DEATH OF A CHEESEMAKER

One of the saddest stories I have read in the on-going pandemic, which has caused our world enough grief, is the senseless death of an Ethiopian migrant who became a symbol of integration in Italy by building a thriving cheese business in the Alpine countryside.  She was brutally  killed on her  goat farm in the Valle dei Mocheni of Italy on December 29, 2020.

A Ghanaian employee on the farm in northern Italy confessed to killing 42-year-old AGITU IDEO GUDETA  with a hammer in a dispute over an unpaid salary.  .

Agitu who fled Ethiopia in 2010  was seen as a shining migrant success story at a time of rising hostility towards immigrants in Italy. She had escaped from Addis Ababa after angering local authorities by taking part in protests against government 'land-grabbing'.  She had been a university student in Italy, where she studied sociology, so was already fluent in the language.

Her goats were the rare Pezzata Mochena, the ancient piebald race of the high Alpine region near the Austrian border. They come in all goat-colors, but mostly streaked and patched with black or warm red-brown. In 2010, when she bought 15, they were almost extinct; within a decade she had 180, and knew the names and characters of every one of them.

 

“In Ethiopia I had worked on some projects with nomadic desert shepherds and learned how to raise goats. I thought that with all these pastures it would not be difficult to make good milk.”

She was renowned for making goat's cheese and beauty products on her farm La Capra Felice - the Happy Goat - which was built on previously abandoned land.

On reaching Italy, she was able to use the common land which lay in waste in the northern mountains to build her new enterprise.  The cheeses produced by Capra Felice received several awards over the years, including an award received in 2015 by Cheese, the annual international cheese fair organized by Slow Food.

 'I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,' she told Reuters in a 2018 interview.

However, the same year she revealed that she had received racial threats, and earlier in 2020 a man was jailed for nine months for injuring her. 

Agitu employed a fellow migrant to help out at her business and was looking to hire at least two more foreigners.  Italians struggled to keep up with the grueling work day, she said, with milking starting at 5 A.M. followed by long hikes through the mountain pastures to tend the goats.  

Agitu  was known to be one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in Italy. Friends grieved at candlelit processions as a picture emerged of a remarkable woman who overcame considerable odds to find happiness in Europe. While she has been praised her as a model of integration in Italy, her courage, determination and love of her animals should inspire, not only immigrants, but all, to make room in our lives for those less fortunate.

The Piebald Mochena goat is originally from Valle dei Mocheni, a valley in eastern Trentino in northern Italy inhabited since the end of the 14th century by a population with Bavarian origins. The local goat breed was described as having the current characteristics in the first half of the 20th century. I t is a good sized goat that typically has hooves slightly larger than other breeds. The horns, almost always present, are tapered and sword-like. In most Mochena goats, the coats are of an uneven piebald or streaked pattern, with a black and white striped pattern or red and white pattern both being rather common. The length of the coat varies, with most goats having long wool. Small cheeses of pure goat’s milk or of goat’s milk mixed with cow’s milk are produced from this breed.

A smoked sausage called Kaminwurtz is produced using 60% meat from the Piebald Mochena goat and 40% pork. In 2005, this breed came very close to being lost. Thanks to the Province of Trento, some individual goats were recovered. From these, new Mochena goats could be bred.

The Piebald Mochena Goat Association was born in 2009 to promote and maintain the survival of the breed. Today, there are more than 10 breeders with 300 goats registered. The Piebald Mochena Goat Association, a non-profit organization, is responsible for bringing them all together to the pastures in the summer.

 

While, in winter, the association redistributes the goats to the various farmers situated from Rovereto to Trento. In Bedollo in autumn, there is a festival that centers on the Mochena goats. During the event, the best examples of the breed are exhibited in various categories, and the best goats are awarded prizes. Counting also the small number of breeders outside of the Association, about one hundred excellent examples of the breed are consistently presented. The main reason this breed is at risk of extinction is the fact that the Piebald Mochena has only an average milk production, less than many other breeds.

                                                               (From Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity)