My Life

By Mehari Tewolde Ocbamichael

In June, 1998, I was living a normal life close to my sister in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Following the ignition of a border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the government of Ethiopia announced in the national tv that all Eritreans be registered by going to the nearest police station. The next day I went to a station in my area and the police kept me the whole day there. At dusk, the police told us to board their pickup trucks and took us to Shegolle Detention Camp. We spent there the whole night. In the morning, big Mercedes trucks came to transport the nearly 2000 detainees to Fitche Detention Camp, a town 100 miles north of Addis.

After a month, they moved us to Blate Detention Camp located in the south of the country. We stayed in Blate for about a year in a strictly controlled rural area. We tried to keep ourselves busy by organizing indoor and outdoor activities. In Blate, there was epidemic like cholera and malaria that killed so many detainees.

Then, they moved us to Dedessa Detention Camp which is located in the west of the country. After five years of detention, a peace agreement was signed between the two countries. In Dedessa, first contact with Aby was made. In the 2000 US election season, contact with Aby became stronger. Many messages were flowing and became the driving force for our release.

UNHCR arrived at the camp and started resettlement process to a third country. Around 250 detainees were allowed to migrate to different countries – US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I was resettled in the US with my family in 2005.
Life in America started in Harrisonburg, Virginia. My wife and I started working and my kids started school. My first job was in a supermarket close to my residence. The second job that started in 2008 was as a medical interpreter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667855417

Book preview

Chapter 1

Fiche Detention Camp

It was in the early June 1998, the government of the country in which I use to live, announced in the Ethiopian National TV for all Eritreans to be registered by going to the nearest local Administration Office or police station around them. The announcement was for the next day. It was in the evening program after the NewsHour. I was living in the capital, Addis Ababa, with my family, my wife and newborn daughter. She was two months old by the time. I remember before this announcement; my daughter had a sore throat and I was worried. I remember her mom use to get sore throat almost every six months. And she used to be treated with antibiotics.

At that time, I was living maybe five minutes away from my eldest sister’s house. And then, I walked and told her about it and she swiftly got up and we drove to the biggest referral hospital in the area. When the Emergency Room doctor who was on duty that Sunday saw her, he realized it was a sore throat. He was a very experienced doctor and he gave her procaine penicillin injection. We saw significant improvements right away, all the fever and fussy look gone. I thanked God for his mercy on my child. After that, till now she never had any kind of symptoms like that in her life.

The neighborhood that we lived in was a quite area. It is mainly inhabited by retired government officials. My sister also lived in that neighborhood for more than 20 years. The cookie cutter design of the houses included a big house with service behind.

I had a minibus that I used for transportation business. The vehicle occupancy was 14 passengers. It was like a taxi. In the morning, I use to transport kids of the neighborhood from home to school and vice versa. Most of the family of the kids were my sister’s friends. I used this as part of my daily routes.

In addition to the transportation business, I had a little car spare parts shop jointly with my friend who had an auto-repair shop. My friend is a good mechanic that he learned it from experience with his brother. His brother has extensive experience fixing cars with little theoretical background. They were Eritreans. Eritreans were well-known in the area for their skills in autorepair. Moreover, his brother was also known for his ingenuity in modifying auto-bodies and engines for low fuel consumption. At one time, he was interviewed by the BBC regarding his experience of modifying the engines for less fuel consumption.

My vehicle was well maintained by them. Unfortunately, when the Ethiopian government decided in June 1998 to summarily deport all Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean heritage, my friend was among the first to be deported.

My brother was also in Addis Ababa visiting us. So, me and my brother went to different police stations to be registered at 5 a.m. I was waiting what would be decided for me in the police station. The police told me first, we are waiting for an order from the Police Headquarter. Every time I asked the response was the same.

Tirhas and my sister brought me lunch and I ate some. That day, they came twice and nothing changed. The third time they came, they started to feel apprehensive that things were getting serious and left home. Immediately after they left around 6 pm, a police pickup land cruiser came and we were told to get on to the truck. I and five other Eritreans together were taken to a camp in the north outskirt of the capital city. The camp was full of hangars used to shelter displaced people by the previous government. We spent the night there with a lot of Eritreans gathered from different parts of the country. The camp is called Shegolle Camp.

The camp was heavily guarded by police. The hangars were very cold because the floor was concrete and the door was left open. The next day around 4 am, the police came with Mercedes trucks and told us to get on the trucks. Right when we came out to board the trucks, I don’t know how my sister and my wife heard about where we were, they brought us blanket and sponge mattress. It was a sad moment.

We started our journey by trucks to the north of the city and brought us to barracks in a small town 100 km away from the city. The town was built in a high elevated area too cold with the barracks made of corrugated iron. The floor was like dirt even not concrete. It is called Fiche Camp.

The sanitation was poor with that kind of crowded detainees. I met my brother there. The incident that my brother and I, two from one family, irritated me. Especially when I thought about my ailing mom, she was old and if she heard this bad news, it won’t be good for her health. Looking back, I say she was lucky she survived it from 1998 up to 2019. That means almost 20 years after that. She died November 2019. She was a great person. My mom was my model figure, my idol, my hero and my everything.

In that prison, we stayed about one month. Visitation was allowed every Sunday. The first week, the visitors were my sister with her friend. I was really sad about what happened to us. The only close encounter I remember about prisons was in 1976. We were about 30 teenagers playing in a sport club in Asmara. Ethiopian government soldiers suddenly surrounded the area and took us to prison for 8 hours. At the time the country was in a state of emergency.

A second incident was in 1989. At the time, I was really sick and soul searching. It was for about three months. Otherwise, I have never been in prison for any criminal offense.

The next week my aunt came with her friends to visit us. Right after that visit, my aunt was also deported to Eritrea. She was working for the National Bank of Ethiopia for more than 30 years. She was even denied of her retirement benefits and expelled without any compensation. Then 8 years later, I met my sister and my aunt in the United States. Both of them died of breast cancer in the United States: my sister in 2011 and my aunt in 2018.

The third week, my wife, Tirhas, with Yordi, my daughter, and our neighbor were the visitors. When I saw them, I felt my heartbeat went up. I had my child and hugged her. And I thanked God for this opportunity before going to another concentration camp. The camp was isolated from the people and put in an abandoned area far from the cities.

The first camp was a place where families can easily visit us using regular public transportation. The government, however, didn’t want us to have a close contact with our families. In the first week of our detention, the administration ordered us to dig a restroom. Because the first one wasn’t enough for all the detainees. So, we dug a new one. But we didn’t stay there longer.

The Visit by Core Diplomats and NGOs

Within a month of our stay in the camp, delegates from European Community, Arab League and Organization of African Unity came to visit us. They talked to us and gathered information from the detainees. At the meeting, I was picked up by the detainees to interpret and coordinate the meeting. I was helping in three languages: English, Arabic and Tigrigna. The most interesting question raised by the delegates was why we were detained. What is the real cause?. The answer from the detainees to the question was resoundingly we are innocent except our Eritrean identity.

Some other journalists and the Geneva International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also came during this time to the detention camp. Voice of America (VOA) and Reuters were the first. The VOA journalist asked me sound questions and I explained to him about the whole situation. The interview was broadcasted the next day in the VOA. He also mentioned my name and with all the description that I talked about. This wasn’t good for me. Following the broadcast, the prison administrator came the next day and tried to intimidate me.

In my defense, I showed him that I was a mental health patient for a while but he ignored it anyway. And I reached to a conclusion that there will be no quick solution to my situation.

My wife and my daughter visited us on a regular Sunday visit. The next day Tirhas brought me clothes in a suitcase. I received that and things were happening too fast.

We were given a prison uniform. They appropriated all our belongings including our shoes. We became barefoot detainees. Blankets were also distributed by Geneva Red Cross.

Chapter 2

Elate Detention Camp

All these happened as a preparation to relocate us to another detention camp. The same day, the roughly 2000 detainees were told to board the public transportation buses and headed to the south of country. It was in the evening. The Mercedes trucks were not there like before when we left to Fiche Camp. We started our journey south crossing the capital at night time. We frequently stopped at provincial cities on our way for meals. During each stop, we were told to remain put in the buses and were each provided with a loaf of breads.

Continuing our travel to the next provincial city and we stopped outside the city in a rest area at day break. When we get down from the bus barefoot, people of the area were already told that we were Eritrean prisoners of war while we were law-abiding civilians working and residing in the country. Some of us were living in the city and left our families to be sent to detention. The area was like granite stone covered ground; we were not able to step on it barefoot. But there was no choice and it was painful with the hot weather.

Once we passed the city, the road was earthen road and mountainous and was dangerous. When we got closer to our destination, we were on top of the hill viewing the destination in a lowland. You can see the place, it looked like a city filled with so many hangars.

After we arrived there, the police told us to get off the buses making arrangement to set us in each hangar. The place was organized and built with water pipes, showers and kitchen. The name of the detention camp was Blate. Even if it was in a remote area, the hangars were insulated and had administration buildings. Close to the prison, there was also government farm of tobacco and cotton plantation. Else, the area is sparsely populated.

Blate Camp

Blate camp was built on the banks of the Blate River. It was next to a cotton and tobacco plantation. The camp was far from cities in the Southern Peoples Region. The area is very hot. The camp was built at the end of 1980. When you look down from the hills, it looks like a big city with the hangars shining. North Korea built the camp. It holds about 70,000 trainees. The purpose for the camp was to use it for military training for the war on Eritrea. Mengistu Hailemariam who was the leader of Ethiopia before, in 1991 had fled the country, last landed at Blate with a small airplane.

Far from the camp you see barely naked people. They carry tools for hunting. They hunt for food. You also see some people who carried guns. Those are government militias. If you get caught trying to escape, they don’t have mercy on you. The wild people kill you with a spear and tools they had. The militias of the government some would take you back to the camp, if they catch you, and others would kill you to take all your belongings.

There were also dangers from wild animals such as hyenas, cheetah, and lions. Blate camp was around the well-known national parks in Southern Ethiopia. The area is a sanctuary to wild animals.

Many detainees died when we were in Blate. They were killed by the militias or the wild people. And some were eaten by wild animals. These incidents were reported to the ICRC. However, only those who died of malaria and cholera epidemic were reported to the Eritrean government. We use to hear the news of the deaths in the Eritrean national radio. Those who died of the dangers in the area when escaping were reported neither to ICRC nor to the Eritrean government.

Activities in Blate

Gardening

The food in the detention camp wasn’t good. We tried to change it by growing vegetables in the camp. Especially when there is loose kind of control, the solution of gardening was very fruitful. To do this successfully, I asked help from some of the detainees who have a good potential in agricultural education. There was one of them who was an agrotech who was working in the cotton plantation next to the detention camp. I tried to acquire books on tropical gardening from outside sources including the ICRC. I made research about it. I collected enough information that can fit with the soil and weather of the area. I prepared fertilizer by composting left over food and green grass.

Our concerted efforts began to bear fruits. As a result, we started to eat nutritious and