Berhane’s life in northeast Africa was surrounded by death
WORTHINGTON — The tears flowed freely down Alemitu Berhane’s face Sunday afternoon when asked about her homeland of Eritrea, bordering the Red Sea in northeast Africa.

WORTHINGTON — The tears flowed freely down Alemitu Berhane’s face Sunday afternoon when asked about her homeland of Eritrea, bordering the Red Sea in northeast Africa.

“Bad,” is all she could say before grief overtook her, leaving her friend and fellow Eritrean, Aida Simon, to tell of the horrors witnessed by Berhane as a child and young woman growing up in a battleground — the Eritrean War for Independence against Ethiopia.

The war, from September 1961 through May 1991, pitted 80 million Ethiopians against 3 million Eritreans — a “suicide mission,” said Simon, for Eritreans who stood their ground to protect their homeland.

Still, it took a 30-year battle. The Eritreans were determined to fight to the end — women fighters standing alongside their men, children expected to take care of their families by age 7, enter military training by age 10, and go off to fight by age 14.

And in the end, Eritrea maintained its independence.

It’s easy to understand why Berhane, who came to the United States in 1984 as a refugee, exclaims over and over how much she loves America.

Born in 1965, Berhane’s entire life in Eritrea was filled with fear, fighting and death.

“Life there, growing up, was very tough,” Simon said. “All of (Berhane’s) dad’s family was killed.”

In 1975, Berhane’s father was among hundreds of people praying inside an orthodox church when they came under attack by Ethiopians armed with machine guns.

“Every single person there that day died, except a few escaped — including (Berhane’s) father,” Simon said. All of his brothers were among the approximately 260 Eritreans killed in the attack.

Other visions of war are equally as traumatic for Berhane.

She detailed her cousin’s hanging at the entrance to his parents’ home. She told of Ethiopian Army personnel raiding villages and gathering all of the young children — pulling some from the arms of their mothers — in the streets, only for the families to watch in horror as a tank ran over them until they all were dead.

“They didn’t want the babies to grow up and become soldiers,” Berhane said.

After experiencing such violence, Burhane’s mother begged the family to seek safety in another village.

They ultimately settled “in the low lands” of Hamasen, but safety there was short-lived.

“The Ethiopian soldiers came and burned the city,” said Simon, again speaking of tragedy too difficult for Berhane to put into words. “They raped little girls; they raped mothers in front of their children. (Berhane’s) brother’s head was cut off.”

At Denkal, Eritreans were captured and hung on ropes, their body parts cut off one by one by Ethiopian soldiers as families cried out.

It was around this time Berhane’s father was captured by the Ethiopians and kept in an underground prison, where he was beaten, tortured and starved for 10 years.

By the time he was released at the end of the war he was blind, Berhane said, tearing up again at the treatment her father endured.

Berhane was no longer with her family when her father was captured. She had a “chance to escape” in 1979 and become a guerrilla fighter for Eritrea. Deemed too small to go out and fight, she was asked to cook and care for the children left behind when both parents went off to fight. She also had to help dig graves for the dead and sometimes — to protect the camp — she would have to fight, too.

“Every woman carried a gun — and shot, too,” she said.

Berhane was a guerrilla fighter from 1979 through 1984, during which time she married and had a son, Hiruy. In 1984, she was given the opportunity to move to Sudan with them to escape the fighting. That same year, the three were granted refugee asylum, sponsored by the Lutheran church, and relocated to Florida. In 1986, they moved to Atlanta, Ga., where they raised their family, which grew to include five children.

During that time, Berhane kept in contact with her mother in Eritrea, though it was always a challenge because her parents did not have a telephone. She would often ask to speak to her father, not knowing at the time he was a prisoner, but her mom would always say he was too busy to come to the phone. She didn’t want Berhane to worry.

In 1993 — two years after the war — Berhane told her mother she was returning to Eritrea to visit. What was anticipated to be a simple phone call became an incredible surprise. Berhane’s mother explained she wanted to see her daughter again before she died. She was speaking not only of Berhane, but of another daughter — her oldest daughter — who had escaped the war before Berhane’s birth and was living in Germany.

Berhane said she never knew she had an older sister — saying now her parents were so preoccupied with the war and keeping the family safe that they never spoke of the girl.

It took some research, but Berhane ultimately found her sister in Germany, sent her money for a plane ticket and arranged for them to fly to Eritrea at the same time to reunite with their family. When they arrived there, Berhane finally learned of her father’s blindness and the killings of her two brothers.

The sister she’d never met was reunited with her family, but she was so affected by the war she trusts no one and fears everything. After she returned to Germany, the sister changed her name and phone number, causing Berhane to lose all contact with her until just a week and a half ago, when her son — a soldier in the U.S. Army now stationed in Germany — found her.

Later this month, Berhane will fly to Germany to visit her son, James, and to see her sister for just the second time in her life.

“I haven’t spoken to her in 19 years,” she said.

Life in Worthington

In 2007, after divorcing her husband, Berhane said she needed a change. She and her youngest daughter, Sara, traveled to Minneapolis to visit friends, and after failed attempts to find work there, she was encouraged to visit Worthington. Among the first people she met here was Simon, and they became instant friends and roommates for a brief time until Berhane was able to get back on her feet.

“She was scared of the small town,” Simon recalled. When she realized, however, the vast cultural diversity in the community, she quickly decided to stay.

“I like Worthington because it’s a small city. There’s no violence,” Berhane said. “Atlanta was very bad — too much crime, too much problems.”

With just $100 in her pocket when she came to Worthington, Berhane found a job at JBS. She still works there today, putting in as many hours as she can to earn money not only to pay her bills here, but to help her family around the world. She sends money to her parents in Eritrea so they can buy food. She sends money to her oldest son, who was deported to Ethiopia in 1999, so he can pay rent and eat. She sends money to her oldest sister in Germany so she can have a place to live.

Berhane has often volunteered to work 12- to 15-hour shifts just to help her and her family survive, and she said she loves the work at JBS.

“I like the different people,” she said. “We’re like family.”

Berhane works side by side with people of all different nationalities at JBS, and among some of her closest friends are people from Ethiopia. While their countries were at war for 30 years — and tensions remain between the two — Berhane said the Ethiopians lost family members in the war, just as she had. They share something else in common, too — they all sought out life in America and the promise of freedom.

Today, two of Berhane’s sons work to maintain the freedoms Americans enjoy. James is serving in Germany as a member of the U.S. Army, and Temesgen is enlisted in the U.S. Marines. That they are both serving the country where they were born — just as Berhane served Eritrea as a guerrilla fighter — makes her incredibly proud.

“I love America so much — it’s a very nice country,” she said.

Berhane earned her U.S. citizenship in 2009, and has greatly improved her English-speaking ability since moving to Worthington and getting help from the Nobles County Integration Collaborative. She is also learning to speak Amharic from her Ethiopian friends.

Her daughter Sara, who lives with her, works for Ridgewood in Worthington and dreams of one day going to college. Daughter Aster, who remained in Atlanta, is studying for her doctoral degree and works for the federal government. Temesgen is also in college in Atlanta, and hopes to one day become a business owner. James, in his eighth year with the U.S. Army, fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is married with one son. And Hiruy, her only child that wasn’t born an American citizen, is caught up in the system after he got into some trouble with the law in Atlanta and was deported to Ethiopia. He was sent to Ethiopia because his papers said he came from there, but both he and Berhane contend he should be in Eritrea, where at least he has some family. Because of rising tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, he isn’t allowed to cross into his home country.

While Berhane wants desperately for him to come back to America, she’s resigned to the fact he likely never will return to his family here.

That realization struck her after someone, pretending to work for American immigration in Ethiopia, swindled her out of $2,000. She was told her son could be sent back to America for $4,000, but she needed to pay half of the money before the process began. She put in extra hours at work and borrowed money from four friends to get the $2,000 together, and after it was sent, she never heard from the guy.

“He was a crook,” Berhane said, adding she’s since paid back her friends, and learned a valuable lesson in the process.

“With immigration, it would take years to have enough money to get him to America,” Simon added. “She just wanted so badly to believe it could happen.”

Daily Globe Reporter Julie Buntjer may be reached at 376-7330.