Zenebech: A Woman of Strength

 Zenebech lives at my compound home and her job is to cook (exclusively on charcoal and wood fires), make injera, clean, serve food, wash clothes by hand, make coffee, go to the market, take care of the sheep, cow and chickens, and watch the home. Her job is essentially 14-16 per day, 7 days per week, and for this work she makes the equivalent of 5 US dollars per month.  This is a normal wage for this job in Ethiopia; I include it here just for perspective.

Zenebech making coffee in the evening.

Zenebech never got the opportunity to go to school, which unfortunately is a reality for may girls in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, there are more than one million primary school-aged who aren't in school.(www.planusa.org).  Zenebech can’t read, which I didn’t realize until several months after I got to Mezezo.  She came to my room with a fresh piece of injera (as she does every time when she makes injera) and a big smile on her face, and asked if she could use my phone to call her son who lives in Addis and who she hadn’t seen or talked to in years (since she doesn’t have a phone).  She brought a piece of paper that had several names written on it in the Amharic script, with a phone number next to each. She asked me which of the names read, “Kebede,” her son’s name.  As she called her son, I have never seen her so happy; she simply lit up as she got to hear her son’s voice for the first time in years.

When I’m working in my room or cleaning, I put on Ethiopian music on a speaker, and several times I’ve seen her smiling ear to ear, swaying and dancing. However, she is careful not to let the music interfere with her work of transforming wheat into flour, by grinding the wheat with a giant 4-foot tall mortar and pestle outside the house; she makes her tedious labor look so beautiful and graceful; the rhythmic grinding of wheat has come to be a soothing sound. It’s moments like this that I won’t forget.

One evening several weeks ago, a guest came over, and we were chatting in Amharic over coffee. The guest asked Zenebech, “How is it having Hannah as a neighbor? Is she a good neighbor?” Zenebech immediately replied: Hannah isn’t just my neighbor, “Ihite nech”, which means “she is my sister”.

Zenebech helping me wash my "gabi"- a large blanket-like, cultural scarf 

In Zenebech I not only have gained a sister and friend, but I have learned about strength, joy in the simple things, and taking time to just sit and be still.  In the evenings while we waited for my landlord to get home, we would sit for an hour or two and listen to Ethiopian music, talking and laughing, while she went through the ritual of making coffee: washing the beans, roasting the beans over a charcoal fire, pounding the beans into ground coffee, and then boiling the coffee.   This ritual is much more important than simply drinking coffee; it brings people together, and invites deep conversation.  Sharing these evenings with Zenebech and drinking the fresh coffee were some of my favorite times in Mezezo.