After attending the Sandford English School Ellene won a scholarship to study nursing at the American University of Beirut, but was dropped from the course after impusively mis-prescribing.
She supplemented the station's collection with a collection of her own 78 rpm records, including work by Negatwa Kelkye and her husband Ferede Golla, Etagennho Haile, Bafana Gobaze, Bogalech Yimer, Abebech Azene, Beyene Omardin, and Mesganaw Adugna.
[2] In the early 1970s she left TV to become coordinator of vocational schools run by the Young Women's Christian Association.
She later recalled the political pressures from the ministry of information: "The first thing we had to do was to heap insults on the previous government and glorify communism.
[1] Married to her teenage boyfriend, engineer Seyfu Lemma, for over 50 years, she had four girls (one adopted) and seven grandchildren.