Little debate existed until two weeks ago about where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could least expect a warm welcome in Ukraine. In Lviv, an elegant, cosmopolitan city of cobblestone streets, cafe culture, and manicured parks on the country’s western flank, residents viewed him more as chief jester than commander in chief.

In 2019, Mr. Zelenskyy, a former actor who played the role of president in a popular comedy series on Ukrainian TV, ran for the real-life position and crushed the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko. He carried every region of the country except Lviv, an area of 2.5 million people that shares the name of its largest city, where he captured only one-third of the vote.

Residents here doubted that the political upstart could deliver on his promises of economic reform, fend off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ceaseless pressure, and guide the country closer to Western Europe. Since then, nothing about Mr. Zelenskyy’s uneven performance in office had changed attitudes in “the soul of Ukraine,” as Lviv is known – until Feb. 24, when Russian tanks rolled over the border.

Any vestige of skepticism about the president has vanished as Russia escalates its attacks and civilian casualties mount in cities throughout the eastern two-thirds of the country. His blend of defiance toward Moscow and compassion for Ukrainians has won over his toughest audience at home and transformed him into a national treasure and international icon.

“He has made Ukraine proud,” says Yuriy Polovyy, a retiree and violinist in a string ensemble who voted for Mr. Poroshenko in 2019. He carries a plastic bag loaded with warm cabbage rolls and containers of borscht from a cafe as he walks home across the city’s central square. A patch with the country’s coat of arms adorns his black wool cap. “He is our president – the president for all Ukrainians.”

Martin Kuz

Yuriy Polovyy, a violinist in a string ensemble in Lviv, Ukraine, stands in the city's center square, March 4, 2022. A onetime supporter of former President Petro Poroshenko, Mr. Polovyy praises current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "He has made Ukraine proud," Mr. Polovyy says.

Political analysts suggest that Mr. Zelenskyy’s sudden strength as a wartime leader derives, in part, from the same inexperience once regarded as his primary weakness. His visits to front-line soldiers, heartfelt video messages exhorting civilians, and passionate pleas to Western officials for more support reveal an intuitive, visceral understanding of the moment that transcends politics and policy.

“He is not behaving as a typical politician,” says Sergii Glebov, an associate professor of international relations at Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University in southern Ukraine. “He is behaving more as a human – as a Ukrainian fighting for his country, for his 44 million people, for his family, for himself. I’m not sure Poroshenko or any typical politician could do or would do what he has done.”

Daily doses of hope

The heavy shelling and destruction unleashed on Ukraine by tens of thousands of Russian troops has yet to reach Lviv, some 50 miles from the Polish border. Still, the war has intruded in visible ways on this city of 720,000 people, the region’s largest urban center and the country’s most Western-leaning.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have passed through Lviv by car, bus, or train on their way to Poland. Sandbags fill storefronts and soldiers walk the streets. Police occupy newly erected checkpoints fortified with anti-tank barricades and concertina wire on Lviv’s outskirts. Volunteers staff pop-up donation centers that gather food and supplies to send to military units and towns in the area.

Martin Kuz

A bomb shelter in Ivan Franko Park in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv is shown March 6, 2022. City officials have reopened the brick-walled space, which closed after World War II, in reaction to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Beneath Ivan Franko Park, named after the Ukrainian poet and political activist born in the region in 1856, city officials have reopened a brick-walled bomb shelter that closed after World War II. Outside the town hall, a UNESCO World Heritage site built in Viennese classical style, the statues of four figures from mythology – Adonis, Amphitrite, Diana, and Neptune – have been swaddled in protective plastic.

Residents here credit Mr. Zelenskyy’s decision to stay in Ukraine for lowering the ambient anxiety and inspiring people to join the war effort, whether signing up for the civilian defense force or baking bread for front-line soldiers. Nazar Maidan and Zhanna Shurta, co-workers at a software firm, describe the president’s video addresses as can’t-miss viewing that provides daily doses of hope.

“He has unified us in a way that didn’t seem possible before,” says Mr. Maidan, who cast his ballot for Mr. Poroshenko three years ago. He explains that he found fault with Mr. Zelenskyy as a candidate for his celebrity status, lack of detailed policies, and the fact he grew up speaking Russian, instead of Ukrainian.

“None of that matters now,” Mr. Maidan says, standing near the wrapped figure of Amphitrite, the Greek goddess of the sea. “He has been strong for Ukraine and has gotten the whole world behind us.”

In his video messages, Mr. Zelenskyy, most often clad in a military-green T-shirt and jacket, appears weary yet spirited as he praises Ukrainian heroism, condemns Russian aggression, and beseeches the West for military intervention. The former star of “Servant of the People” melds a performer’s poise with coiled emotion and an urgent sincerity that resonates within and beyond Ukraine.

“He has become our face and voice,” says Ms. Shurta, another former Poroshenko supporter who has become a Zelenskyy booster since the war began. “People wondered before if they could really believe in him. These questions – nobody asks them anymore.”

Martin Kuz

Nazar Maidan (left) and Zhanna Shurta, co-workers at a software firm in Lviv, Ukraine, stand outside the city's town hall, March 4, 2022. They describe President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's daily video messages to the nation as daily doses of hope. "He has become our face and voice," Ms. Shurta says.

“He’s not an actor”

Mr. Zelenskyy has implored NATO leaders to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and deliver more military equipment and weapons. He has emphasized the moral starkness of their choice by detailing attacks on civilians and telling them they might never see him alive again as Russia escalates its offensive.

His reported answer to U.S. officials who offered to evacuate him from the capital of Kyiv soon after Mr. Putin sent his forces into Ukraine – “I need ammunition, not a ride” – turned into an instant internet meme. A selfie video posted Monday showed him walking through his office in Kyiv and taunting Moscow. “I’m not hiding,” he said, “and I’m not afraid of anyone.”

But before Mr. Zelenskyy shed his reputation as a faltering first-term president, he stumbled in the run-up to the invasion, some political observers contend. For three months he brushed off Western leaders’ warnings of an imminent attack as fear-mongering, even as Russia positioned 190,000 troops at Ukraine’s border.

His attempts to avert public panic, while perhaps well-intentioned, look naive in retrospect, says Olexiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. “There were a lot of novice mistakes,” he adds.

At the same time, Mr. Haran admits to no surprise at Mr. Zelenskyy’s ability to adjust to the gravity of Ukraine’s plight, finding the balance between outrage and anguish as he seeks to rally international support.

“His willingness to show his emotions – that’s why the West is so charmed by him. Ukrainians are a little more rational about how they see him,” Mr. Haran says. “But one thing that’s true for everybody is that they can see his authenticity. He’s not an actor playing a role.”

Mr. Zelenskyy’s evolution from TV comedian to moral conscience of a nation has raised fears that Ukraine might unravel in the event of his death. Mr. Glebov downplays such qualms and retains enough optimism to predict that Ukraine will prevail against Russia. In that case, he envisions Mr. Zelenskyy following through on his campaign pledges to enact economic reforms and eradicate the influence of oligarchs from political life.

On the other hand, he adds, “If Zelenskyy were to be killed, I believe Ukrainians would fight even harder to defeat Russia. Because then they would not only be fighting for Ukraine and for their freedom but also for their fallen president.”

For Yuri Yurchenko and Anastasiia Studenyak, colleagues at an IT firm in Lviv and onetime Poroshenko backers, the prospect of Mr. Zelenskyy’s demise represents the darkest scenario for Ukraine. “It would be catastrophic for us,” Mr. Yurchenko says. “He has become our rock star.”

Ms. Studenyak, who plans to transfer to a company office in the Netherlands in the coming weeks, considers Mr. Zelenskyy the one person who can prevent Russia from once again laying claim to her country. “If we lose him,” she says, “I feel we will lose Ukraine.”

Efrem Lukatsky/AP

People negotiate an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing the town of Irpin, Ukraine, March 7, 2022. Russian artillery and rocket fire stymied efforts to create humanitarian corridors out of several cities to allow civilians to flee.

The term diplomats use – “exit ramp” – sounds almost shockingly detached amid Vladimir Putin’s escalating violence against the civilian population of Ukraine.

It’s shorthand for finding a negotiated formula to stop Russian attacks, and more specifically to provide Mr. Putin with sufficient political cover to call a halt to them. And while Washington and its European allies doubt that’s possible at the moment, they haven’t given up.

But they’re facing a “Putin paradox” that makes peace more pressing, but perhaps less possible.

For there are growing signs Mr. Putin is ramping up the kind of scorched-earth assault his forces unleashed on the Chechen capital of Grozny more than two decades ago, and on Aleppo, Syria, in 2016.

On the one hand, that’s focusing Western diplomats’ minds on the need to pursue any realistic diplomatic avenue to halt the violence.

But the intensification of Russia’s assault is also apt to have another effect. Scenes of ever more terrible violence are likely to heighten horror and anger throughout the West. That will make it harder for Western leaders to pursue an agreement seen as in any way rewarding Mr. Putin for his actions.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson captured the conflicting pressures and priorities in an article for The New York Times on Sunday.

He wrote that the West should remain open to “diplomacy and de-escalation.”

French President Emmanuel Macron is in regular contact with the Russian leader, and the allies are taking an interest in Mr. Putin’s recent talks with two other leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

This doesn’t mean they’re close to an “exit ramp” plan. But they hope to get a sense, from Mr. Putin’s mindset, of whether such an option might ultimately prove possible.

But Mr. Johnson also added a caveat: “Putin’s act of aggression must fail and be seen to fail.”

Alberto Pezzali/Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (right) on Downing Street in London, March 7, 2022. The three leaders agreed to increase their military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

That’s a reminder that designing the shape of an “exit ramp” agreement, however complex, could still prove easier than securing the political conditions in which it would be possible to enact.

Fashioning such an accord would start with comparing what all sides might want, and what each might be willing to give up.

Mr. Putin’s wish list is clear: He wants to retain Crimea, annexed in 2014, and the self-styled breakaway “republics” in eastern Ukraine that he formally recognized before the invasion. He would, presumably, hope to hold on to a large chunk of whatever territory his forces held at the time any diplomatic effort began.

And he would doubtless insist on formal acceptance of the demand on which he ostensibly invaded: that Ukraine will never join NATO.

Western leaders might be able to come up with diplomatic wording to give ground on that last point. Ukraine was never likely to join NATO in the foreseeable future anyway. It’s even possible that a formula could be found to acknowledge that the Russian-backed eastern provinces are not likely to be reincorporated into Ukraine anytime soon.

A far trickier issue might be the unprecedentedly tough – and effective – sanctions that the West has imposed on Russia since the invasion. Mr. Putin wants them gone. The U.S. and its allies might consider the prospect of loosening some of them at some stage, but presumably only in coordination with proven Russian compliance with its own commitments.

It’s hard, though, to see how Western leaders could endorse Russian control over the towns and cities they’ve been attacking and terrorizing since the invasion began. And there’s one very bright red line: any acceptance of Mr. Putin’s claim that the freely elected government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is somehow illegitimate.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 6, 2022. His daily speeches are credited with sustaining his citizens' morale in the face of the Russian invasion.

That leads to the final – crucial – party to any such arrangement: Mr. Zelenskyy and, through him, the millions of Ukrainians whose livelihoods, or lives, have been lost to Russia’s onslaught.

As things now stand, the most that Ukrainians are ready – indeed eager – to explore is the prospect of cease-fire “corridors” to allow civilians who are trapped in cities under Russian bombardment to evacuate to safer areas of Ukraine.

As for Mr. Putin’s menu of territorial demands, they’ve long been anathema to Ukraine’s government, which sees them as an overt challenge to the country’s territorial integrity and independence. That conviction has only deepened since the Russian invasion.

If a serious negotiating process did get underway, Ukrainians hope that it would have been forced on Mr. Putin, if he were eventually obliged to accept that a comprehensive military victory is beyond his reach.

But officials in Kyiv know that it’s at least equally possible, amid the intensifying Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and their residents, that they might feel morally obliged to negotiate in order to avoid unbearable levels of civilian suffering.

In the ordinary course of such diplomatic processes – the kind of crisis-resolution examples batted around in university courses – such a decision would be a product of potentially delicate talks between Ukraine and its key allies, the U.S. and European states. Those allies might very well press for concessions simply to avoid a dangerous escalation.

And that kind of discussion may well happen.

In ways Mr. Putin almost certainly didn’t anticipate, however, the political environment in Europe has changed seismically since his invasion.

Ukraine is indeed less powerful than its allies. Yet in a shift epitomized by Mr. Zelenskyy’s own passion, presence, and defiance, Ukraine has become, in the eyes of the wider world, exactly what Mr. Putin insisted it was not: an indisputably proud, brave, independent nation.

So it’s Ukraine itself that’s likely to have the last say about how, when, and whether to move toward any diplomatic offramp.

As Jonathan Barnes rounded the corner of the Zulu parade route on Fat Tuesday last week, perched atop a float, he looked down at the partygoing Mardi Gras crowd. He felt a sense of peace. It was as if the world split into two, with cheering crowds and bright faces on either side. 

Ahead of their float, as he tossed beads to the surging crowd, he could hear the echo of high-stepping marching bands bouncing off the bottom of the Claiborne Bridge’s underpass ahead. 

It almost took his breath away. Joy was evident. He could see his city, his home – New Orleans. 

“That, for me, was the moment where I was like, ‘Whoa, we’re back.’ This is what it used to be like before the pandemic,” Mr. Barnes says. “You saw everybody together, you saw unity.” 

He’s still basking in that glow, much like many locals, now days removed from festivities. 

On the heels of a weekslong binge of excitement and dancing, the city’s authentic culture sheds a light that’s still felt among residents. For some, it’s a happiness that’s become unfamiliar in recent years. The city has been deeply affected by the pandemic and by major storms such as Hurricane Ida this past August.

This year marked New Orleans’ first Carnival season since 2020. Within weeks after Fat Tuesday in February of that year, the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the nation. New Orleans became an early hotspot, with Mardi Gras identified as one of the first major super-spreader events. 

New Orleans was shaken. City officials canceled Mardi Gras 2021. Decorated homes replaced the extravagance of parade floats. The brazen sounds of the city’s brass bands were muted.  

It was a seismic shift for the city, and the first time Carnival had been canceled or reduced in scope in New Orleans since a police strike forced the celebration’s organizers to do so in 1979. 

Today it feels like life has been breathed back into the city.

“Mardi Gras 2022 is going to be that symbol of when people look back and say it was a defining moment, where we got back as normal as possible,” Mr. Barnes says. “I just felt that spirit.” 

Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate/AP

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club rolls through downtown for Mardi Gras in New Orleans on March 1, 2022. Jonathan Barnes, who was among those participating in the parades, says it was a "We’re back" moment for the city. "You saw everybody together," he says. "You saw unity."

Mardi Gras is the annual focal point of a tourism-backed economy. New Orleans boasts a roughly $10 billion hospitality industry. As the industry tottered in 2020, the city saw its general fund drop from $659 million to $583 million, forcing the city to furlough employees and cut contracts. 

Without Mardi Gras and the host of festivals that follow it in spring, like Jazz Fest, the city’s marginalized communities take the hardest hit. 

A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 41% of Black-owned businesses nationwide were forced to close during the early days of the pandemic. Only 17% of white-owned businesses felt the same impact. (In New Orleans, a Black majority accounts for nearly 60% of its population.) 

But Mardi Gras is more than just a draw for tourism. What the celebration means to the city has no sum of value, and its history and tradition have been ingrained into the city itself. Fat Tuesday, Carnival’s finale and a last chance to eat rich foods before the Lenten season, has been a state holiday since the Mardi Gras Act was signed into law in 1875. 

For Nikki Ummel, a local poet and educator, there was a moment after Hurricane Ida hit the city last year when she wondered how much longer she could be in New Orleans. 

The fifth-most-powerful storm to hit the U.S. mainland in recorded history, Ida had scattered power lines and shingles like dandelion seeds in a gust of wind. For weeks, where there should have been hope ahead, the stench of uncollected trash hung over city neighborhoods. 

“But this Carnival season, this Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, it was a reminder that we still are what makes the city amazing,” Ms. Ummel says of Carnival 2022. “The heart of the city is still there.” 

She’s noticed similar feelings resonate in the people around her. 

“Over the past couple of weeks, I saw a light come on – in my friends, in my neighborhood,” Ms. Ummel says. “Everyone has hope again.”

Gerald Herbert/AP

Paradegoers reach out their hands for gifts from the members of the Krewe of Zulu during Mardi Gras on March 1, 2022, in New Orleans. The festivities came after two difficult pandemic years, with 2021 including a canceled Mardi Gras and the heavy winds and floods of Hurricane Ida.

Devin De Wulf, a local folk artist and the founder of the Krewe of Red Beans, feels refreshed by the return to normal, even if he had never forgotten what makes New Orleans special to start. 

“People are thankful to have it back,” Mr. De Wulf says. “to have the culture back.” 

New Orleans was prepared for this moment – not just with a longing for deep belly laughs together in the streets, but with a parallel determination to battle the pandemic. (Roughly 85% of the city’s adult residents are fully vaccinated.)

The tourists who flocked to New Orleans – in some years briefly doubling the city’s population – have gone home. Lent is underway with its blend of repentance (for the faithful) and cheap fried fish plates.

And if the city is rejuvenated, hard work remains, says Mr. De Wulf, who founded the nonprofit Feed the Second Line, which has aided the city’s culture bearers throughout the pandemic.

“It’s been a tough couple of years,” he says. “Now the joy part is back, and we just need to be appreciative of it and we need to work to make things as good as they can be.” 

That joy is still buzzing in Mr. Barnes’ heart. Part of him hasn’t stopped throwing beads at the Zulu parade. He can still see the sun reflecting off smiles in the crowd as they chant for beads. 

It was “a gumbo pot of so many characters,” Mr. Barnes says. “This is the life I’ve missed since the pandemic. This is incredible. We’re back, we’re back, we’re back, we’re back, we’re back.”

Courtesy of Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, Johannesburg

Dr. Eddie Mhlanga, who died Feb. 5, 2022, walked a middle road between faith and reproductive choice. He often reassured others struggling to reconcile their faith with a desire to help women, and led with an ethos of compassion.

In October 1996, as South Africa’s National Assembly found itself embroiled in bitter debate over a bill to legalize abortion, a soft-spoken doctor from the country’s Department of Health stood up to speak.

“I am a born-again Christian, amen,” began Dr. Eddie Mhlanga, the department’s director of maternal health. And then he began to tell a conversion story of another kind.

As a young doctor in the early 1980s, he explained, he had operated on a colleague following a botched informal abortion. Then, he said, he asked for help.

“Every day I was at her bedside praying that God would have mercy on her,” he explained to the members of Parliament, who had gathered to consider whether South Africa should roll back an apartheid-era law that had made abortion almost entirely illegal in the country.

Two weeks later, Dr. Mhlanga’s colleague died, one of around 400 women that year to die after informal abortions. “It was my road to Damascus,” he later wrote.

The grief from watching a colleague die in such a way propelled Dr. Mhlanga to become a key advocate for the bill that would become South Africa’s Choice on Termination of Pregnancy law.

Today, it’s one of Africa’s most comprehensive abortion laws, and an international model, but high rates of deaths from unsafe abortions persist because of stigma and a lack of access.

Dr. Mhlanga, who died Feb. 5, spent the rest of his life trying to hold his country to the promise it made that summer to a nation of women whose choices about their bodies were often policed and criminalized. In a country where, like in the United States, faith and reproductive choice are often seen as opposing corners, he walked a middle road, and did what he could to bring others along with him.

“He saw his practice of medicine as an act of love and devotion – his patients felt it and his students learnt it,” Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, a doctor and abortion-rights activist who studied under Dr. Mhlanga, wrote in a tribute to his life.

“Professor Mhlanga did the work of caring for the most marginalized – adolescents, women, sex workers and those seeking abortion – because of his faith.” 

The defiance of becoming a Black doctor

Roland Edgar Mhlanga was born in 1953 in Acornhoek, a town in what is now the Mpumalanga province of northeastern South Africa. His father worked as a gardener at a local hospital, which became his introduction to the medical field. 

But to become a doctor in apartheid South Africa as a Black man wasn’t just a career choice. It was also an act of political defiance. The country had one medical school for “nonwhites,” at the University of Natal, which, by the time Dr. Mhlanga arrived there in the early 1970s, had become a hotbed for anti-apartheid activism.

Then, in 1976, the apartheid administration passed a law prohibiting abortion in almost every instance. The government saw a “moral crisis” for the country if white women didn’t continue to give birth to enough white babies, Susanne Klausen, a historian of abortion under apartheid, told the Monitor in 2018.

For Dr. Mhlanga, who described his background as “conservative and religious,” the law was a good one. As a medical student, he remembered hearing about a Black woman who died from an illegal abortion after she was impregnated by a white man and thinking, “It serves her right.” But when he began to work as a doctor and saw the toll of unsafe abortions on Black South African communities, which suffered the most under the former legislation, his views began to shift. 

“I didn’t want to be a gynecologist, but when I saw the many women and children who were dying, I said, ‘Lord, if you placed me here to see this tragedy, I guess you are sending me,’” he later recalled. 

When apartheid finally toppled in the early 1990s, Dr. Mhlanga took a post in the new country’s Department of Health, where he joined forces with activists interested in liberalizing the country’s abortion law.  

“We had just achieved the biggest miracle – we had gotten our democracy, and in that space, nothing felt impossible,” recalls Daphney Conco, an academic and activist for reproductive health in South Africa. 

“So we said, everything that does not work for Black women, for Black people, it has to be left behind,” she says.

It was with that energy that Dr. Mhlanga approached the parliamentary committee meeting that day in October 1996. “I saw women dying every day” in pregnancy and childbirth, he testified, speaking of his experiences working as a doctor in the 1980s. 

Outraged by his testimony, an MP for the National Party, which had been the ruling party under apartheid, stormed out. After several days of fraught debate, the bill passed, granting South African women the right to abortion on demand in the first trimester, and in many cases during the second as well.

Over the next five years, deaths from pregnancy terminations in South Africa fell by 90%.

“Eddie was an absolutely fearless leader in that space,” recalls Yogan Pillay, his former colleague at the Department of Health. 

Activism with reassurance

Throughout his career – which spanned work in government, academia, and international abortion activism – Dr. Mhlanga used his own story to reach across the divide. He frequently spoke at conferences on how, for him, abortion and faith were not opposing sides of a coin, recalls Marion Stevens, a South African health activist and a longtime friend and colleague of Dr. Mhlanga’s. He didn’t frame it as a conflict, she says, but rather “just affirmed that this is not contested, and not an issue for him.”

In a speech at a 2019 conference, he recalled admitting a young refugee woman into hospital after she miscarried. The nurses and doctors caring for her were whispering: Why had she gotten pregnant to begin with? She must have aborted the baby herself. This was no accident. 

“I went and sat by her bedside and I put my arm around her shoulder and said, ‘How are you doing, my dear?’” Dr. Mhlanga recalled. The woman began to cry. No one had asked her what had happened, she said. “I wanted this pregnancy so much.”

In a society that was often deeply polarized, Dr. Mhlanga reassured others struggling to reconcile their faith with a desire to help women. He led with an ethos of compassion, recalls his student, Dr. Mofokeng, who was herself inspired to become an abortion provider. “No one chooses to be in a difficult situation, but we are chosen to be in that space to provide the necessary care,” she remembered him telling her. 

At a conference she attended with him last year, she recalled that “he spent a lot of time barefoot. He said he wanted to feel the earth.” 

But until his death, Dr. Mhlanga was also deeply haunted by the law’s failed promises. In 2019, the Department of Health estimated that at least 50% of abortions in the country were still informal and unsafe. Many doctors and nurses in South Africa still refuse on moral grounds to provide the procedure, despite a mandate to do so. And women frequently report being humiliated and shamed for requesting terminations. 

Many times throughout his life, his colleagues had asked, “How can you support abortion when you are a Christian?” Dr. Mhlanga recalled in a speech in 2019. “But I found that in the end, it is all about love. When I look at you ... I see the image of God in you. I know I’m not perfect. Therefore I cannot judge anyone, but only serve and show love.”

Karen Norris/Staff

I come from a family of excellent cooks, one of whom was my father. Our German heritage influenced the flavors of their creations, starting with my dad. He favored aromatic bay leaves, an abundance of garlic, Kitchen Bouquet sauce, and Lawry’s seasoned salt in his roast beef. Mom always sliced in fresh onions, celery, carrots, and potatoes to round out the meal.

We lived on a Kansas farm and raised beef cattle. We had generous roasts to feed our family of 11. Mom made sure to cook enough meat to make a big pot of leftover soup the next day.

Homegrown tomatoes, green beans, and corn – in addition to the vegetables cooked with the original roast – filled a large graniteware pot. A low flame kept the soup simmering all day. Mouthwatering steam filled the kitchen with a promise of a magnificent supper. My job was to keep a watchful eye on the soup and stir it often. 

We received large quantities of government-supplied commodity foods at my elementary school in the 1950s, including blocks of yellow cheese. Our cooks found inventive ways to use them up.

Our lunchtime vegetable beef soup, for example, was topped with a generous slice of cheese. I liked the combination and always topped off my soup with a piece of cheddar cheese when I served it to my family.

One of my cooking instructors in college said, “Recipes are only a jumping-off place. You should add your personal touches to the dishes you create.” That helps explain the evolution of my recipe for vegetable beef soup.

I married into a Southern family, and fresh sliced okra soon found its way into the soup. Then a TV cooking show encouraged me to add Worcestershire sauce to beef dishes. So I did. When we moved to Missouri, a new neighbor stopped by to see if I had any cabbage she could use to finish making supper.

“Vegetable beef soup just isn’t right without it,” she said. Once I tried it, I knew what she meant. My soup grew ever larger, and so did my soup pot.

Years later, I was manager of a small institutional kitchen. My lead cook’s vegetable beef soup had a slightly different taste. The tomatoes weren’t as strong.

“I always toss in a couple of heaping teaspoons of sugar – brown sugar if I have it,” she explained. “It mellows the acid in the tomatoes.” I’ve mellowed mine this way ever since.

A college friend lived in Spain when we lived in Germany for a few years, and she and her family came for a visit. We were cooking dinner together, my soup of course, when she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of soy sauce.

“I never thought about putting this in vegetable beef soup until I moved to Spain,” she said. “They put it in their meat dishes. It enhances the flavor.”

She sprinkled some in, and I knew I had an addition to my list of ingredients.

And that’s how the character of my soup has evolved. It reflects a chronology of friends, experiences, and places in my life. Each time I make it, I relive the memory of each ingredient, and how I was inspired to grow my soup. 

Vegetable beef soup recipe

Yield: about 4 quarts 

Ingredients: 

2 cups shredded, cooked pot roast (or more
if desired)

Two (14 ½ ounces) cans of tomatoes, with juice [our tester used peeled, whole plum tomatoes] 

3 tablespoons beef bouillon

1 can (14 ½ ounces) of green beans, drained

1 ½ cups coarsely chopped cabbage

1 large onion, chopped

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup frozen corn

1 ½ cup sliced carrots

2 medium potatoes, chopped

2 cups frozen or fresh okra, sliced 

3 medium bay leaves

1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 teaspoons Lawry’s seasoned salt

1 tablespoon Kitchen Bouquet browning and seasoning sauce [our tester substituted 1 tablespoon Crock-Pot hearty beef stew seasoning mix] 

8 cups water or more, depending on consistency desired

Additional cut-up or leftover vegetables to taste

Slices of cheddar cheese, for topping

Instructions

1. Put all the ingredients except the cheese
in a large (4 quarts or larger) stockpot.

2. Simmer for 3 hours or until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. You can also put it in a slow cooker for 8 hours on the low setting. 

3. Remove bay leaves. Serve soup piping hot with a thick slice of cheddar cheese on top. This soup freezes well.

Claire Nevill/World Food Programme/Handout via REUTERS

People carry relief grains at a camp for displaced people in the Somali region, Ethiopia.

Throughout the civil war in Ethiopia, now in its 17th month, consistent and accurate assessments of the fighting and its humanitarian impact have been frustratingly hard to come by. The government has maintained a blockade on the northern ethnic state of Tigray to isolate and hem in a rebel force. The warring sides have laid out irreconcilable conditions for peace talks.

International groups hailed a lull in fighting three months ago after the government repelled the Tigrayan advance on Addis Ababa, the capital, and declared victory. Observers hoped a window had opened for peace. But fighting continues. The government, supplied with drones from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, seems intent on using the battlefield to pursue its conditions for peace.

This week the international community launched a different approach. The United Nations Human Rights Council deployed a team to investigate potential war crimes committed by both sides. That project is based on a view that truth, reconciliation, and inclusiveness are prerequisites for enduring peace.

Its success may also depend on drawing on a deep reservoir of strength: women.

Two of the three U.N. team leaders are African women. Within Ethiopia, women hold 50% of the seats in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, including the ministries of Defense, Finance, and Peace. For the first time a woman is president, a largely ceremonial post.

That gender parity in government is building greater expectations within civil society. Last month lawmakers formally approved a new National Dialogue Commission to promote unity among the country’s rival political and ethnic groups. Culled from a list of 632 potential members, the 11-person panel includes only three women. Ethiopian women’s groups are demanding more seats.

“Women suffer the negative consequences of the absence of national consensus,” wrote Endegena Ashenafi and Elizabeth Ashamu Deng, two Ethiopia-based Oxfam officials, in an essay for African Arguments news site. “Their voices and leadership should contribute equally to addressing the root causes of crises in Ethiopia.”

As a result of the war, 5.2 million people in Tigray need emergency assistance, 2 million people in the state have been displaced, and more than 100,000 children are at risk of dying from malnutrition, according to a running tally by the Council on Foreign Relations. Since November, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said Monday, airstrikes have killed 304 and wounded 373 civilians in Tigray. Her office also received 304 claims of rape against Tigrayan forces in states bordering Tigray.

Successful peace processes in other countries emerging from civil and guerrilla warfare underscore the importance of restitution for those caught in harm’s way. “Peace must be fair, acknowledged, and accepted by victims and society in general,” Sergio Jaramillo, Colombia’s then-High Commissioner for Peace, told a conference of the International Center for Transformational Justice in 2015. “Peace must be transformative. It must break the cycles of violence and end the cycle of historic revenge.”

Kaari Betty Murungi, a Harvard Law School-educated human rights lawyer from Kenya and one of the leaders of the U.N. war crimes investigating team in Ethiopia, notes that rebuilding societies after conflict requires acknowledging the specific crimes that women and children face during war. That point underscores the unique insight that women can bring to a healing national dialogue in Ethiopia.

“Justice means different things to different people,” she said in a 2018 interview with the Wayamo Foundation in Kenya. “There is retributive justice. But there is also reparatory justice.”

The shape of peace need not await the outcome of war. In Ethiopia, an insistence on inclusivity and restorative justice is already taking root.