Barko describes his family history. After his parents divorced when he was a child, he moved to different villages until he settled with his mother’s family, in a village named Cankiri. Barko describes the village and the natural environment. He explains how he used to make whips from tree branches.

At the age of eight he moved again, this time to live with his sister in Lev Waha in the Zango region, and went back to visit his mother for weekends and festivals. In Lev Waha, he began to herd sheep with the local children. Barko guarded the sheep from monkeys, foxes, and leeches and made sure the sheep did not damage crops in the area.

At the age of 13, Barko returned to live with his mother in a village named Deguma, a two-hour walk from Lev Waha. He would wander between his relatives in the different villages. Barko describes the process of building the house they lived in, and he points out the differences between this one and the house he built several years later.

He began to work in farming with his sister’s husband. Shortly after, he reached a leasing agreement with him and began to work land himself. At a relative’s wedding, Barko met a cousin who inspired him to learn to read and write in Amharic and English. He began to teach himself while he shepherded the flock.

Barko reminisces about how his grandfather used to write words of Torah on parchment and explains how he made the ink. He shows a prayer book written by his grandfather and reads aloud from it. He also describes how, during wars, they would store the books his grandfather wrote in clay vessels and bury them in pits in the ground.

At the age of 15, he began to study in an organized school. He was self-taught and bought books with morals to read in his free time. Barko tells several stories he remembers by heart, including some about a wandering minstrel (in Amharic: Azamri) and a tumultuous river. He also describes the various games he would play with his schoolfriends and the friends he herded sheep and cattle with. During the winter months, when there was vacation from school, he would work as a hired farmer to support his family. During this time of year there was lots of work in the fields.

When the Derg party rose to power it re-allocated the lands and allowed Jews to be landowners as well. Barko returned to his mother’s house and worked his land. He continued to study. He travelled to Gondar to take the national examinations. He advanced through the classes in the school. In order to move up to seventh grade, Barko moved to the ORT Jewish school in Ambover, far from his family. A year later, the Derg regime stopped the ORT organization’s activity in Ethiopia. The school was closed and Barko had to move a school in Meksanit. For a year, he rented a bunk bed to sleep on and ate the bread he brought from his mother’s house each week.

After completing his studies in middle school and passing another national exam, he began to study in a school in the town of Azozo. He and his family could not afford to pay for public transport and therefore Barko had to walk 80 km, a walk that lasted an entire day, to reach the school in Azozo. He remembers the great hunger he suffered during the week and describes the walk back to his mother’s house.

When he was in eleventh grade, during the civil war and the period called the Red Terror, the Derg regime proclaimed general conscriprion. Barko and his friends decided to escape to Sudan to immigrate to Israel. The first attempt failed and Barko had to return home. He did not give up, believing that it was better to die on the way to Israel than in the army in Ethiopia. He set out for his second attempt together with his mother, but after a short while she returned home and Barko continued alone. After nine days he reached Sudan and immigrated from there to Israel.