking bread then telling the biblical story of why christenings happen. He had performed the Christening ceremony at the church earlier in the day. It is tsom so the ceremony took place at 3pm, which was later than usual. During an event like this, it is also customary for division of labor to be gendered so men are doing most of the serving while Alem was sits with the guests. Her husband was in charge of making sure everyone’s cup was full and greeted every single person there. Alem was truly the belle of the ball.

The event felt more about community and less about the individual. The main room contained about 28-35 women with most of the men and children outside. Tela (homemade beer), buna, and ouzo were constantly being poured for the guests. Most of the women had sheruba.

It is customary for people to bring a bottle of ouzo (anise liquor), so by the end of the day, Alem had more bottles than she could count. When I asked what she would do with all these, she said, we will drink them and also take them to other people as gifts. In a later interview, I asked her what she will do with all the araki (liquor) from the christening. Her

58 answer changes and she explains that she will sell it in the market and keep a few bottles for herself and that the christening was helpful in that way. There is a cost to putting on such a large event and Alem spent 4000 birr on the preparations but received 3000 birr plus the araki in gifts

I estimate her family's monthly income at about 1000 birr per month. This is based on what she has told me about her husband's salary. I do not know if she has other forms of income or remittances.

Figure 7. Prep Party: The women of the compound and their friends and relatives were up all night cooking and preparing for the Christening of Alem’s son. The power was out for a full day so this made the preparation more difficult. It came back right before the ceremony. (Photo by author)

Figure 8. Christening Day: Alem dressed for the christening; pile of Ouzo bottles; man serving beer to guests (photos by author)

The following is a transcript from a conversation with both Tirhas and Alem on that day. Alem expresses her happiness at having a woman as president. They are both happy about the new woman president, Sahle-Work Zewde. Here we learn more about their feelings regarding trust of political leaders, the care they feel women give, and hopes for the future.

MA: What do you think about the new president?

Alem: Desta! (One of the many words in Tigrinya for desta)

Tirhas: Are you saying this by your neck or by your stomach?

Alem: (Gestures to her stomach)

Tirhas: A woman leader will not steal. I am very happy about the woman president. I dislike

Abiy very much.

Alem: It’s good that a woman won. It is a victory for all women.

MA: What do you think of this change overall?

Alem: Asasinal (I am disturbed). Before there was peace, now it is frightening.

MA: What do you think will bring peace?

Alem: If people get what they want and if people respect the law, there will be peace. The government must listen to the people.

Tirhas: Equality for the kilil (ethno-linguistically based regional states). Tigray is wodetach (to the back or behind) and Amhara is ok. Tigray people died everywhere.

Sara: (Tirhas’ 22 year old daughter) No. All people died.

MA: What do you hope for the future?

Tirhas: From the government? Peace. From the city? Affordability. For the children? Tiru

61 bota (good place). School nearby, master degree, doctor, success through school (She has a huge smile on her face when she says this).

Alem: Work in another country, maybe Jedda, Arab. There is now work for women in this country. You have to go out.

Tirhas: What will you bring Micknai from the ARAB country?

Alem: Perfume!

We all have a good laugh at this.

Alem believes women can be good politicians. Still, she admitted that she is not a fan of

Azeb, the wife of the former prime minister Meles Zenawi. She is afraid to say why and jokes that ‘Azeb is great’, but I get the feeling she is talking out her neck (lying) because she is afraid to speak freely. I suspect she knows that Azeb is my mother’s relative. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Alem where we talk about the women’s development army and politics. I found that her sentiments about trust, care, and furity are made evident here.

MA: Do you know anything about Ethiopian politics?

Alem: No

MA: Do you know about the Women’s Development Army?

Alem: Yes. I know the WDA and their work in the community. They told us if we need anything, they are responsible for the community.

MA: Are they helpful?

Alem: Yes. Very much

MA: How so?

Alem: If there is any meeting, they come and invite them to it and tell them about the

62 information from the meeting.

MA: Do you know about the model women or household?

Alem: Yes. The community votes to choose the woman

MA: What attributes are important for the woman to have?

Alem: We choose who we think will follow through and has a good work ethic.

MA: Do you choose older women?

Alem: We choose woman who can read and write well, finished at least grade 8 or 10, and those who are good leaders. They are housewives.

MA: What do you think of the government’s women empowerment? Do you believe them?

[We assure her that she can tell the truth. She will not get in trouble]

Alem: Yes because they give microloans to women who want to open a business like a coffee house. I didn’t ask for the loan though.

MA: How about other than loans? Is there anything she wants for women? For the future?

Alem: Education, a house and money

MA: If you had a house would you have a garden?

Alem: Yes.

After the recorded part of the interview was over, Alem mentioned to us that on the news the government shows that they are doing all these things for women, but in real life, she doesn’t see these things.

Over the years, I have watched Alem’s daughter grow up. When I first met her, she was

5 years old and spent most of her day playing with other children and her baby brother. Now, as

I watch Alem give more and more responsibility to her only daughter, I ask her if it is more helpful to have a son or a daughter. She says, without hesitation, a daughter because she will help her with activities in the home. I wonder what expectations she has of her sons and ask if she thinks men can cook and clean for themselves. She scoffs and says, NO. They are not interested. They think it’s a women’s duty. When I ask Alem, how she imagines women’s lives are in the US, she answers, “they are different from here because they take care of themselves and they help their family here. They don’t need a man to help.”

Our interactions mostly took place in Alem’s home and around the compound. We talked over buna (Ethiopian coffee ceremony), television, food, and while she cooked everything. We also spent a lot of time in the injera kitchen (this is a name I came up with to refer to the room in the courtyard where injera is prepared). We laughed over the children and teased each other about everything from why I am not married to her breasts being different sizes. I noticed the difference in her quality of life compared to Tirhas. I also noticed how they balanced walking the thin boundary between tenant/landlord and friendship. I noticed that sometimes, Alem’s husband came home a little too drunk. He suffered from a malaria flare up while I was there and we worried that he would not be well in time for the christening. He went to a doctor at the local hospital but when that didn’t work, he traveled to the nearby rural area to visit a medicine woman. What she gave him worked. I pressed Alem for more information about this but she was understandably cautious since it is still frowned upon to seek medical help from a “witch doctor.”

In this chapter, we explored themes of trust, care, and futurity through the Christening of

Alem’s son, her patient and kind parenting, her thoughts on Ethiopia’s new prime minister, and her hopes for the future of Ethiopian women. In the next chapter, we will conclude our section

64 on women’s narratives with the story of Lucy. Here we learn about her desire for peace, asphalt, and water without salt.

Chapter 5: Selam ina Asphalt (Lucy)

Lucy’s story is that of the modern Ethiopian woman. We come to understand the importance of stability and self-determination through her story as a transnational migrant, hotel manager, and young mother. When asked what she hopes for the future, she replied, “Selam ina

Asphalt” which translates to “peace and asphalt”. She wishes peace for her country and for the road in front of her home to be paved. This, along with her return from working in “Arab”

(refers to all Arab countries, specifically gulf states), encapsulates the linkages between the everyday micropolitics and larger structures.

Lucy is 27 years old at the time of our initial interview in August 2017. She has lived in

Mekele for 10 years and this house 4 years. Her young son is here with us, making adorable baby noises and giggling constantly. Ethiopian television plays in the background. Her father- in-law, who is blind, sleeps soundly on the bed during most of our interview. She lives, together with her husband, young son, father-in-law, and sister-in-law in a two-story “hidmo bet” (a dry stone masonry home indigenous to Tigray) on the first floor. This is comprised of a room with two beds, a few chairs, a “kitchen” area that is more like a pantry, a television, and some decorations.

We mostly cover her life history and food preparation in our 30 minute recorded conversation. Fana asked her questions in Tigrinya while I followed along and directed her from time to time in broken Tigrinya and English. Lucy is strikingly beautiful, with an even and youthful chocolate complexion and jet black, loose hair that would cascade down her back, if she ever wore it down. She almost always has a smirk on her face and walks with a sassy gait that

65 matches her quick and sharp wit. You realize immediately that she takes zero shit from people.

Lucy grew up in Temben, a neighboring region in Tigray. I have a personal fondness for people from this region because of their sing songy Tigrinya accent, great humor, and traditional dance that involves cupping your armpit with you hand and moving your elbow up and down to make a sound. Lucy moved to Mekele to attend school, where she completed 8th grade. She started working after and continued until she had her first child. She worked as a hotel manager in Mekele until she got pregnant and quit her job to become a housewife. She explains that she got this job not just because of her education but because she worked her way from a server.

Before she was married, she worked as a maid in Beirut for 3 years for a very nice family. She moved back to have a child (I found it interesting that she didn’t say to get married).

Lucy makes most of the decisions for the household when it comes to purchasing and preparing food. Her sister-in-law also buys what she wants and everyone who is able shops for groceries. On Sundays, Lucy tells her husband what she wants and he picks it up. They all pitch in money for groceries. I go through the questions on food insecurity and she assures me that they have not gone hungry, worried about food, or suffered in the last month. Lucy shops for food twice a week unless it is fasting time, during which she goes just once a week. She buys food from shops in Kedamy Weyane (city center) and Ada Haki. She explains that locally grown are easier to find while a large variety of fruit is unavailable. Chard and lettuce have been difficult to find lately. Foods like meat and eggs are more difficult and costly to purchase regularly. She always buys foods like shiro, berebere, teff and oil. Items like sugar are left behind if funds are low.

Lucy shares food with others during holidays, weddings, christening, and other customary times. Whenever guests come, she offers them food, coffee, and refreshments. She

66 cooks with both metal and clay pots on a charcoal stove. Electricity is unreliable in this neighborhood, as it is in most of Ethiopia, and although they have had water plumbed to a spigot for 7 years, she says that it doesn’t work most of the time. Otherwise, she would love to grow hot peppers and shard to eat at home. The HEW visited after the birth of her son and gave her advice on how to cook. She doesn’t follow it.

Lucy’s home has changed significantly since the last time I visited, one year ago. Below are the before and after photos.

Figure 9. Stone Homes: The hidmo bet where Lucy and her family live (photo by author)

“Up north in Tigray, the dwellings - hidmo - are skillfully constructed with stone, often up to two storeys high, and are naturally air-conditioned” (Mesfin, 1987, p. xxxvi).

Figure 10. Modern Dwellings: These first photo shows the new section of the compound where Lucy’s father in law now lives. His new quarters are very nice but he sits alone most of the day. When they lived in the Hidmo bet, he was there in the room with Lucy and her son all day. The second and third photos show the space between the Hidmo bet and the new section. (Photos by author)

The following interview took place during my final round of research in December 2018. Here,

Lucy expresses her feelings about politics, women as leaders, and her hopes for the future.

Many of the themes of this thesis are expressed during this interview, especially the role of women in relationship to modernity, politics, and to each other.

MA: What do you think of the new prime minister?

Lucy: I don’t like him

MA: Why?

Lucy: He only listens and speaks to the outside world. Investors. He cares about money and the economy. He does not listen to the people in Ethiopia.

MA: What do you think of the new woman president?

Lucy: it is good that she is a woman. She is a good role model.

MA: How do you feel about the changes in Mekele and the number of people coming to the city?

Lucy: It is good. People are coming to Mekele because it is a better life. There is peace here.

MA: Is it too expensive?

Lucy: The last four months, everything is very high. Including the food. It is because we make peace with Eritrea. We have peace with Eritrea but in Ethiopia, we have fight by race.

MA: Now that we have a woman in the government, are you more interested in politics?

Lucy: Yes! I don’t understand it but now I will learn.

MA: What do we need to have peace?

Lucy: It is not about the individual people. The government administration should discuss the conflict and listen to the poor people.

MA: What do you hope for the future?

Lucy: For women to have equal power to men in the government.

MA: Do women’ make good leaders?

Lucy: Women are mothers. They are not rude. They love all people. They will bring equality.

Women are innately mother to all.

MA: What do you hope for yourself?

Lucy: I hope there will be change so Tigray will be strong and correct.

MA: What do you want to change?

Lucy: The price of things should go down not just for me but so poor people to buy things easily. I want to see women in power at schools (all levels) and hospitals and any office. 50/50 men/women. I want peace and asphalt and water without salt.

Chapter 6: Discussion

In this final chapter, I first revisit my thesis rationale and goals. I then revisit the women’s stories and focus on the differences and similarities between Tirhas, Alem, and Lucy’s perceptions, sentiments, and lived experiences. I situate this research within the grander narrative of women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming and show the linkages between the micropolitics of everyday life and large scale and generalized concepts of empowerment touted by the United Nations and operationalized in directives like the Millenium Development

I center the narratives of Tirhas, Lucy, and Alem to document how some Ethiopian women perceive and experience political and cultural change. I focus on making multi-scalar linkages and double down on Chandra Mohanty’s claim that the ‘‘micropolitics of context, subjectivity, and struggle’’ provide critical insights into the operation and consequences of global economic and political systems. Such analyses allow us to link ‘‘everyday life and local gendered contexts and ideologies to the larger, transnational political and economic structures and ideologies of capitalism’’ (Mohanty, 2003, pp. 225-226). Ethiopian women’s lives Mekele,

Ethiopia are very organized, systematic, and sophisticated. In writing about their lives, I wish to bring forward their voices in a way that does not disregard contextual differences, produce them as “a singular, monolithic subject,” and does not overlook their concrete agency and experience

(Seppälä, 2016).

This thesis and research focus on women’s relationships to other women to examine how lived experiences and practices are productive of, and produced through gendered ideologies,

71 structural power relations, and processes of both local and global change. I also provide support from my own positionality as well as cultural, historical, economic, and political context while drawing from a rich tradition of feminist analyses of informal practices and the economies and micropolitics of everyday.

These women model the values of love, relationality, trust, care, stability, self- determination, spirituality, and futurity, all of which lay the foundation for Injera Epistemology.

This is a theoretical framework that emerged from witnessing how these values are reflected in their social reproduction and protection of Injera making as one of the staples of Ethiopian cuisine. It includes themes of power, agency, resilience, and persistence which are reflected in personal narratives of the three Ethiopian women.

Through the story of Tirhas, we can understand the values of interconnectedness, relationality, love and spirituality. The time spent with her making injera offered me a peek into the richness of her social, spiritual, and cultural life. “The kitchen as a woman’s space, though, can represent a site of multiple changing levels and degrees of freedom, self-awareness, subjectivity, and agency. The social interactions of daily life that unfold within a given space define its significance” (Abarca, 2006). The presence of the women in her and each other's lives shows the value of interconnectedness and relationality. They cook, pray, eat, care for children, shop, celebrate, cry, debate and problem-solve together. We see this as well in her connection to her home and family abroad. Her daily visits to church and visits from the priest show us that spirituality. The importance of love is evident in her repeated complaint of fikir yelem.

Through the story of Alem, we learn about the values of trust, care and futurity. She trusts women more than men in power. She is skeptical about the efficacy of the government's programs aimed at women. She cares for her children, neighbors, and community with great

72 tenderness and in turn, she is cared for, especially by Tirhas and her daughters. She is hopeful for the future and wants women to have more access to resources and education. She is happy to have a woman as president.

In the story of Lucy, we see many of the above themes and values expressed. She helps us to understand the value some women place on modernity while still holding tight to tradition.

“[T]he non-Western woman” as a trope of feminist discourse is either nonmodern or modern; she is seldom perceived as living in a situation where there is deeply felt tension between tradition and modernity.” (Ong, 1988) The changes in her home are a great example of this.

There are many sentiments and experiences that these three women share. Through them, we see the linkages between global events and the micropolitics of everyday life. For example, they are aware of the effect of outside forces on their access to affordable foods and resources. When I asked Tirhas about the increase in the prices of foodstuffs, she said, “They reduced this because of peace, but there is no peace. Nothing is coming from Amhara because the road is closed from Woldia. It comes instead from Samara (Afar). The price increase is because of the flow to Eritrea.” The border to Eritrea had only been open a few months, and already a new market had popped up down the street from their home, with Eritreans selling some foodstuffs and mostly cheap chinese shoes and housewares. Tirhas’ 22 year-old daughter agreed, “The price of goods has gone up because of the open border. We now export to Eritrea and through their port.” Food is not the only commodity that has gone up in price. Cost of living across the board has increased, with rent in some neighborhoods doubling.

When I asked Alem about the increase in local prices, she responded, “Outsiders have come from all over and driven the price of everything up. Houses, food, etc. But there is still no work.” Still, her neighbors told me that Alem’s husband gets a lot of business now because so

73 many people are coming to Mekele and he is a broker for real estate and construction.

The theme of outsiders came up again during an interview with Lucy when I asked what she thought of the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. She said, “I don’t like him. He only listens and speaks to the outside world. Investors. He cares about money and the economy. He does not listen to the people in Ethiopia.” Here again we see the linkages between the global forces of capitalism and economic development, and Lucy’s daily experiences.

Tirhas, Lucy and Alem have to rely on existing networks of cooperation to solve problems. This can be seen in how they deal with purchasing and distributing goods from the kebele store. For example, Tirhas divides the 20 liter jerry can of palm oil evenly between herself, her son, Alem, and Lucy. I ask about how they deal with the different household sizes and she explains that they borrow from each other if one runs out. At the time of this interview, kebele sugar was 19 birr per kilogram. Tirhas explains, “2 years ago sugar was sold everywhere for 16 birr per kilogram but now it is only sold by the government to the kebele. The old ways were better. Now the amount is limited and can run out any time.”

Raising the Modern Women

Women are embedded into their communities and often have their own strategies for common pool and common property resource management. Many past and ongoing studies on

Ethiopian women focus on maternal health, nutrition, and access to water. These studies fail to include substantial data on the resilient forms of cultural transmission, social reproduction, informal networks and resource management carried out by women. Traditional practices are often framed as detrimental to the progress and wellbeing of women and by extension the economic development of the state. The language of the 1993 National Policy on Ethiopian

Women (NPEW) reads like a manifesto on the importance of state controlled reproduction, “As

74 child bearers, women have direct contact with the younger generation of the labor force. They can, therefore, influence their children both positively and negatively, especially during (the periods of the latter’s) infancy and childhood period… they are in a better position to promote and/or eliminate harmful traditional customs and practices of their localities” (NPEW, 1993).

In Curative Violence, Eunjung Kim writes of the Korean nation state, “the power to physically transform a disabled individual through biomedicine becomes part of the branding effort of the normalized ethno-nation-state” and “the sign of progress, the proof of development, the triumph over the mind or body” (Kim, 2017). She applies the metaphor of the cure to the success of the Korean state. Similarly, the Ethiopian government presents answering the

“woman question” as a necessary step towards the fully realized modern state; an international entity that is not only self-sufficient but also a major player in the global market economy.

Women are framed as pitiful and miserable creatures who toil away in the household and fields.

From the NPEW, “The most striking thing about the overall health condition of Ethiopian women is that, it is pathetic,” and “Women are, as a whole, viewed as a personification of weakness and as treacherous beings who do their duties if and when they are whipped and beaten” (NPEW, 1993, pp. 16-18). The paternal nation state is responsible for “raising” them where their parents have failed them. Freedom, education, and self-efficacy are things the state teaches the modern woman, not something that women are seen as already having, nor capable of cultivating on their own and within their own networks.

I grew up with my mother constantly complaining about having to make injera so often.

She is a master injera maker and is uncompromising on the “right way” to make injera, even though she hates having to make it. Watching Tirhas breathe in toxic smoke, break tree limbs, and slouch over the hot stove for hours just to make sure we would have fresh injera for the next

75 few days, simply because one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mekele suffers from constant power outages made me question who this so-called development was for. Does the nearby

Messebo Cement Factory suffer these power shortages? I am going to guess that the 3.5 billion

EBT investments keep this from being an issue.

In Maria Mies 1998 paper, New Ethnic States and Population Policy, she writes of women in post soviet Eastern Europe:

They had experienced the contradiction between a universalist socialist ideology and a political and economic practice which favoured certain ethnic groups or new elites who preached socialism to the people but were after all the consumer goods of the capitalist supermarket. But most of these women were not feminists. They had never questioned the patriarchal sub-structure of either capitalism or socialism. They, like many others, had believed the rhetoric that decentralization, democratization were equivalent to equal access to the capitalist supermarket which, for Eastern Europe meant and means, catching up with the lifestyle and the economy of Western Europe and the hope of being accepted into the European Common Market, before it closes its doors (Mies, 1998).

Similarly, in Ethiopia, the policies of decentralization and democratization put in place by the revolutionary democratic party were accepted by women who were not the feminist guerilla fighters, as necessary for Ethiopia to “catch up” to the rest of the world. Neoliberal technologies are deployed at the behest of the government and influential global institutions (Ong, 2006). At the same time, the Marxist ideals of the party’s revolutionary manifesto are still espoused in order to mobilize subjects (including diasporic Ethiopians dispossessed during the civil war) to invest in the vision of utopian modernity. Ethiopian women experience first hand the contradictions and tensions that come from these approaches.

Power and Persistence

“Domestic space as a field of epistemology validates the social, cultural, and economic significance of women’s household work. With different fields of knowledge, we academics can see how the subjects of our research are active agents in the making of their own historias, their own life stories.” -Meredith Abarca, Voices in the Kitchen, 2006

Tirhas, Alem, and Lucy helped me to understand so much about the women to whom I belong. I witnessed difficult conditions like lack of potable water and electricity. I learned about some of the personal hardships these women had endured. I also witnessed power, agency, self- determination, resilience, and persistence in their stories and daily life. These women show up and get shit done. They choose to be in each other’s lives (relationality). They maintain structures, rituals and traditions like attending church, christenings, and mahabers, and by making buna and injera. The embodied knowledge needed to cook, make herbal remedies, and care for children is modeled and mentored for the younger generation of girls in the intergenerational domestic space. The narrative of women’s empowerment implies that these women need to have power handed down to them from on high. I believe that these women have power and it comes from their relationships with one another, their spiritual practices, their connection to land and home, their knowledge, and their love.

Bina Agarwal writes of women's covert and overt forms of contestation and resistance.

“Women’s resistance and forms of contestion are defined here in the broadest possible way, ranging from individual acts of covert non-compliance to overt confrontation by women’s organisations, with varying degrees of covert group action and overt individual action in between” (Agarwal, 1994). This can be seen in the women’s covert resistance to following the recommendations of the Health Extension Workers and the overt distrust and dislike of the new prime minister. A common thread among the women I interviewed was their interactions with

Health Extension Workers (HEW). All the women admitted that they do not follow the advice

77 of the HEWs. Alem had been visited by a HEW before. They asked how she was doing and how her family was doing. They told her not to put too much salt in her food and to eat more fruit. When it comes to cooking, they told her not to overcook greens and to keep the water from cooking. She laughed when I asked if she followed their advice. “No. I don’t have enough time and I forget.”

During my research, I rarely encountered men in the home. These women rarely had to interact with men and seemed to have a great deal more choice on this matter then professional women. Although their lives are shaped by structures and events that they cannot control, their daily lives were spent exercising self-determination and agency. Again, their resistance to the

Health Extension Workers recommendations shows that they would rather make decisions based on their sentiments. Their organizing to buy kebele foods and care for each other’s children does not happen through the medium of the state. They communicate and organize with each other directly to execute a myriad of tasks. From the state they simply want things like clean water, electricity, and peace. Their resistance to politics is indicative of the lack of trust they place in their leaders. The placement of a woman president makes politics a field of interest for these women. It is not because they are too uneducated or unable to follow politics. I code their disinterest as covert resistance to the problematics of Ethiopian politics.

Final Thoughts

I resonate a great deal with the first chapter of Lila Abu-Lughod’s transnational feminist masterpiece, Veiled Sentiments, entitled “Guest and Daughter”. Here, she describes her entry into fieldwork being accompanied by her father and how this affected her relationship to her

78 ethnographic community.

The other consequence of my introduction to the community as my father’s daughter was that I was assigned and took on the role of adoptive daughter. My protection/restriction was an entailment of this relationship, but so was my participation in the household, my identification with the kin group, and the process by which I learned about the culture, a sort of socialization to the role” (Abu-Lughod, 1986).

In choosing my grandfather’s neighborhood and the site of my own father’s coming of age, I was treated as both a guest and a daughter. Over the course of my visits, which began in

2006, I saw an eventual change in how I was treated. I went from guest to daughter, and was made evident when I was given permission to cook for my host family, do my own laundry, and travel to town on my own. This trend from cautious interlocutor to close kin is reflected in my field data and interviews.

My last round of data collection in December 2018 was my shortest but was much more fruitful. There was no awkward reacquainting ourselves or formality. It was as if I had taken a long trip to the market and was finally back with spoils. We joked about how fat I had become, caught up on neighborhood gossip, and drank coffee while watching Turkish soap operas dubbed in Amharic on Kana. Even the children were quick to accept my return and pick up playing where we had left off, emboldened by their change in relative size compared to me. While I like to attribute this all to my adeptness at building interpersonal relationships, I feel that the “laid backness” and ease of interactions were somewhat tied to the general relaxed and hopeful state of the country due to Dr. Abiy Ahmed’s rise to power and the appointment of so many women to government posts. This is not to essentialize the sentiments of the women I spent time with, who, as we see in their interviews, did not all feel the same about Dr. Abiy or the state of the country. Still, I felt a sense of release from hypervigilance and more than a hint of the giddiness

79 that can exist only in its absence.

As a researcher, the gravity of witnessing the very thing I am researching happen during my project was overwhelming and very exciting. I scrambled to get money together and time off so I could travel back to Ethiopia for one last round of data collection. As a daughter of

Ethiopia, I was deeply moved, and even writing this now, I am overcome with teary eyes and chills. The excitement, hope, relief, joy, and celebrations that swept the Ethiopian diaspora and

ESPECIALLY the women was contagious and uplifting. My mother said to me, “It’s like Abiy is speaking the words straight from my mind. Everything we fought for, everything we wanted is finally happening. I can’t believe it is finally happening. We fought for women’s rights”

(Shiferaw, 2018).

My mother ran away from an arranged marriage at 14 years of age to join the rebel group known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (የኢትዮጵያ ሕዝባዊ አብዮታዊ ፓርቲ; Yethiopia

Hizbawi Abyotawi Party; a.k.a. EPRP a.k.a. Ihapa). She wanted to complete her education past the 8th grade and decided to literally flee her current conditions to fight for women’s liberation.

She was radicalized by her uncle Asfaw, who like many young men at that time, were reading

Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Enver Hoxha. He exposed her to the women’s question and stories of women guerilla fighters serving side by side with their male comrades and even leading their own battalions. My mother is an unapologetic feminist to this day and her story reads like an anarcho-feminist fairy tale. Her name as fighter was Seraweat, which roughly translates to “army of god.” She has three daughters, no sons and is herself the oldest of 9 children. She often laments the fact that women fought as equals but when the time came for politics, they were relegated back to the home. Sometimes over coffee, I see a glimmer of her younger radical self as she explains to my more traditional aunties how the American political

80 system oppresses those who are vulnerable. Patiently and brilliantly, without a hint of condescension, she explains the intricacies of policy, implementation, and global forces. This is

Ethiopian feminism and it is not new. “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own”

(Walker, 1972).

My brief interviews with women in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in December 2018 revealed that while they were skeptical of Dr. Abiy, they were happy about the placement of women in powerful positions. What I found most interesting was that this did not necessarily endear the current regime to them. They were thrilled by what this meant for the overall culture.

Many of the women stated that they trust women to make better informed and pragmatic decisions in general and they felt that now women had something tangible to aspire to. One woman even stated that she was not much more interested in politics and although she did not understand much, she was intent on learning. Women in leadership denotes large scale change and the ramifications of this cannot be simply understood as a form of manipulation by the ruling party. The effects will unfold for decades to come and in ways we cannot possibly anticipate.

There is an opening here for Ethiopian women to lead ethnographic research so that we can record women’s perceptions of change in what could become a step toward more holistic and inclusive Ethiopian history.

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Appendix A: Food Prices

Price per kilogram unless otherwise specified Food/Item August 16, 2017 December 19, 2017 December 26, 2018

Buna (coffee) 120 130

Shinkurt (onion) 15 16 20

Timatim (tomato) 15 10 16

Dinich (potato) 8 10

Key Sir (beet) 10

Karia (jalepenno) 20

Enkulal* (egg) 3.50/egg 3/egg

Gomen (collard 10/bunch 15 greens)

Nech Shinkurt 40 40 40 (garlic)

Incense (itan) 140

Charcoal 550/100kg (1 bag) 550/100kg

Mar (honey) 350

Shukar (sugar) 20

Teff (white) 2400/100kg (1 bag) 2400 2600/10kg

Forno (white flour) 580/25kg

Gesho 70

Gebs 600/100kg (1 bag) 2000/100kg

Besho 30/kg

Berebere (spicy 85 powder)

Dagusa 1600/100kg

Mashila 1200/100kg

Cho (salt) 12

Salata (lettuce) 40 40

Lomi (lemon) 20

Apple 15 each 5 each or 75 per bag

Carrot 22 40

Weyra Zeit (olive oil) 230 per liter

Sunflower seed oil 270/5 liter

Palm Oil 126/5 liter (jok) or 80/3 liter

Avocado 20

Mango apple 45

Banana 20

Costa 40

Bekolo (corn) 1200/100 kg

Shiro 35

Misir (lentils)

Kik (split pea) 100

Selit (sesame) 60

Telba (flax seed) 40

Ird (turmeric) 120

Mercy (bottled water) 65/20 liter * Difference in egg price is due to fasting versus non fasting time, according to Tirhas.

Appendix B: Women’s Policy Timeline

The following is an outline I created to highlight some of the international and national policies relevant to Ethiopian women from 1975 to the present. Most of the information in this section come from A Review of National Policy on Ethiopian Women by Sosena Demessie and

Tsahai Yitbark in the Digest of Ethiopia’s National Policies, Strategies and Programs (Assefa,

2008).

Internationally

■ 1975 UN Conference on Women in Mexico, City l First UN conference to focus exclusively on women’s issues ■ 1976-1985 International Decade of Women ■ Alma Ata l 1978 Human rights declaration ■ Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women CEDAW (UN 1979; Ethiopia 1996) l Basis for National Policy on Ethiopian Women ■ UN Declaration on Violence Against Women (1993) ■ International Conference for Population and Development ICPD (1994) ■ Gender Mainstreaming l The concept of gender mainstreaming was first proposed at the 1985 Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya. ■ Women’s Empowerment l Shift to rhetoric of women’s empowerment Millenium Development Goals (2000-2015) ■ GOAL 3: PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN ■ Fourth Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995)

Ethiopia

l 1991 Transitional Charter of Ethiopia l 1991 Women’s Affairs Office create (WAO) l 1995 Ethiopian constitution recommits to women Articles 13 and 35 l Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

1979: United Nations version ratified 1996: Ethiopian version ratified l 2006 Women’s Affairs Office becomes Ministry of Women’s Affairs l National Action Plan on Gender Equality NAP-GE (2001 and 2006) l NAP-GE ■ 2005 Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) l 4 Pillars designed to integrate NAP-GE into PASDEP document Enhanced Rapid Economic Growth Improved Human Development Democratization and Governance 2006 Version included Environment and was formulated by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) Established the National Committee on Gender Equality (NCGE) ■ Assemblage of international, federal, regional, and local governmental and non-governmental organizations, associations, donors, and groups. l 2003 Health Extension Program trains 30,000 salaried women as community health workers (Maes et al., 2018) l 2011 Women’s Development Army The Women’s Development Army was created through a policy that aims to put more of the responsibility of social welfare squarely on the shoulders of women. This program falls under the umbrella of the Health Extension Program (HEP), and mobilizes Ethiopian women to serve as unpaid community health workers under the supervision of salaried Health Extension Workers (Maes et al., 2015).