The earliest memory of Pnina Tamano-Shata’s childhood is receiving a bag of fudge at a refugee camp in Sudan. Since then, she has travelled a long way, becoming the first Ethiopian woman to hold a seat in the Israeli parliament and host her own current affairs show on mainstream TV.
Born into a religious Jewish family in the Wuzaba village in northern Ethiopia, Tamano-Shata’s grandfather was a Rabbi (Jewish spiritual leader). He could trace his lineage to the first Jews who arrived in Ethiopia between the first and sixth centuries. A staunchly religious community, they practised their rituals completely isolated from Jews in the rest of the world.
When Tamano-Shata was three years old, word arrived of a new way to travel to the Jewish homeland, Israel, and thousands set off.
“We were very afraid of the Ethiopian authorities at that time. On the way we were attacked by robbers, women were raped and children disappeared. We ran out of water before we reached the refugee camp in Sudan and a lot of people from our community died,” she recounts.
From 1934 to 1999, four waves of Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel. They number more than 125,000 today.
“Trucks came to take us to an aeroplane that was waiting for us at a secret meeting point. I remember the Israeli soldiers. They gave us water and candies and bananas.”
Tamano-Shata, her father, and four siblings were separated from her pregnant mother and two sisters.
“Our truck arrived on the tarmac but my mother’s had broken down along the way. People were dying in the refugee camp and we didn’t know if she had also died or not. It was a very hard year for me until the Mossad (Israeli secret service) located her and brought her to Israel. I always say I am lucky because I found my mother and since then God has been taking care of me.”
But life in Israel was also difficult. The country was struggling to integrate these newcomers from mostly rural, remote regions of Ethiopia into a relatively modern country. Tamano-Shata received her first pair of shoes only after arriving in the Jewish State.
“In the first two decades after we came to Israel, the government’s policy was to help and help and help. It was like we were the poor in need. They invested a lot of money but forgot a really important thing – to ask us what we wanted. Only in the third decade did we find our voice and start saying to the government it’s not a problem of money, you need to work more on integration.
Source: www.forbesafrica.com
