In addition to being a broadcaster, writer and program host, Mimi Sebhatu is the Amharic Service's premiere war correspondent.
Her colleagues call her Mimi, but her real name is Igigayehou, which, she says, means ?I saw the best? in Amharic. She is a petite woman, with enormous eyes, a wide smile, and black curls highlighted blonde. As a VOA reporter, Mimi Sebhatu has found herself on many front lines, most recently when covering the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Reporting on the war between her native Ethiopia and its neighbor, Mimi Sebhatu says the greatest challenge for her was to keep her emotions at bay.
Mimi Sebhatu did not start out to be a journalist. She grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, one of the eight children of a successful landscape architect.
The Sebhatu family?s lifestyle changed dramatically with the socialist revolution that brought Colonel Mengistu Mariam to power in 1974.
At Addis Ababa University, Mimi Sebhatu studied theatre arts, and after graduation wanted to work as a filmmaker.
Mimi Sebhatu came to the United States to visit film institutions, as part of a program sponsored by the American Embassy in Addis Ababa. Her first impression of America was that it was very big.
Another thing that struck Mimi was how welcoming the people were.
While in New York, Mimi was invited by New York University?s Tisch School of the Arts to stay on for a year as a visiting scholar. That year ? 1991 -the military dictatorship in Ethiopia was overthrown, and the political uncertainty back home made Mimi decide to remain in the United States. When her year at New York University ended, she applied for a job with the Voice of America in Washington.
That was ten years ago. Since then, building on her experience in media and film in Ethiopia, Mimi Sebhatu has been a broadcaster, editor and producer in VOA?s Amharic Service. But the highlights of her work are, for her, reporting assignments in Africa. Just three months ago she was the first VOA reporter to be in the capital of Somalia in close to 10 years.
Mimi Sebhatu says that her hobby is people, and in the future she wants to continue to be a sort of a bridge between her native Ethiopia and her adopted country, the United States.