marcus: you know, none of the people that cook here today, like, consider themselves cooks. all of them like anthony: well, like, in rural communities when you kill a big, you know, a couple of animals, right, everybody in the village has, sort of, a chosen specialty. like, joe bob over there, he does the cracklins. somebody over there does the boudin. somebody else over there is, like, good at scraping the fur off. somebody else but, everybody s got a function. you know? it s, it goes right back to the first fire. i mean, i ll bring the dip. you know? maya: normally, you hold it like this, and then you have, you put everything you want in here. marcus: okay, cool. anthony: got it. maya: so you guys could take some and then we re going to take it around. anthony: perfect. gomen and ayib are greens, like collards, with a big hit of berbere and ayib cheese. mmm. i like the cheese. it s like a ricotta. marcus: that s right. anthony: lamb kiftu, prepared
maya s story differs from marcus in a lot of ways. it was not disease or famine or poverty that drove her and her brother petros to europe and a new life. it was the brutal reality of politics. so, who is your father? maya: my dad was my hero and everyone s hero in this i mean everyone, but my brother could explain a little bit more. petros: he was a local chief and also a member of the supreme, or the highest court, you can say. during the haile selassie period he was engaged in more innovative and experimental and mechanized farm. with, during the communist anthony: yes. petros: period. you know, something unexpected happened. anthony: in 1974 emperor haile selassie was deposed and the very unpleasant general mengistu and a
people that cook here today, like, consider themselves cooks. all of them like anthony: well, like, in rural communities when you kill a big, you know, a couple of animals, right, everybody in the village has, sort of, a chosen specialty. like, joe bob over there, he does the cracklins. somebody over there does the boudin. somebody else over there is, like, good at scraping the fur off. somebody else but, everybody s got a function. you know? it s, it goes right back to the first fire. i mean, i ll bring the dip. you know? maya: normally, you hold it like this, and then you have, you put everything you want in here. marcus: okay, cool. anthony: got it. maya: so you guys could take some and then we re going to take it around. anthony: perfect. gomen and ayib are greens, like collards, with a big hit of berbere and ayib cheese. mmm. i like the cheese.
killed. maya s dad was all those things, an educated landowner and part of the rural tribal administration from the selassie time. most people who had the means left the country. petros: i know this guy who is appointed, you know, as a governor of the region, killed 60 people in the region. in three year s time. maya: nobody knows when he s coming. anthony: right. maya: so he could, he d just knock our door and my mom, she gets it every time he comes. he gave her bullets. he tells her, this bullet next time is yours if don t bring your husband. so my dad always came to visit us in nighttime, so he never been really home or around during the daytime. anthony: so for most of that time your father had to live in hiding. maya: yeah. petros: yeah, and then we all survived by the grace of god, and we are blessed for this.
hard-lying communist regime called the derg took over the country. as in mao s china, all agricultural property was taken over by the state and broken up into small parcels. petros: everything what my father had, the land, the property, is confiscated. and those who had the authority, they had the chance to work together, to cooperate, or they were enemies. anthony: right. anyone deemed an enemy of the state, and this could be a very dangerously loose definition, but usually and typically included the educated, the well-off and anyone associated with the former government were hunted down, shunned, jailed, harassed and often straight out