Who said living as a vegan is difficult?

This is live testimony of an ordinary Ethiopian vegan immigrant in South Korea and Seoul. 

Here will follow a blog roll from my short yet adventurous life in Korea.

Life in many ways can be difficult for a lonely, broke activist from one of the most unlikely places. It is difficult indeed when things force you to lose hope and the same reason makes you do regrettable mistakes. I admit there were times when I made mistakes driven by hopelessness, poverty and social pressure but never with others’ lives in my recent history after I went vegan in 2008 and it is a lifetime commitment that will never be broken.

Again, it is regrettable that the things and values you fight for turn out being fallout with your family, society and an iron fist, anti environment, anti people puppet government that that is farsighted from letting its own people to do things they want and value freely.

There are however opportunities in adversities. There will always be footprints, gains if one sticks to their values and fight for it. My struggle has just begun.

I came here to South Korea for a UN Biodiversity COP (Conference of Parties) representing global youth. Then I witnessed the jokes humanity makes on life on the planet where negotiators amongst parties consider themselves as the gods of nature as if they were not part of it seemingly forgetting that it is nature that governs us all and the one that has all the power. I saw them playing games, tit for tat negotiations on nature. I saw them arguing, bluffing amongst each other and demanding others with  things they should have done by themselves, pretending biodiversity or life on the planet as a separate thing from us human animals. They even indirectly label those people better close to nature like their perceived distant biodiversity and give them different names as if they had to continue with the destructive lifestyle they are in. It was generally saddening and frustrating time for me besides some other reasons to observe the whole thing from rights based or ethical perspectives.

Life had never been stable for me and I think I am not seeking stability in life afterall. Here is a new beginning to a different one though I believe this will be a struggle to maintain instability in life. Now coupled with terribly dangerous situations back in Africa putting life in crisis and stagnation there, I am in Korea as an immigrant in refugee and the following will be my updates on vegan living in Korea.

It’s already been more than three weeks now. I spent the first two weeks in Pyeongchang for the “conference” and more than one week here in Seoul. Kimchi has replaced Shiro -Injera served with spiced pea flour stew so far. I love Korean veggie soups served with rice and some roots, leaves that I don’t know of yet but love their flavor.

The most phenomenal moment during my time Pyeongchang was the 100% vegan choices everyone has to pick at Templestay at Woljeongsa Buddhist Monastery during the weekend between the two weeks. There was no reason to scrutinize anyone, just picking from the various choices.  Furthermore, dried shiitake mushrooms that I bought from a store in a northeastern coastal town of Gangneung mixed with noodles while cooking my dinners back at the hotel in Pyeongchang was also phenomenal. I had nothing to lose but all to pick from or cook my unconformist style of mixing things together in the pot.  

It was a global meeting with “expected veggies” for somehow it was believed to be an environmental meeting though the case did not seem like that at all. The advantage was the perceived ideas benefited people like me. Most restaurants in an around the venue had vegetarian marks easily convertible to vegan choices clearly put in English. It was indeed easier there than in Seoul despite its many veggie restaurants.

However it was also never difficult moving back to Seoul. As a vegan on my 6^th year, I am now used to having interrogative research for every meal whether back in Ethiopia or here at home in Seoul. This is what usually happens to me. And thanks to Google with their comprehensive map of Seoul city, I am coping well.

While eating out, those on the lookout list for me are kimchi, rice cakes, see weed with rice rolls, sprouts soups mixed with multitude of vegetables, salad, rice, tofu and noodles. These or a mix of them are those I could find easily or convince most restaurants to switch to anytime. Thanks to my new veggie friends, I was also pretty amazed to have found Injera that at least on the weekends I can indulge on my cravings at Zion Club in Itaewon. The place is pretty more like a club so I recommend for anyone to go over there from Friday to Sunday for lunch (12:00 to 4 pm) when it appears like a restaurant. They have injera made of rice rather than teff which is the conventional grain for injera but almost impossible to find out of Ethiopia. So they have two different vegan meals- both well known in Ethiopia and my favorites. Tegabino or Shiro (8,000 Won) being my most frequented meal in the past and Beyaynetu- the most famous Ethiopian vegan delicacy that may contain shiro and various veggie stews put on a spread of injera. Beyaynetu may cost you around 10,000 Won

I have also been to two vegan places- one Loving Hut at Sinchon Rainbow and the other being PLANT at around Itaewon. Sure they were a delight, their offers great but I doubt if they could be the places to frequent by a poor immigrant like me.

I am wondering by the way, why vegan food business must be a niche? I guess not, vegan food is something or the only one that almost everyone can eat or live on. I believe, so long as we promote it and get everyone feel closer to the food , it can have the potential to be the most widely sold and cheapest. That is my assumption though. I like to give this a try in the future. Who wants to do that or dream of that in Seoul or anywhere else?

Soon, I found my delights- dried shiitake and some of the exotic Korean leaves and vegs from a local store around Janseungbaegiyeok subway station just across the street from exit 4 and am enjoying them at a shared kitchen in my amazing place Orange Guesthouse – Hongdae area of Seoul. Mixing the shiitakes in noodles with tomatoes, carrots, local vegetables, roots and see plants and some rice gave me yet another Korean flavored delight. Now finding vegan snacks or biscuits is also getting easier as I get to know more stores.

So here are the technologies I am using to help me cope well: Google maps, My maps and search to locate, pin/save places and find them easily for later and get directions via either subway or buses. And Translate. If you ask me how to get around finding most of my meals so far, as English is in poverty here, I use translator apps, websites or even keep translates in forms of mobile screen shots in my pictures for offline use. Translators are not good while using conversations in forms of sentences so I try getting around putting a sentence in several phrases or words. The English version of my model goes like this “I AM VEGAN. I DO NOT EAT NO MEAT, NO PORK, NO CHICKEN, NO MILK, NO FISH, NO SEA ANIMALS, NO CHEESE, NO BUTTER, NO EGGS OR NO ANIMALS. I EAT PLANTS, ROOTS, SEEDS VEGETABLES OR SEA PLANTS”  and translating this into Korean in my smart phone app gets the reader ooooh and most of the time the next thing you see will be the food of your choice on your table.

This is my thought for now. I will be back with more soon. 

Hey Japan - Inspirations from "In Harmony with Nature"

Amazing enough was that I travelled all the way from Addis to Seoul via Hong Kong and to PyeongChang for my first international meet-up on biodiversity, CBD COP12, which was funded by the Japan Biodiversity Fund channeled through the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, but also the fact that I flew part of my 15 hours long journey reading what JICA is doing to help revive Siemen Mountains National Park- under threat UNESCO world heritage site at the northern part of Ethiopia, illustrated in the Sept/Oct 2014 edition of Ethiopian Airline’s in flight magazine -Selamta.

There is a saying in my country: one opinion breeds many others. Japan may have seemed to ring on two opposite sides of conservation to me before. TV shows that I enjoy on NHK on how the Japanese tradition developed towards “Living in Harmony with Nature” resonates in me on how a society can be so developed and lives with less harm to nature at the same time. That has to be said in favor of the lives of non-congested urban places of Japan though. The other side would be Japan’s traditionally orthodox views on whaling and Taiji dolphin massacres that have a lot of media coverage as they happen.

So I would like to take the good side and debate on the other side. Japanese tradition of living in harmony with nature is what the world has to learn from whether developed or developing societies as even the UN and the CBD claims nature has to be utilized and conserved for the economic/material needs of humanity unlike my perceptions of the intrinsic values of nature assuming that biodiversity conservation has to have the required ethical justification. I doubt if the Japanese tradition I am arguing in favor here totally abides by my opinion and many others’ as well but it still somehow matches the target and I believe also shares at least some of the values what I am up for here.

However, the unconformist traditions of dolphin and whale massacres are those that everybody or every society does in slight alteration of forms. We do the same to goats, antelopes, kudus, ibexes, apes, elephants, rhinos, sheep, cows, camels, chicken and you name it. As I list different societies the list goes further down to many species. That is also what we say when it comes to animal rights that can be translated to biodiversity rights without much alteration: you can’t speak for dog killings anywhere while devouring chicken & fish. These schizophrenic or morally contradictory ideologies have to be focused up on. Of course I do not like dolphins and whales to die but I also don’t want the whole system of agriculture and our lifestyle that dwells on one hand precious citizens of biodiversity and sentient lives on the other hand.

So my bows to Japan. Thank you for the contribution in helping me become a pioneer in Ethiopian youth participation at a global level. I hope our government learns and gives voice to local youth and communities at national biodiversity policy formulation, designing and implementation levels. Thank you also for the contribution in really protecting our “protected areas” and for showing the way on how it is done. I hope to learn more on the field level.

I also hope to one day see Ethiopia, USA, Japan, Korea and the whole planet at a developed but perfectly pro nature position that keeps our neighbors at peace.