Memory, Tizita and longing for place

Abstract

The raw facts of memory, of longing for place, and the corresponding need to shape a narrative and to account for experience, create fundamental tensions in this piece of creative non-fiction. Childhood memories of the “Garden of Eden” underpin adult experiences as a researcher in what is now the UNESCO listed Kafa Biosphere Reserve in southwest Ethiopia. Research and writing about “saving” birthing women as an international development goal identified friction between visiting women in their homes, and remembering childhood encounters with women whose lives (and souls) needed to be “saved”. Struggling to find meaning, and writing about these experiences, offered a way to move on from other unhappy childhood memories. Drawing on descriptions of Tizita (Ethiopia’s anthem to nostalgia and longing) by Maaza Mengiste and Dagmawi Woubshet, and fernweh (longing for a place “far away from here”) by Teju Cole and Christiane Alsop, longing for home, ሃገሬ ናፈቀኝ (the Amharic term pronounced hagere nafekegn), guided more recent journeys accompanying women as they walked from home to the field, to collect water or firewood, to visit neighbours, to the market or to a health facility. Walking defines an approach to living whereby daily activities are framed by time and distance.