Yityish Aynaw: First black Miss Israel will go to the ball

It's been an astonishing three weeks for Yityish Aynaw, an immigrant orphan from Ethiopia, who became the first black Miss Israel last month, and has now been invited to Thursday's gala dinner with visiting US President Barack Obama.

When Yityish Aynaw arrived in Israel as a 12-year-old, winning beauty contests and dining with presidents was as far from her thoughts as her native Ethiopia is from her adopted land.
Her mother had just died, leaving her an orphan - her father had died years earlier. So her mother's parents, who were among thousands of Ethiopian Jews already living in Israel, arrived in Addis Ababa to fetch Yityish and her older brother.
In their new home, they had to learn Hebrew from scratch.
"It wasn't easy because I couldn't speak the language and I was put into a regular class without any help," Aynaw, is now 21.

Yityish Aynaw was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme Newshour

"It was a new language. It was a new culture. Quite often children even laughed at me," she says, though she adds that she also met many kind people.

But Aynaw was determined to succeed in her adopted country.