The running away girl

by Etenat Awol (Ethiopia)

A leap into the unknown Ethiopia

The running away girl Discovering thy innate, through a tough rebellious childhood! It was summer 2010, my first successful escape. That was the very first time, my foot lit up a step out of my village. For the first time in my life I’m in a city, characterized by completely different life styles. To the girl from 10 years ago all the things in her destination were new and equally incomprehensible. She placed her gaze here and there, trying to make some sort of sense; those fascinations didn’t let her though. I couldn’t understand anything clearly. Except all nature of the feeling were developing a muddle of thoughts into my head. Between every strange step I take, I constantly worried about what to do. It’s getting late and to my worst nightmare the rain was so defiant to open the way for a helpless little girl. The irresistible black muds make it almost impossible to walk even with a perfectly fine shoe, let alone with a worn out kongo (a plastic made shoe that is very known in the rural parts of Ethiopia a decade ago). Window catering, street vendors, chaos caused by uncountable aloof of footsteps, cars, too many of them, yet no one dare to acknowledge my existence. May be this is completely different from my previous encounters, I never found a fine explanation than saying I became a clueless alien only after walking 25kms away from home. That day I realized there is another world different from my little world which seems so peculiar and completely strange to my tiny eye and limited experience. I was barely thirteen and completely alone. Frozen and furious, my veins filled with despair. This mocking paranoid knock into my head now and then, murmuring obliviously how I would get out of this abyss, yet I voluntarily and ignorantly embraced? Maybe that was not a good reason to run away. I thought now and then. Actually I had never had a good reason for such relentless act, which left my family in unbearable troublesome, not to mention each psychotic labeling I faced about wellbeing. Finally a glimpse of solutions seems approaching, maybe there is something I can do praying! Who would close a door to a little helpless girl? Please God make the rain stop, the farmers are not going to complain, and they had enough for today, please! The thing is I had built a name in the neighborhood with this strange action of mine “The running away girl”. As long as I remembered I had always love the road. I always wondered what kind of life was cherished behind every mountain. Do child went to the field to look after their cattle. But I never had come this far. Growing up in a culturally settled countryside where traveling is considered as huge privilege to foreigners I never had a chance to visit and explore. My fortune of traveling didn’t come from a nurturing environment. I just find my way out from the scratch of a mere passion. Yeah this is my story, a nomad in the making, an explorer by heart. Escaping that redundant familiarity and a mundane routine over silly excuses of disagreement with my mom or my younger siblings is what I’m really proud to acknowledge, because that way I make a space for the innate sprit to embrace the child in me. Now standing in one of the ancient civilization of Ethiopia, Tigray, which is filled with a treasures of history, culture and folktales, I send a gratitude to the little me. Here I feel my origin, here creation speaks louder. And the attachment I always craved to have with the ancient world feels itself alive through me. My existence is perpetual as my odyssey is everlasting; I realized now She doesn’t just run away to disappoint her family. She was fighting to reveal what is inside her within a need to be free. Yes this diehard enthusiasm of discovery comes from a rebel, a rebel that craves for utter freedom, a rebel which brought a noble in a flesh. That’s why I say I became close to my nature through a volcanic and rebellious childhood experience.