EMAMA TSION MICHAEL ANDOM...

                               

    First acclaimed designer, creator and merchant of modern Ethiopian fashion based on traditional hand-woven fabrics and styles, a business she maintained until her late 80’s; fundraiser for many charities from the 1940’s through the 1960’s, including the Red Cross, the Ethiopian Women’s Welfare Association, the Ethiopian National Association of the Blind, and Cheshire Homes    

    Tsion Michael Andom, known to many as Mama Tsion, has been designing clothing, first for her dolls and then for herself, from the age of about 10, ultimately opening Tsion Tibeb, the first modern high Ethiopian fashion design firm at the age of 43, in 1965. She continued to run her business, using the beautiful Ethiopian hand-spun, hand-woven fabrics and hand-embroidery to create more modern clothing she sewed herself, until she was in her late 80’s. The beauty of her creations was widely acclaimed, both in Ethiopia and abroad. Before opening her business, she spent nearly three decades raising money for charities in Ethiopia benefiting women, the disabled, and her beloved church. Though she grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, she returned to Ethiopia at her father’s behest, along with her brothers, to help build and modernize her country and continued to do so under three successive regimes – Emperor Haile Selassie I’s rule, the Mengistu Derg regime (when she survived a seven-year prison term), and now the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

   She has seen enormous changes in Ethiopia in the 70 years she has lived here, in its people, its customs, and its built environment, for better and for worse, and hopes to see its people, especially its women, regain some of their fabled devotion to family life for the future of the country and its culture. A remarkable occurrence started the sequence of events that would eventually lead to Tsion and her brothers moving to Ethiopia to help build their country. When Sir John Maffey, the British Governor of Sudan, was invited to Ethiopia to attend the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1930, he decided to ask Tsion’s father, then the Chief Clerk at the Palace, to join him on the journey to Addis Ababa, probably to serve as an interpreter. Tsion appreciates the British Governor for this historic decision, since she would never have come to live in Ethiopia had he not made it.

     When Michael Andom was introduced to the emperor, the emperor asked him to come live in Ethiopia to help build the country; her father replied that he had an important job and a family of children to raise back in Sudan, but that when their schooling was complete, he would bring them to Ethiopia to serve their country. In 1940, when the emperor came to Sudan on the way to leading his army to retake Ethiopia from the Italians, her father fulfilled his promise and each of his children returned over the course of the next year to Ethiopia. Not long after she arrived in Addis, Lady Barton, the wife of the last British ambassador to Ethiopia before the Italian occupation, arrived from England and asked for help to raise funds to start the Red Cross and a women’s association.

   Completely at a loss as to what to do, Tsion went to the office of her brother Aman, then a captain in the army, and told him her predicament. He gave her a little money and took her to a few of his friends, launching her career for the next thirty years as "the unlicensed beggar". She muses that she was in fact very good at it, since she wasn’t asking for herself but for a cause that needed attention. Tsion laughs that one makes many mistakes trying to change things for the better. At one point, she began teaching home-making as the directress of the Princess Tenagnework School for Women, because she felt it was important for women to learn to take care of their homes and children, But the girls coming to the school really wanted to learn secretarial skills and hoped that she, as a well-dressed English-speaking person, would be teaching them typing and shorthand; but what she knew was home-making.

  Finally she announced on Ethiopian Radio that she was teaching only home-making and not secretarial skills – and the next day the number of girls who showed up for her class had fallen to 100 from the 400 – 500 that had been coming before. She loved her work. She hired fifty weavers who wove the fabrics for her dresses by hand and lived in the large compound she rented; every week they would slaughter a lamb and have lunch together. She designed each item of clothing herself, dreaming of the designs as she slept; the fabrics were custom-woven, the embroidery created by men she hired to work her designs, and she herself sewed each piece. She worked long hours and was a perfectionist about everything she made – a quality she thinks she inherited from her father. Her trademark was beautiful colorful tibeb, (embroidered borders), matched on the dresses and the accompanying shawls (shamma).

     She pioneered cultural wedding gowns with the traditional capes (kabas) made in colors, rather than the traditional black, and beautifully decorated. Her designs, shown in fashion shows all over Addis became very popular. Many of the well-to-do women of the time, royalty included, came to her for their special dresses; because she was constantly working, they would come to her shop to see her. She is deeply proud that she was able to preserve and build appreciation for the national dress and design traditions. She ran her business from 1965 to 1976, when she was imprisoned by the Derg. Her younger brother, General Aman Andom, had been President of Ethiopia for the first three months after the overthrow of the emperor; he was like a father to many of the soldiers who had supported the revolution because he had taught them and he felt he owed it to them to help lead them. But, refusing to go along with some of the policies advocated by the eventual dictator Colonel Mengistu, he was killed in a shootout at his home by Mengistu’s supporters. He had been popular in Ethiopia, in the public and with the army, and very close to Tsion, who tried fiercely to protect him. Following his death, the regime feared that she would attract a following or would go abroad and condemn the Derg regime.

    She had no such intention – still committed to building her country, and more importantly, a strong Christian with an unshakable belief in God’s will, she felt that what was happening was what God wanted for Ethiopia for His own reasons and she should accept it. Nevertheless, the Derg regime imprisoned her in 1976, more than a year after her brother’s death. Today, now 90 years old in 2013, she continues to lead an active life – still driving her own car and doing much of her own household work - cleaning her house, polishing her pots and pans, washing her clothing, recycling fabrics and embroideries from up to 80 years ago because they’re still wonderful – the same perfectionist she always was. She has a lot to say to today’s Ethiopians - about the kind of life Ethiopians lived 70 years ago; about how some of the changes since then have been good and some bad; about how meaningful it is to work for free for your country; about the changes good and bad in the positions of men and women; about the dangers of falsifying history; and about all of our responsibility for the future of the country, its people and its culture.

     Her current dream is to create a home for elders on land she hopes to receive from the government, to be named after her family, the Andom’s. In her vision, she and her friends would live in this community; she’d have a big house and her friends would pay to live there, while she managed the premises. Small rooms would be included for about 20 poor elders, who could live rent-free but make coffee, kollo and other products to sell to the paying renters. She hesitates to go back to her old calling – "unlicensed beggar" - to raise the money, because this time it would be partly for herself, though she knows people would support her. These days she feels blessed many times over, because wherever she goes, people offer her love and help; it feels as if the whole town is Mama Tsion’s family. She feels that she loves God and in turn people love her; for that she thanks God.

     When she thinks about the next generation, Mama Tsion is happy that women’s lives are not as tough as they used to be, dominated by men who were often harsh to the women around them. But she feels that the balance may have gone too far – that men are becoming weak and women losing the benefit of the strength that men have to offer. Most important, she worries that in the struggle for equality between men and women, with both men and women in the office, families and children will lose the attention and care that is necessary for building a strong culture, a strong race, a strong country. That, she feels, would be sad. In trying to win, we would lose the most important thing.