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. 

World Environment Day ( #WED14 ) Message : Youth Voice

This will be my first in a series of blog posts related to major environmental days which was supposed to focus on youth participation in the environmental sector in Ethiopia turned to one big plea due to on one hand the circumstances I see everyday and partly from the complete absence of the word youth in major policy or strategy documents (Environment Policy of Ethiopia, CRGE, NBSAP) of the country I tried to navigate through. However in the generalized context of the fight to curb the environmental catastrophe of our time, the lack of youth participation is a mere representation of the problems but overall popular awareness and participation had to be questioned. So anything that relates to youth in this article shall also be addressed to all men and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, local and marginalized communities and all within the civil community of Ethiopia.

The 2014 theme for World Environment Day will focus on 'Small Islands and Climate Change' and the official slogan for the year 2014 is 'Raise Your Voice Not The Sea Level. There as a result is a good chance to relate the global & local perspectives of environmental protection especially climate change and biodiversity loss that directly and indirectly relates with climate, with the need to raise our voices together. Our action, their action and everyone’s action whether good or bad will be reflected everywhere across the planet. Our inaction in emission reduction or inaction in raising our voices together against the major emitters affects all including the islanders and coastal communities suffering from rising sea level at the other end of the world.

We therefore need to move beyond our biggest challenges like lack of awareness and other critical social factors like poverty and apathy from the great majority of our communities coupled with limited sense of ownership & responsibility amongst the more aware community to problems of only finger pointing and short-sighted attitudes disregarding current and importantly future emission rates thus regarding mitigation efforts as insignificant while a good and strategic environmental movement that systematically and effectively deals with the challenges and that could come out of our efforts in addressing environmental issues could bring about a greater sense of unity, public responsibility and concern to face any challenge threatening humanity and nature in general as an opportunity.

Yes we don’t have much to do about current changing climate, but we need to be part of the solution. We need to make sure that we don’t take the same environmentally destructive path in our fast developing country like our western/northern counterparts. Besides awareness raising and offering adaptation and coping mechanisms, we need to directly face the emerging villains while standing in solidarity with our global campaigning friends for they also have our voices to share as we definitely are the biggest losers in climate change. We need to take motivation by the fact that our country and its great majority of poor farming community members dwelling on natural trends for their livelihood remain very affected by changing climate. These people don’t know how exactly the change happens especially in form of its global perspectives with the lack of knowhow on ways of mitigating and adapting to the effects. Most of them could answer loss of trees or creator’s might if asked about the cause of change climate that they are continually observing. The answer could partly be true but what we don’t know is the effect of emission from western countries taking the biggest share. Furthermore, the fact that our need to stand for nature and the broader environment that all life dwells upon are being threatened by climate change should motivate us and our peers to be part of a climate and pro environment movement.

It is fact that young people constitute a large part of the world’s population not to mention the African or Ethiopian perspective. Youth also have both special concerns and special responsibilities in relation to the environment. A number of environmental risks and hazards disproportionately affect young people, who have to live for an extended period with the deteriorating environment bequeathed to them by earlier generations. In addition, young people will have to live longer with the consequences of current environmental decisions than will their elders. Future generations will also be affected by these decisions and the extent to which they have addressed concerns such as the depletion of resources, climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and long-lived chemical wastes.

Consequently, young people have to be empowered and prompted to engage in any forms of action and activism that will generate effective responses to ecological challenges. Beyond youth themselves, the responsibility will have to be on the government, CSOs and INGOs while the later two are better off in dealing with the situation. I can provide testimony to UNEP Liaison Office to AU, UNECA in Addis Ababa to their efforts in trying to engage youth groups as major partners in their limited ability with special credits to two of their outgoing expat volunteers.

When it comes to overall environmental ambitions that directly or indirectly affect us all, the government especially those at the higher level have to be credited for the ambitions put in most policy and strategic documents which unfortunately have to be said more rhetoric than practical. Consequently this has to be the time to engage more practically and inclusively on most of our ecological issues as the country moves fast forward in the economical path and not to bring it in the same destructive way western countries had travelled. If the same path continues we will have grim consequences in the futurity of our current development as our people are being engulfed in western consumerist lifestyle with almost complete lack of awareness of their path while on the other hand public infrastructures are devouring local ecosystems and communities, virgin ecosystems and even parts of the mere 14% designated as protected area and the proposed only Ramsar site are being given away to corporate monoculture farming companies. Our government and its environmental institutions had to move beyond focusing on political gains to ecological ones to prove worthy for the environment and achieve the policy put on the table. Public environmental & conservation institutions have to be given better chance in restructuring their management process to better effect as other institutions.

These problems are mere representations amongst many while all Ethiopians had to be accounted for them. Citizens especially youth, in politics, can help by making their influence felt as constituency for the long term, calling political leaders to account for the long range environmental consequences of their decision. Representing the concerns of future generations should not necessarily be difficult in the context of policy-making even though the focus is often on short term profits and advantages for which efforts had to begin from today.

On the other hand, the importance of youth participation was already confirmed by Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Rio Summit in 1992 and its subsequent conventions particularly UNFCC & CBD which Ethiopia is party to. Agenda 21 states: It is imperative that youth from all parts of the world participate actively in all relevant levels of decision-making processes because it affects their lives today and has implications for their futures.”. This has to be the ground to positive concerns for youth participation within the UN system especially UNEP and its major subsidiary bodies - with YOUNGO notably being one of the most actively visible groups during the UNFCC COP meetings and GYBN to a lesser extent within the CBD COP meetings besides its MGCY and Tunza.

The process in engaging Ethiopian youth in environmental affairs had to begin from this and now is the time, as it always seems, to give us representation locally and in the aforementioned global youth platforms to facilitate the awareness raising and catching up process. It’s time to curb the almost complete oblivion within children & young people of Ethiopia on what is and had been going on at the global, regional and local environmental policy arena. It’s time to start giving youth the chance to participate in the COPs. It’s time to end what is rumored that the place for youth delegates within the national team for the annual UNFCC COP meetings is given away to friends/relatives within those responsible for the selection process of national delegates. It’s time to find solution to the status quo that CSOs are finding it difficult to send their reps as well for bizarrely restrictive budgetary regulations despite being able to finance their participation which could have had the opening door for youth participation and knowledge sharing process.

Now it’s not difficult to imagine the advantage if some highly motivated young environmental activists like Yohannes “Green” had the chance to take part in global environmental meetings notably UNFCC COPs to network and share ideas/knowledge with youth environmental movements like YOUNGO (youth constituency within the UNFCC system) and learn the values and basics of environmental activism and the debilitating effects of gigantic HEP dams on local ecosystems among others. In speaking of big HEPs, our case made me realize the negative effects of patriotism/nationalism even further and how it can completely brainwash whole populations altogether or be used to brainwash them in favor of many ill factored deeds ecological ones included. I will have more to say on that some other time.

Finally, we all have our own problems to deal with individually but ecological ones have to be those that we have to deal with together- all of us. Let’s unite for the environment!

Good to start with positive and encouraging virtues and move on to the others. Ethiopia has CRGE already in action which aims to achieve zero net emission status for the country by 2025 and is doing good at soil and water conservation efforts while America is trying to adopt Clean Air Act aimed at penalizing highly emitting power generation facilities. Let’s support these and raise our concerns on others, educate one another and push on all members of our society to share knowledge and act together for most of our critical environmental challenges.

Thank You!!