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African Immigrants Project Interview transcription John Kidane Interview date: July 27, 2000 Location of interview: Nationalities Services Center Country of origin: Eritrea Ethnic group/language group: Tigrinya Religion: Eastern Orthodox Profession: Immigration counselor at Nationalities Services Center Level of education: Unclear if undergraduate studies were completed Location of residence in Philadelphia: South Philadelphia Mr. Kidane fled to Sudan in 1980 after fighting in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front. In 1981, he and his wife came to the United States, sponsored as refugees by UNHCR and Nationalities Services Center (NSC). She was pregnant with their son at the time. After arrival, Mr. Kidane attended the School of Social Work at Temple University and eventually got a job at NSC as an immigration counselor. He is extremely active in both the Eritrean community and in the African immigrant community in general. He was a founder of the Eritrean Community and is also active in the Eritrean Youth Club, the Eritrean Development Foundation, and is the Public Relations person for the Eritrean American Network for Peace. Mr. Kidane was a member of the African Immigrant Project Community Advisory Committee. Interview Transcription Interviewer: Leigh Swigart (LS) Interviewee: John Kidane (JK) START OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A Leigh Swigart : Okay. Your name, please? John Kidane: Oh, my name is, um, John Kidane. LS: And you’re from what country? JK: I’m from Eritrea. LS: And what ethnic group are you from in Eritrea? [break in tape] What’s your native language? JK: Well, I speak Tigrinya. LS: O.K., that was your mother’s language, or --- ? John Kidane 2 JK: That’s my father’s and my mother’s language, but the ethnicity and the language are different in Eritrea. There are many ethnicities who speak the major language, which is Tigrinya. LS: As their first language? JK: Because they settled --- Well, it’s not their, ah, it may not be their first language, but because they settled in a Tigrinya-speaking region --- LS: -hmm. JK: They will speak Tigrinya. LS: Right. JK: If, ah, for example they are Fawoulta tribe, who lived in Tigray-speaking area, in the lowlands in Eritrea, and they speak Tigray, because of where they settled. So, ethnicity and language are totally different things. LS: So, but, even though people may not have that language, they still have an ethnic identification? They’re not supposed to change that? JK: Yes, yes. LS: That’s interesting! Cause sometimes --- JK: They will dance their ethnic, ah, culture, they will respect who they are from, they will link with the, you know, with the other cultures which are in the proper areas. There, in their region area, they speak their own language. It’s very unique. LS: That must make intermarriage easier. JK: Yes, yes. LS: Between ethnic groups. JK; Well, it does once they move in to the area, but if they stay in their region area, then it' not that easy. LS: So if you can just go back and tell me how is it that you left Eritrea, the reasons, and how you eventually got to the United States. 2 John Kidane 3 JK: Well, you see, first of all, my name in Eritrea is Yohannes Kidane. Yohannes is John. , but I prefer to be called John, because my family, most of them, they call me John, Johnny. That’s my name at home, but my proper name in Eritrea is Yohannes. LS: Why do they not call you Yohannes? JK: Because they wanted to call me John, I don’t know why, It’s, it’s, ahh, more, ahh, urban family, my family was very urban in Asmara, the capital city. LS: Oh, you’re from Asmara? JK: Yeah, so, that’s where I lived, that’s where they lived, even though that’s not where they are originally from. , so, but that’s where I lived. And they call me Yohannes. So, I was born in Asmara, and I went to high school in Asmara. I started the university in Asmara, first year and that was the time during the --- when Haile Selassie was about to be overthrown and that was where the Eritrean independence movement was at its peak in the seventies, that’s where there was some fighting in the city. There was a lot of imprisonment, there was a lot of assassinations, killings of a lot of student leaders that I knew. We were part of the Student Union. We wanted a peaceful transformation in Eritrea, which, you know, the government that overthrew Ethiopia, Ethiopia and Haile Selassie, was preaching for that they will do, but they didn’t do it. They resorted to the, ahh, forceful resolution of Eritrea and thousands of students were killed in front of our eyes. I remember when we were hiding under the bed when we were teenagers, it was very, very bad, and the CID, we call them, the intelligence people of the government, they use to go door to door, knocking doors, looking for people , arresting people, they arrested relatives of mine. They arrested friends of mine. LS: And this is just if you were being suspected of being involved in --- JK: --- of being involved with the independence movement. LS: If I can just interrupt for a second, does this movement, does the independence movement, have a historic basis? Has there always been as a consciousness of the separation between Ethiopia and Eritrea? JK: Yes 3 John Kidane 4 LS: And it just sort of --- JK: Yes. The movement as far as I know it started in the in the forties. The history says the movement basically started in the forties, the political movement. When the British came to become the protectorate of Eritrea after the Italians were driven out. OK? So there different political parties. There were groups that were helped by Ethiopian Haile Selassie. , there were groups that were purely fighting for Eritrea, but they may have been saying they are Muslims. OK? But there were also people who were conscious who were not Muslims, who were not saying they were Muslims, or ( ), who were purely calling for Eritrea for Eritreans. That was the movement that was led by Wildhabul Damarriam and, ah, Abdulkadir Kabirri. You can see, they are Muslim, and these were the modern and middle class Eritreans, who were mostly Protestant, mostly Protestant, the Christians. LS: But where are the sense of who was Eritrean come from, if you have mixed ethnic groups? What historically gave people sense of --- ? JK: Oh, well, Eritrea has a history of Bahranagash. They had their own fiefdom, their own, you see, kingdom. You know, the Abyssinians had kingdoms, too. Within Abyssinia. So we had our own kingdom. We linked with Ethiopians. At many times we linked with them to fight the Turks, which is called the Ottoman Empire. We had common interest and we're related, we have historical ties, but we have our own autonomy. At all times. Eritrea had its own kingdom, the Kingdom of Wildanikild the Famous. They called it Bahranegash. It's like “The King of the Seas.” That's what it means. So that was known --- Eritrea was known as Bahrnegash. Now, “Eritrea” --- the name was given to it by the Italians. The Italians came in the 1800s, the same way they came into Libya and Somalia. The same way they created the borders of Libya, current Libya, and current Somalia --- created current Eritrea in 1889. LS: In Berlin. JK: Well, yeah, you can call that. And the rest of Africa was created that way, including Ethiopia. O.K? Even though Ethiopia was not colonized the same way like us, but they sat down with the colonizers and they divided their maps, and they agreed Eritrea is an Italian Colony. They signed 4 John Kidane 5 out Djibouti to French; it was part of Ethiopia. Ah, but again, you have to understand that kingdom in that area was like whoever was powerful taxed everybody and considered it its own colony. So the Ethiopians in the center were the most dominant. When they went to the South, they used force to incorporate the South. And South has its own kingdom in history, so we're not going to go there for the purpose of our discussion today. But Eritrea had its own identity. Where there was an identity of Eritrea, there was also even disagreement with immediate, ah, ah, ah, neighbors of Tigray, which were also kings. , and even Alula had its own problem in Eritrea. He killed the king of Eritrea, he was named Rasfodemikael. This is in the history, recent history. And then, like anybody in Africa, like any country in Africa, we were given that part of Africa, which is called Eritrea. So the Italians came and created modern communication. They brought their modern roads, ah, economy, and they were there to live. They didn't have no intention to leave Eritrea. It was a permanent home to them. The reminiscent of that was that, like, even now you’ll see a lot of Italian-Eritreans from that era. Hundreds and thousands. LS: There were lots of residents then, right? JK: Oh my God. 250,000 Italians --- LS: Oh, really? JK: --- lived in Eritrea. Eritrea is a country of 3.5 million. We had 250,000 Italians at the end of 1977, when the war was out of control. LS: So, when they lost Eritrea in World War II, the Italian residents just stayed? JK: They stayed. LS: And they weren't forced out? JK: They were not forced out.