Rebecca Teclemariam-Mesbah: Thinking and Painting 'Outside the Box'
- Painting Murals at the Sarajevo Pediatrics Ward
Rebecca Teclemariam-Mesbah defies a simple description. French-Ethiopian, eight years of childhood in Ethiopia, another few in Kenya, studies in France, Germany and Holland, and currently living with her family (Swiss/French/Iranian husband, two children and two cats) in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Loaded with credentials—an MA in Gender studies and a PhD in Neurobiology (research on "the fascinating connections between our eyes, our biological clock, and our organs")—and after having worked as a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Strasbourg, France, the Netherlands Brain Research Institute, and the Free University of Amsterdam, she has chosen an atypical career path, involving a mélange of teaching biology, moral leadership, painting, and motherhood. In this interview Rebecca talks about how she has tried to bring together her varied facets—artist, mother, scientist, person of faith, entrepreneur, African, European—into line with her values.
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EBBF: You were born in Ethiopia to a mixed race family, have lived in very different countries around the world, speak French, English, Dutch, German, and now Bosnian. How has this diversity of countries and cultures influenced your outlook on life and career choices?
Rebecca: Well, I feel both African and European. African in that I don't create separate compartments in my life. Work, family, faith—all are one. But the way I behave and interact with people is European. Also, I grew up surrounded by poverty, which is a good thing. I don't allow my kids to say (about food), "I don't like it". I tell them that they can't go from a grandfather eating just one meal a day to turning down food!
EBBF: You work a lot, but you don't have a typical career. Can you talk a little bit about what you do?
Rebecca: Well, most people consider me a housewife, which is silly considering I'm not very good at house work! I take my responsibility as a mother as my primary job. I study and organize it as I would do my job. I also make and sell custom made, hand-painted furniture, I teach biology at a French school, and work as a freelance translator.
I started my business by accident. After our second child was born, we moved to a small city in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Travnik. My daughter was so active that I had to dedicate all my time to her. It was very challenging, and in order to channel my frustration I started to paint. I chose furniture because we had unfinished wooden tables and chairs in our house which are made in that part of the country. When the painted furniture kept piling up and filling the house, my husband made me sell it!
The business grew, mostly painting children's furniture, and I started to work in a shop with two other people. But when they started fabricating fantastic stories about the origin of the pieces as a marketing strategy, and also squeezing the price from the carpenter provider, we split up. Now I do the furniture on order so I don't need to keep a stock. I sell online, mostly to customers in Europe and America. Aside from children's furniture, I also sell paintings for kids' bedrooms and abstract art for adults.
- At work in the studio
EBBF: You mentioned that you decided to dedicate your time to your daughter. Does this mean you are living the 'family vs. work' dichotomy? Do you feel pressure from people to get a so-called 'real job'?
Rebecca: I do not regret the time spent with my children. Time flies so quickly and if you look at the 80 or so years we're supposed to live here, child-rearing years take up only a fourth of your life. It is even much less when you think about the eternal after-life!
Although I loved working in science research, most of the time I did not like the conformity of the career paths offered to me. For a very long time I had the impression that I was on train tracks, following the path laid out for me: science studies, PhD, post-doc, assistant professor and I just needed time at the job (in Europe, a long time!) before I could think of becoming one day a professor. It is the same in most professions but this only validates one type of experience. The fact that I could deal with people from different backgrounds or that I was creative was not really considered an advantage. Also, I never liked being defined by my job. In my research institute we were even defined by the area of the brain we were studying. I remember once someone in my team (we were the hypothalamus people) commented on how I had had lunch with people from the cortex group as if I had done something quite revolutionary!
About not having the real job: here is one area where it is an advantage to be a woman! There isn't as much pressure on getting a "real" job. Some of my male friends who are stay-at-home fathers have a much tougher time. However, it is quite bruising for the ego when people stop a conversation short because they just learned you don't have an interesting work or even worse when they patronize you because they assume you have a small IQ given you have chosen to stay home to look after your family. Everything I do now is more of a one person job, so I miss the buzz of the workplace, the intellectual challenge and the fun of having colleagues. However, because there is no one to push me, I have learned the assertiveness, and the strict discipline I probably would not have developed otherwise.
EBBF: You seem to have managed to integrate various jobs and responsibilities into your schedule, working as an entrepreneur, mother, teacher, and also dealing with moral education and youth leadership. Do you see this as a viable path for more people or is yours an isolated experience? Are there things about this more integrated approach to life that you think can be applied to more conventional work experiences, businesses, and the like?
Rebecca: I think it is important to know yourself first; not everyone can do the same thing. But it is also important to integrate service to a worthy cause into your life and have a passion for it. In our late twenties, my husband and I realized that the life we had chosen—i.e. a career in science research—would mean we'd have to live in a large city in a wealthy country while we both dreamt as kids of working in developing countries. It also meant we'd live a very regular life and although there is nothing wrong with all of this, it was just not for us. First, because we both have a tendency to quickly get bored by routine and need to put ourselves in difficult situations to advance. Then in 1998-1999 a series of dramatic events happened: my husband's brother committed suicide, and I became pregnant with our first child. It is also during those months that the Universal House of Justice [the governing body of the Baha'i Faith] wrote some words which struck a chord: "The days pass swiftly as the twinkle of a star. Make your mark now, at this crucial turning point of a new juncture, the like of which shall never return. Make that mark in deeds that will ensure for you celestial blessings--guarantee for you, for the entire race, a future beyond earthly reckoning." This quote captured our feelings: life is very short and while you're alive you have to do something meaningful. Also, by becoming parents, we wanted to live up to what we would expect from our children. So we decided to put ourselves in a difficult situation and try to do something meaningful, make our mark—as small as it might be—so that our child would see that our deeds did follow our words. We moved to Sarajevo. We had to understand a new culture, learn a new language and re-invent our careers since we pretty much ˝hara-kiried˝ our research careers!
EBBF: In your presentation at EBBF's annual conference you mentioned that currently society is organized around a conception of human nature as innately selfish and competitive, and that society could change to a cooperative model of organization. In this model, you used the analogy of the bird with two wings, male and female, to illustrate the need for one kind of cooperation. How are these ideas related to what you've experienced in your own life?
Rebecca: As human beings we do have greatness and darkness, selflessness and selfishness. It is all about which of our sides we want to focus on. I believe we can not even grasp the changes coming generations will make in the organization of society if the view on human nature changes. This is real science-fiction! We can only extrapolate from what we know from small groups putting human value at the core and using a non-confrontational model of group decision making. EBBF is one group trying to do that. Results show that individuals develop new abilities, learn from mistakes, and in general have a lower stress level. This is not only a ˝feel good˝ effect. It goes deeper, in that constant stress in general is toxic to the brain. In an enabling environment the level of creativity and learning is much higher. I am often humbled by the attitude of children who have been taught that since a young age.
About creating a new society, we have to think that not only do we need to integrate men and women but also minorities, East, West etc. An exciting challenge because it forces us to rethink our assumptions. Does having a career mean I have to give up having a family? Many working men and women do not want to choose. Is it a 9 to 5 job that defines a ˝functioning˝ human being? Romas in Bosnia for example certainly do not think so, but they play a large role in the recycling of materials in the country. Why is this not looked upon as a valid human activity? I think it also comes back to what defines a human being. In an ever-changing world it will be more and more difficult to put people in boxes. Bosnia is a country struggling with defining nations and I know it can be difficult not to know who you are. But if you see life as a journey in which mishaps, mistakes, successes will help you find out the gems you did not even think you had, then it is not so important to draw boundaries around your personality. Just put down a note saying "work in progress"!
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