The Eritreans

While visiting Kampala in 2007, I ventured across the street from the Human Rights Commission to do some shopping for souvenirs at a crafts market that benefited local organizations supporting women in need. While visiting one of the stalls, a female vendor, who looked East African but not Ugandan, asked me where I was from. I said the USA, and she followed up with, "Which state?" I replied, "you've probably never heard of it, but it's the greatest of them all, Minnesota." To which, she said, "My sister lives there." This is how I met Yordanos. She is an Eritrean refugee who has been living in Kampala since 2003. At the time that I met her, she had two sisters living in the US (Hizbawit in Minnesota, another in Colorado), two sisters left in Eritrea, and one sister with her in Kampala, Sehin. During my previous stays in Uganda, Yordanos has invited me and fellow travelers to her apartment in Old Kampala for amazing Ethiopian/Eritrean lunches on Sunday afternoons when she is not working in her shop. This year, I found her again in the same craft market, and once more she invited me and my friends to her place to enjoy her native cuisine and hospitality. On the way to her place, Binford was captivated by the scene of a man carrying the back door of a matatu while riding a boda boda.

A lot has changed for Yordanos since I last saw her in 2008. First, she spent most of last year working odd end jobs in Juba, Southern Sudan, where she raised enough money to now be able to rent half of a stall in the craft market where she can sell goods she directly buys from suppliers. This still doesn't provide her with enough income, she works at another stall selling crafts for her landlord. Secondly, Yordanos's mother was granted permission last week to come to the US and live with her sister in Colorado. Her mother had been a refugee in Nairobi for most of the past year with Yordanos's younger sister, Emuna (which means Hope), who is 20. Both have recently relocated to Kampala, Emuna now works in Yordanos's craft shop and the mother will be leaving for the US in two weeks. The last big change for Yordanos, however, has to do with her sister, Sehin.


When I found Yordanos sitting in her shop two weeks ago, I immediately asked about her sister Sehin, to me they were inseparable. Sehin is younger than Yordanos by a couple years, and speaks nearly fluent English, which always came in handy during our lunches. While sitting on tiny, wooden tripod stools on her half of the craft shop, Yordanos pulled out a large blue annual planner from a low lying shelf, and told me that she has concerning news about her sister. She opened the planner, and on the inside cover was a world map, with black pen lines drawn from Kampala to Dubai, Dubai to Ecuador (a shaky tracing across Europe with some scratch marks over Turkey), Ecuador to Columbia, Columbia to Honduras, Honduras to some where in the middle of Mexico. After 7 years, Sehin had grown tired of being a refugee in Kampala and set out to make some money in Dubai. While there, she met a handful of other Eritreans intent on reaching the US and applying for asylum. Their journey began two months ago, and Yordanos only receives a phone call from her sister when she arrives at an immigration office kind enough to let her call her family. Yordanos last spoke to Sehin when she had arrived in Honduras two weeks ago. The conversation lasted for only a few minutes, but Yordanos learned that Sehin had to walk 5 days straight in Columbia without rest and with little food, had to cross by paddle boat to Panama, and was now on her way to Mexico. No one in the family has communicated with Sehin since Honduras, but we recorded video messages from her sisters and her mother on my flip camera that will be posted online for her to see for whenever she gets access to the internet again.

The story of Yordanos and her family is closely tied to the land they come from. The mother is Ethiopian and the father is Eritrean. After over 30 years of conflict and a mutual disdain for people born on the other side of the border, the family has been torn apart. The youngest sister, Aday (which is the name of a yellow flower that only blooms in September) had been living with her father in Eritrea until this past September when she secretly crossed the border with some friends to defect to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Aday is 16. Above: Yordanos and her mother relax while roasting coffee beans after our meal.



The hospitality of this family cannot be praised enough. In this video, Michael, John, and I are wowed by their traditional technique of making coffee.

John, Emuna, Mother, Michael, Me, and Yordanos