Kamala Gururaja, Contributing Photographer

Students gathered Sunday to ring in the Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year at Beinecke Plaza.

The event was organized by the Yale Ethiopian and Eritrean Students Association, or YEESA, an organization of students with Ethiopian and Eritrean roots. The celebration was open to all and included a performance by Desta, Yale’s Ethiopian-Eritrean Dance Team. 

“It’s definitely been a labor of love. It has been a lot of behind the scenes work but also something that we are all so passionate and excited to pour into” Seline Mesfin ’27, one of the event’s organizers, said. 

This year, they celebrated the start of 2018, which officially began on Sept. 11. The Ethiopian and Eritrean calendars, which are the same and based on the Coptic calendar, are around seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar. 

Many attendees donned traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean clothing and YEESA also served traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean food, such as injera — a pancake-like flatbread. 

Hilldana Tibebu ’27, YEESA president, noted the importance of the New Year celebration for students looking to celebrate their home culture with their Yale community.  

Though Tibebu described YEESA as a “more recent” organization, the New Year celebration was also held last year. Tibebu added that the main goal of YEESA is to “give a home to students” at Yale while also connecting to their culture back home.   

“Structurally it is very similar in the sense that we are coming to celebrate one another and our cultures with a lot of shared elements like food, music, dance,” Mesfin said. “We do want to try and spin things a little bit to keep people on their toes and keep people interested.” 

Many attendees noted the importance of being a part of an Ethiopian community at Yale, while others highlighted the importance of opening the event to the public. 

“We are bringing together a wide range of people,” Meron Tegegne ’27, who also helped organize the event, said. “In the past, people have just been walking by, seen the vibe and the music and just joined. We’re totally open to all of that.” 

YEESA has around 70 to 80 regular event attendees, Tegegne said. The group is affiliated with the Afro-American Cultural Center and is advised by Teferi Adem, a research anthropologist and member of the MacMillan Center’s Council on African Studies.

Sosna Biniam ’26 highlighted the importance of the community, describing her culture as “unique.” She said it can feel isolating being one of few members of the Eastern Orthodox Church — a smaller religious community that celebrates holidays at different times from other Chrsitian denominations.

For Saron Tefera ’26, YEESA provides a community different from her home in Cincinnati, Ohio. She said it meant a lot to her to see the YEESA community grow over the years. 

“It’s been really nice to see people that look like me with the same cultural background come to this university and share all of our cultural experiences together,” Tefera said. 

In February, YEESA will be hosting the EESA Feast, an annual conference for Ethiopian and Eritrean Students Associations from universities across the country. Mesfin said the conference will be a celebration “for the diaspora and by the diaspora,” and invites will extend across the country. 

“It’s supposed to be a really powerful way to unite us, celebrate our culture, but also talk about the things that matter to us and make progress towards our future,” Mesfin said. 

KAMALA GURURAJA

Students ring in Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year on Beinecke Plaza