Kalkidan's favorite subject is English. “My teacher is so nice,” says the 10-year-old. She enjoys going to school, “because I get to see my friends there.” Her everyday life as a child wasn’t always so normal. Kalkidan’s mother had to flee the war in Tigray with her and her little brother.
KALKIDAN WAS BORN IN TIGRAY, Ethiopia’s northernmost region. Her father is Tigrayan. “I wasn’t even aware that I was Amhara,” her mother, Firehiwot, explains. Then the civil war broke out, and suddenly their ethnic backgrounds became a problem in their marriage. Her husband began to distrust her. “He became aggressive. He said, ‘One day you’re going to kill me,’” Firehiwot recounts. She became afraid for herself and her children.
On foot and by truck, they made their way to the capital, Addis Ababa. Eventually, Firehiwot returned to her hometown of Debre Berhan. Life was hard. During the day, she hauled stones on construction sites; at night, she baked flatbread.
It wasn’t until she received a microloan from Menschen für Menschen that things turned around. Firehiwot turned her nighttime side job into her own business: she began baking flatbread in larger quantities and selling it to hotels and restaurants. With another loan, she bought an electric stove. Today, she is able to support her family with it.
The three of them live in a simple room with freshly painted walls. Everything looks clean and tidy. Is Kalkidan happy? She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Yes,” she says finally. “Because of my mother and my brother. We have something to eat and a place to live.”
Internal Displacement
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic nation where ethnic conflicts repeatedly force people to flee their homes. The Tigray War from 2020 to 2022 was particularly devastating. Approximately 3.3 million people have been displaced within the country. Some of the poorest children in Debre Berhan also come from refugee families. Menschen für Menschen is helping them build a new life.
