by: Hallelujah

After a long awaited slet to Yeka Michael, I finally managed to leave emaye Ethiopia in 1984. My story begins being born to a privileged family and attending the same private school from kindergarten all the way through high school.

IdilE honena, Derg took over when I entered high school and by the time I finished, the revolution was in full force. Even though I had completed matrick with good grades, the only university in the country was reserved for abyotawi lijoch and my application was rejected. With no hope of continuing my education, I started doing odd and risky jobs like taking a BBC film crew that came into the country disguised as National Geographic Reporters on tours in Ethiopia.

But my biggest and sometimes easiest source of income was what I called my black market dollar exchange network. The Derg's exchange rate of 2.05 birr for the dollar was comical. I'm forever grateful to my friends in Merkato, who at the time could have turned me in because as my popularity in the ferengie community grew, I use to exchange 3000 - 5000 dollars a week for 3.50 birr and give my clients 3.00, making a cool 50 cents on the dollar.

But I was becoming restless and unhappy in Ethiopia and always looking for any opportunity to get out. My luck came in the name of a European man we will hereon call Charlie. Charlie was on a long assignment in Addis and did not like the apartment that had been assigned to him by the Housing Authority. So we made a deal: I would find him a nice villa if he could help me get out of Ethiopia.

I found him a nice place on Bolé road and he found me someone who, for a small fee, would marry me and get me a visa to a European county. The deal was struck and this gentleman and I, who I had known for exactly ten days, were on our way to Europe.

My plan was simple. Once I got to Europe I would call my sisters in America and they would take care of everything. We got to Europe all right, but it turned out that the two weeks I had originally planed to stay with my savior got extended for at least a year, and my European husband gave me exactly three weeks to find my own place.

To make a long story short, I ran into some Ethiopians (who today would be considered Eritreans) one cold December night with a suitcase full of clothes and twenty dollars to my name. They helped me get a place and a job. It took me exactly one year and two months to get out of that dreadful place and the beginning of my love story.

The day before Thanksgiving, I arrived in the city I would call home for the next ten years. I sat in a window on the airplane seat looking down at this beautiful piece of land that overlooked the ocean from almost every angle, with two big bridges, bigger then anything I've ever seen, connecting it to the inland and to my heart.

I looked up to the roof of the plane and said, "Qulibi Gebrel siletE derese" and I truly fell in love. This small city, just seven miles by seven miles in diameter, became my home, my city and my love. If you haven't been there then you haven't seen beauty. With the hilly roads, the foggy weather and beautiful and I mean beautiful people, San Francisco will forever remain my love.

I was welcome by my entire family: five sisters, seven cousins, two aunts and my uncle at the airport. I fitted right in, started school in January, got my Green Card in less than a year, finished school in exactly five years and found a great job and a beautiful apartment in the heart of the city, on the corner of California and Filmore. Everything happened on my street or within a three-block radius.

The best restaurants, the best jazz clubs, the best Ethiopian restaurant (well, what the city had to offer at the time), the best coffee shops, movie theater, Mrs. Chin (my dry cleaning lady who was also my cook, mentor, advisor and friend). You name it, I had it within walking distance from my apartment.

But there was one big problem: NO MEN. What dear San Francisco lacked was a good pool of handsome, decent, educated men. Yes, there were a lot of men, but not eligible bachelors.

My biological clock was ticking so loud I couldn't sleep at night and my mother’s remarks of "endew ye lij-lij salaE memote new" sounded more like a billa tearing through me, so I decided to go bal-hunting.

And yes, I met my soul-mate but he happened to be on the other side of the country, and, yes, you guessed it, in Washington, DC. We went back and forth for a year and a half, but other than gaining frequent flyer miles, our relationship didn't move an inch.

Somebody had to give in, and my husband made the first move. He embarrassed me one Saturday evening while we were having Kitfo on 18th street when he got down on his knees and asked me very politely to spend the rest of our lives together. I was frantic. I loved him, but what was I going to do about my other love? He gave me all the time to think about it.

Four months later, I was crying while packing my stuff in boxes. "Why was I doing this again?" I asked myself. My sisters thought I had lost it, my friends thought I was crazy. But tidar was my only answer.

Life in DC, take away all the weddings, birthdays, mehabers and all the other social events that eat up your Saturdays, has been great. I landed a great job, bought a nice place in the suburbs and met so many beautiful people.

Every city has it's own marketing tag line, which, in most cases, exaggerates what the city really has to offer. Like "Virginia is for Lovers". Please. But one place where the tag line really describes how I will always feel is "I truly left my heart in San Francisco".