A tale of resilience for International Women's Day and two amazing Eritrean veggie recipes...
Eritrean grandmother Shewa on surviving, lost and alone in the desert
Hi all and HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!
I wanted to share an ultra special experience I have had with a grandmother with you all today. It’s the story of grandmother Shewa, an Eritrean lady whose resilience and strength really shone through when I cooked a delicious, spice-spiked couple of curries with her in her kitchen.
What Shewa chose to share with me was one of the most incredible tales I’ve heard from the grandmothers I’ve cooked with over the past eight years. I hope you find it inspiring and fortifying today, on this very special day for all women…
Born, Ethiopia, 1958
Mother Tongue, Tigrinya Amharic
Grandchildren, Sami, Zoe, Noemi
They call her, Abayeye
Food is important. It’s like fuel to a car but we shouldn’t be too obsessed about it. As long as you have something to eat, that’s the important thing. Being from Eritrea and having lived in Ethiopia has shaped how I see food. When my boys were younger and would ask what we were having for dinner, I would say, “We’re going to eat food,” not list their choices. There are so many mothers and grandmothers who can’t feed their own families in this world that we should respect food and be happy with what we have. These lentils and the stew recipe I’m sharing with you are very typical Eritrean dishes.
When I was 18, it got too unsafe for me to stay in Ethiopia so I left to go back to Eritrea. I was the only youngster left in the city because everyone had left to join the guerrillas. We (the Eritreans) were fighting for independence from Ethiopia. All the youngsters fled to the fields to become guerrilla fighters. This was in 1978. So I had to leave. When I went back to Eritrea, the soldiers put me in prison because we were still under Ethiopian rule and they thought I was going to leave and join the other fighters.
I went to prison twice so my family insisted I either join the Eritrean fighters or leave. I didn’t want to be in this war. I wasn’t up to it. I was looking forward to meeting my boyfriend (my now husband) so I thought it was better I didn’t go. Instead, I walked through the desert towards Sudan.
Of course I got lost. I left Eritrea in January and I got to Sudan in August. I was by myself and had to stay with nomans in the desert. The land was completely flat and I couldn’t navigate it at all. I just collected dates and fruits on the way for a little nutrition but it was so dry and arid that barely anything grew out there.
When I arrived in Sudan, I didn’t have anything. No clothes, no shoes. Nothing. The final leg of the journey was for eight days and eight nights with little food or water and I was completely alone. My (now) husband thought I didn’t want to be with him because he hadn’t heard from me in such a long time.
The first thing I did was found an Eritrean family and asked to have a shower. I asked for two buckets of water, a towel and some soap. I had only sipped at the little water I had left and ate dates for eight days. I didn’t even know how long it would take me to arrive so when I did arrive, it was a great relief.
I never thought I would die though. Someone asked me, “After all this, were you scared?” I was never scared. I always think, “Yesterday is finished so I can now look forward to tomorrow”. Tomorrow, you don’t know what life is going to bring and what is going to happen to you. Whatever is going to come is going to come. You have to embrace it.
Now for the recipes…
Tumtumo is best made with berbere, an intense terracotta-coloured spice blend that Ethiopian and Eritrean recipes use for big flavour. Shewa has great bags of it in the kitchen and says that if you can't find it in big supermarkets or ethnic stores, it can happily be replaced by cayenne pepper. Shewa also uses a spice blend she makes by throwing an equal measure of nigella seeds, cardamom, cloves and ajwain seeds into a coffee grinder for a quick blast.
Shewa served the tumtumo with kale steamed with garlic and bay leaves and another dish of mustard leaves and spinach boiled with bright orange squash. These sat atop the Injera, the sour, pancake-like flatbread Eritreans use as base plate and cutlery in one…
Shewa’s berbere spiced lentils (tumtumo)
Serves 4-6
Takes 20 minutes, plus optional soaking time
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Matriarch Eats to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.