Surviving

Emad Abdullah

ESL 100

Oct 9, 2017

Final draft

Surviving

          When I hear the word dictatorship, I think about what my mother and my grandparent’s lives were like in Ethiopia. There was a dictator that ruled in Ethiopia called Mengistu Haile Mariam (Derg) from 1977 to 1987. The Derg was the organization that use to help Mengistu, and they still exist in Ethiopia at this moment. Mengistu used to kill and throw in prison anyone who defied him or wanted to create a revolution. Ethiopia was affected by corruption, there wasn’t any democracy, and it was hard for people to live under those conditions. People in my Ethiopia were moving to other countries to have a better life. My mom and her siblings were couple of the people who wanted to have a better future. The dictatorship in Ethiopia has affected my mother and her family in unusual ways.

          My mother was sixteen years old when my grandfather wanted her, her sisters, and her brother to leave this country and go to Somalia. They had to go there by foot and try not to be caught by the Derg army. They didn’t have a lot of supplies or water, so it was challenging to get there. They had to do anything in order to survive. They used to drink water in the river that people and animals were peeing in. I can’t imagine how they got there, but they eventually made it to Somalia. My mother said that there were times where they thought of giving up, but they were fighters and have never given up. When they got to Somalia, there were people that they knew who got there before them, so they helped them to go to a United Nation refugee camp in Somalia. They gave them bed, food, clothes, and shoes. After eight months, they started living in the city to begin a new life.

          Living in a new world made my mother miss her parents and her friends who were still in danger back in her home country. She missed the food and the environment were she used to live in. There were no telephones at that time, so it was tough to communicate with their loved ones in Ethiopia. My mother used to send letters to make sure that her father and mother were healthy and well. Everything in Somalia seemed so strange to her: the streets, the people, and the language. They had a rough time adapting to the Somalian culture, especially the language. After four years in Somalia, my mother’s father and mother went to Somalia to check on their children. This was the reunion was that my mother dreamed of for years.

          On the other hand, when my grandfather and grandmother were in Somalia, they almost lost their whole house in Ethiopia. My grandfather got a letter from his friend that sayed, “you should come back home get back your house.” When my grandparents went back to Somalia, they left their home without no protection, so the government wanted to give the house to other people. One of Mengistu Haile Mariam’s famous policies was land redistribution, which is to take land or houses from that people who had a lot and give it for the people who didn’t. My grandparents knew the risk of leaving the house behind, but they can’t change what was happing. Therefore, my grandmother and grandfather went back to Ethiopia to get their house back. When they got there, the government gave them a choice to give up half of their house or they would take all of it. My grandparents knew that they couldn’t fight them in court, so they gave up. My grandfather’s house had six rooms, so he had to give two rooms away to the people who didn’t have a house. When I was living in Ethiopia, I used to live in my grandfather’s house. The people who the government gave our house to still live in our house, which makes me mad when I think about it because we didn’t have a lot privacy while they were living with us.

          Today, when I meet someone from Somalia, I think about my mother and her parents and how they used to look up to each other during the tough time of their lives in order to survive. If my mother had not gone to Somalia, she wouldn’t have gone to Saudi Arabia where she eventually met my father, which means my siblings and I wouldn’t have been brought to this world. Even though I haven’t had any experiences like my mother, I feel like I was part of her journey because when my mother speak the language that she learned in Somalia and Saudi Arabia I feel like there is part of me that feels connected to those countries.