Micah And The Unvarnished Take

Today, Micah (11) has offered to write a bit about learning and teaching language.  Here he is, in his own words:

So, I’m going to write about learning Tigrinya but teaching English. Let’s start with teaching. My dad, (Mark), Daniel, and I help with English for grades 4-6 every day for about 1 hour. The kids have been learning I am, you are, he is, etc. But the thing is that the classes change every week so you have different students each week. One class is good at English, but wild, and the other class is not so good and a lot calmer than the other class. So, it doesn’t really work out. But anyways, after about 2 weeks of kids trying their best, most kids finally got the conjugation right. So, now we are conjugating I am doing, you are doing, he is doing, etc. The way we practice is by calling kids up and asking questions such as, “What are you doing”, and they’ll answer by saying, “I am sitting down”, or “I am learning English”. 

All of dad's students really love tests; this girl stayed late today so she could take the test one day early.  Her friends really wanted to help her.

Now the fighting. Or more accurately goofing off. Kids are constantly talking and standing up. A few times my dad has had to be tough with kids for talking or fighting. But my dad has a co-teacher who works there, speaks great English, and obviously perfect Tigrinya. He’s very strict and doesn’t really take goofing off and/or fighting. But he leaves every 5 minutes for about 5 minutes. So the second he leaves kids stand up and start talking. And then the second they see the door handle turn, they rush back to their seats, and it becomes noticeably quieter.

There have only been a couple of times when kids have actually gotten into real fights. Apparently once when I stayed home to do work two girls started fighting and my dad pulled them apart but one girl reached across him to hit the other girl. So my dad had to send her out of the class. Another time on one of the first days a couple of boys started tackling each other onto the floor. And just yesterday when I stayed home, devotions, which are supposed to be from 1:30 to 2:00, ended at 1:45, so some third graders kept coming into the class and my dad tried to send them out but they wouldn’t listen. So some kids from our class took it upon themselves that they should hit them, and one kid in our class apparently spit in a third grader’s face.

But kids just wrestle for fun most of the time and aren’t actually angry. But all in all, I think that teaching is going well.

Many times the younger students like to walk home with us

Now let’s talk about learning Tigrinya. It’s definitely harder than teaching. Mom is doing ok because she speaks nearly fluent Amharic, and has heard Tigrinya her whole life. Most of the time we’ve been conjugating verbs that we need all the time but can never say, because we don’t know them. During the first few days we just learned simple phrases like, “Where are you from?, What type of food to you like?, and Where do you live?” We also conjugated I am, (Ane eye), you are, (Nikes icha), etc. Recently we’ve been learning about different emotions, like to be happy to be sad, to be angry, etc. We conjugated all of them for don’t be. But we rarely get to speak Tigrinya (minus my mom, obviously) outside of our classes. But we’re definitely getting better. We’ve found out the pattern for conjugating verbs, so, for the most part that’s easy.

Here are some of Daniel and Eli’s Tigrinya funny phrases. 

Daniel’s:  

“Intai diyom????” (What are those????)

 “Kabey metsika, nabey heideka?” (Where did you come from, were did you go?)

 “Kulu gizay Tony Romo godeu eyu” (Tony Romo is always injured)

 Eli’s: 

 “Hasib Mcfly, Hasib!” (Think Mcfly, think!) 

Anyways, we’re doing alright in Tigrinya. But we have a teacher who you can never really expect when to come. The first day he was 1 hour and a half early but wasn’t even knocking on our gate and was standing in the grass across our compound. So some days he’ll come 1 hour early and other days he’ll come 1 hour late. But one day when he came when we were eating breakfast and we finally told him to come at 10:00. So he came on time the next day, but the day after that came at 9:30. We told him again to come on time. So for about a week he did, but one day he came at 8:50 and my mom said that we weren’t ready and to come back later. But 15 minutes later he knocked on our gate. My dad said he was still 50 minutes early but it was ok. Then he got a confused look on his face and turned on his phone and said he thought it was 10:00. Sure enough his phone said 10:05. It turns out that his phone was an hour ahead and that he woke up and thought it was 9:30 and rushed out to get a taxi. When he got here he thought my mom was getting on his case for coming 10 minutes early. But we are definitely improving. 

Mom gets some peace and quiet on her bed

Now to my mom’s soap opera. Hazal’s aunt saw her walking and then Ozan, (her biological brother) pulled a gun on Gulsarin, (Hazal’s sort of mother). Well, that’s enough for this Thursday. Thanks for reading.

Operation Rescue Ethiopia

Hi all!  And thank you, everyone, for your sweet and thoughtful comments on Daniel's blog entry last week.  Your support and interest in our lives has really made this weekly reflection meaningful for us.

Today, I'd like to write a little bit about Operation Rescue Ethiopia (ORE), where our family is volunteering. It's kind of like a Boys and Girls club for the very poor of Mekele - almost like an all-ages before and after school program.  Rather than delve into the history of this organization here, let me just provide a link to their website and allow you to peruse it at your leisure.

http://operationrescue.ch/wer-wir-sind/founders-and-history/?lang=en 

Mark and I teach English classes every day, from 2-3 pm, and then play with the kids for another 2 hours or so.  By some stroke of luck, I was assigned to teach older kids and Mark was assigned to the younger set.  There's a lot more drama in his class than in mine; he often has to pull kids apart.  I'm sure it's both frustrating and a relief not to speak Tigrinya well in those cases; he knows enough to say "Stop it!" but not enough to get into who started it and why.  Daniel and Micah are in the class with him every other day, on their afternoons off from home school.  Eli helps out in my class and I have mainly reminded my students not to learn English from Hip Hop and gotten them to practice saying "the" and not "ze".  I'm just kidding, I do a little more than that, but being a bio teacher has not prepared me for teaching English.  That's for sure.

But I really wanted to tell you about a visit I was able to make to an ORE family after a friend of mine donated some clothes and toys a few weeks ago.  As she drove away, she said, "I'm not sure if anyone can use them, but if they can't, just get rid of 'em."  I forgot all about those donations until Heywota - the head of the kitchen and all around mother of the place, and Birho - the nurse/social worker at ORE pulled me aside and told me about a family that had lost the mother to brain cancer 7 months ago.  Heywota asked me to come by and take some pictures for my friend so she could see how useful her donation was.  When I came to take the pictures, the two youngest girls in the family had just taken a shower at the center and Heywota was fixing a ribbon in the older one's hair.
Their father is a daily worker which means sometimes he finds work and other times he doesn't.  Their primary caretaker is their sister, a lovely young girl of ten.  A more mature ten year old you have never seen.

Heywota had explained that the little toddler was still not potty trained and was always in soiled clothes.  Any mother knows that when a toddler is getting potty trained, having clean clothes handy is crucial.  But what if there's no mother?  What if the closest thing you have is a ten-year old sister who doesn't know how to wash clothes well, and who might not have access to nearly enough running water, and who needs to go to school and somehow get dinner on for everyone in the house, while taking care of you?  Birho had visited the family and saw that the two little ones were eating a stew that looked like it might have been sitting out for days.  She and Heywota knew that such young ones were not usually admitted to ORE, but took it upon themselves to get special dispensation for them. 

As if to ensure that I understood the situation, Birho suggested that I pay a visit to the family home with her, which I did.  We took the route the ten year old sister takes with her tiny siblings to and from ORE every day when she drops them off and picks them up.  It was at least a twenty minute walk that took us across two major roads.  The family lives in a small compound that they share with a few other families.  The six of them (dad, oldest brother, another brother, the ten year old sister and the two little ones) share one room of that compound.  In the room is one large bed with a couple of mattresses rolled up underneath it, a china cabinet, several large barrels for water storage, a small bench, and a little tv.  It was clean, because our young hostess had stayed up late the night before, cleaning it for our visit.

Birho dispenses wisdom.

It was so great to meet this family. And please don't think I'm romanticizing childhood when I say this, but I know that children are extremely resilient.  Seeing these kids live their lives as little adults is not an easy thing, but I get the sense from looking around at the success stories at ORE that they'll make it.  When I asked Heywota and Birho (separately) how these kids would survive, they both looked at me and said without any grandstanding that they'd had it worse as kids.  That's hard to believe, but they both stressed that that's why they wanted me to see with my own eyes what drives them to do the work they do, and what should be in the back of my mind every time I or anyone else thinks that a donation of clothes or toys might be useless.  Behind our little ten-year old hostess is a pink plastic bag of goodies that my friend donated.  No way would we ever have gotten rid of that bag.

Okay, I'm sorry.  I can't help myself.  But I did mention that this family had a small TV, right?  Well, guess what was playing when we came in?  You guessed it; Shinkur Libotch.  My favorite soap opera.  Before you cast judgement on me for bringing this up at this moment, consider this; I had a full-on conversation with those two kids about the awfulness of Hazal.  We bonded over this common feeling, and I think we got to know each other a little bit better because of it.  They also confirmed my feeling that her grandfather, Ato Rahmi is (in my broken Tigrinia) good in heart, but bad in head.

In all seriousness, thank goodness for ORE, and for the staff of ORE who never restrict themselves to one role, ever.  It's a privilege to work alongside them, I tell you.

Speaking of not restricting themselves to one role; the gardener/handy-man, guard, and one of the social workers at ORE invited us and the departing Swiss volunteers to witness the slaughtering of a cow.  This is an annual tradition in which the Swiss missionaries buy a cow, watch it get slaughtered, and reluctantly eat it the next day. I feel the picture of the boys with the unsuspecting cow in the background tells you everything you need to know about how they felt about it.  For my part, I can now say been there, done that.  I don't intend to ever watch that happen again, thank you.

So dear friends, it's late, and I feel very tired.  But a reader asked how to help support ORE.  Well, hopefully reading this has made you think about the children's clothes you have that you're about to get rid of.  Maybe you want to drive it over to my house in Silver Spring, MD before December 15 so that my dad can pack it up and bring it out here with him when he comes for a visit.  If this is something that interests you, please let me know and I'll get you the address and more specific info.  Soon, we will also let you know how you can sponsor a child, if you like.  But for now, if you're praying for us, we thank you.  If you're thinking of us, we thank you for that, too.  

If you're not thinking of us then you wouldn't ever be reading this.  I think it's time to go to bed.

PS....I know I already brought this up, but what the heck.  Hazal's evil knows no bounds.  She is pretending to be paralyzed so that everyone will take care of her.  But we all saw her toe tapping and it's just a matter of time before someone else sees it too and throws her into the Bosphorus once and for all.

Visitor Number 2 and Daniel's thoughts on the first two months

So it has been a while since our quiz, and now the number of people interested in this has jumped from five to a whopping ten, leaving thirty or forty people who come just to look for the pictures (I’m just kidding. Or am I?) 

I’m typing this on Mom’s MacBook Air, looking at a backdrop of a picture of us shortly after arriving at the Addis Ababa airport. I can’t help but think about how that was now two entire months ago, and about how fast time has flown by. In these last two months, we have

Found a house and settled into it;

Welcomed our wonderful maid, Azeb, and her incredible cooking skills, into our home;

Hosted two overnight visitors, Aunt Tasha and Uncle Moges + Gabriel (more on that later);

Come up with an organized way to make sure that we make the most of our water when we have it, something you don’t have to worry about in the United States;

Cared for our first ever dog, Teddy Afro (that’s at least what I call him. Look up the name);

Gone on a spectacular trip including hiking to centuries old churches in the Gheralta Mountains, visiting the historic religious city of Axum, and seeing the village where some of our ancestors came from;

And finally, we have forged a connection like no other with the kids at Operation Rescue, the local center where we spend hours each weekday volunteering. 

Uncle Moges and our cousin, Gabriel, came arrived here last Friday (October 6th), and Gabriel was a pleasant addition. We were not aware that he would be joining us, and their visit made us all very happy. We took them to Operation Rescue, where the kids greatly admired Uncle Moges’ drawing skills, and then had dinner at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant, Geza Gerelasse. On Saturday the 7th, we visited the tall monument near our place that commemorates the struggle to liberate Ethiopia from the communist Derg regime of the 1970s and 1980s. Seeing all the black and white pictures of the people who fought to free the country during those years reminded me about how this dark era of Ethiopian history is a part of me, whether I like it or not. In the mid-1970s, when my mom was a little girl, her family was forced to flee to Kenya after it became clear that they could no longer live there safely. It was there where she met my dad when they were in high school, and if my mom hadn’t left for Kenya, well then I might not be sitting here today. 

Us with the guests at our
house

Uncle Moges at
Operation Rescue

Gabriel and Uncle Moges had a great time here, and getting to show guests around our city makes us feel more at home here. They had a great time here, and we had a great time with them. 

I just cannot believe that it has been such a long time since that chilly, dreary morning in the grim city of Addis Ababa. Take a look at the picture. All of us (except Micah, it seems) had no idea of what to expect here. We were fresh off of a thirteen hour flight from the United States, where we felt like we belonged, where we felt secure. Here, there is no doubt that life is difficult, and we have experienced that firsthand. Being a foreigner in a foreign country is the biggest obstacle I have ever encountered in my life, and I now have at least a tiny idea of what new immigrants face upon entering a completely strange country. From the Mayflower to the most recent flight into Dulles Airport, they all faced the same struggle: the struggle of how to fit in; of how to adjust to a new life. Living in the U.S. for my whole life, I had never known what it was like to face changing circumstances. Everything was the same every day and we were able to stick to a routine free of interruption. 

August 14th at the airport in Addis

Let’s go back to the picture. I was not ready for the stares, the yells, the power outages, the internet connection withdrawal, the water rationing, and much more. But now, through two months of adjusting, I have developed thicker skin, and I am feeling much more at home here. I’ve come to ignore the comments of street people; I’ve learned how to live without using the internet EVERY SINGLE DAY; and I’ve learned that for every rude person here, there are nine people who either are nice to you or could care less about you. I still can’t say that I “like” Mekele, but I can say that the dark days of those first few weeks are now behind me. After all, in less than a month, we’ll be jetting off to Kenya and Southeast Asia for six weeks. I have that to look forward to. 

-Daniel W.

P.S.: I will not be updating you on Mom's soap opera. It is a disgrace to our television set.

Rules? Who needs them?

My friends, it's good to be with you again.  We were heartened to know that some of you read this blog occasionally, and we know who you are because you took last week's quiz. And some of you even got most of the questions right!  Well done!  Let's not forget that there might be many thousands who read the blog but chose not to take the quiz.  Good to be with you, too.  The scores are posted on facebook.  How did we score the quizzes?  Well, since we moved to Mekele, we have become more and more accustomed to the ways of this city.  That is to say, we didn't use any particular rules in scoring because in general, rules shouldn't apply.  And our readers agree, because many of them discarded the usual rules of quiz-taking.  So if you don't like your placement, think of yourself as heroic for occupying a no-rules zone.  (disclaimer, don't apply this thinking to your jobs, schooling, or any other serious endeavor).

Speaking of rules, take a look at this picture:

We took this picture on the night when Meskel was celebrated.  Meskel means cross, and is the celebration that commemorates the discovery of the true cross.  As a celebration, it is a hybrid of extremes; intensely solemn and unbelievably wild.  In Mekele, all the folks who are serious about Meskel climb up a little mountain called Chom'a Mountain.  When the sun sets, two rows of priests stand facing each other and sing songs of worship and praise.  A slow and steady drumbeat marks time.  Thousands of people bow their heads and sway, praying. 

The moment the priests have finished, a mound of hay topped with a straw cross is set alight.  The image is startling if you come from the States.  But those priests are barely out of sight before the band on the stage strikes up a celebratory song and the people of Mekele absolutely go bananas.  Some tips for you if you ever visit during this time: People have carried bundles of wood to the mountaintop, and they set these on fire.  And then they generously share this fire with all the people around them, and with your Columbia jacket, too, if you happen to be standing near them.  Then they place their torches on the ground to form bridges that you must jump over while covering your nose and mouth and trying not to black out from the smoke.  You should also find enough air in your lungs to chant "Hoya Hoye, Ho!" as you jump.  When you jump, you should also make sure that you don't worry about the dry clumps of grass that are smoldering all around you, the boulders you might land on, or your child who has gone missing among the masses. 

You might be tempted to feel relieved that the jumps are over.  Don't.  You got to the top of the mountain, you're going to have to get down, as well.  You'll share this journey with approximately one million torch-carrying, testosterone-fueled young men who want nothing more than to reach the bottom of the mountain with their torch still aflame.  This means that they will break the human chain you've formed, and they will leap over you, crawl under you, and try to go through you to achieve that goal.  I took a video as we were going down - Micah's worried face turned to face the camera a couple of times - but you can hear the men chanting all the way down the mountain as they ran down the rocky road, torches held high, not a care in the world.  One chant actually made me laugh.  It went like this, "Beep Beep!  Beep Beep!" Women with children and old people were shoved out of the way.  Dropped torches lay in the dry grass.  I hit Mark's shoulders a couple of times to put out embers.  It was pure insanity, and it was absolutely thrilling.

The fire marshal would not have permitted this at all.  Luckily, there was no such thing.  But not one old person was knocked to the ground, not one mother was separated from her kid, and the mountain did not burn to cinders.  How can this be when no one was following any rational safety rules whatsoever?  I don't know!  I just don't know!  I only pray and hope that those gentle priests at the top were spared the insanity and that they looked down at the winding trail of firelight as the masses descended and thought, "We men of God will wait it out." 

Not the Woodwards.  But the good news is that in that dark chaos, the firelight that illuminated our group's faces was always fleeting.  There was only one "ferenji" comment, and it was quite funny.  A guy behind me saw the boys and said in Amharic, "There's a white kind of thing in front of me."  And then he was gone, literally in a flash.

In keeping with the rules theme of this posting, I thought I'd just mention a couple of other Mekelitems (hey, I just coined that term.  Trademark!) observed over the course of the week.  The first concerns the very early morning when Mark woke up to the sound of what he thought was construction.  There was a steady banging beginning at about 4 am, and I thought it was road work or some other poorly timed construction project, as well.  Mark couldn't get back to sleep and when the sun rose, he went to the top floor of our house to discover that he'd been listening to the sound of an axe hacking away at bone. Evidently there might be some rules about where you can slaughter a whole cow, and it could be that our neighbor was skirting those rules by doing it in the dead of night.  But what a sight:

The men have loaded the truck.  They wait for one last piece from the guy with the axe (in the orange shirt)

By six am, the crew that was likely hired for the job had butchered the cow, placed it in the back of a truck and were preparing to drive it to a place that would turn it into delicious wat (stew) for a wedding meal. Did our awesome neighbors give us a little meat?  Of course.  Rules, who needs them?

And on the other side of our house, our other neighbor has almost finished the massive construction job on his house.  I've been amazed at how large buildings can be constructed using only the flimsiest scaffolding.  I've also been amazed at how sure-footed the workers are.  This man's approach to safety would not be acceptable by Montgomery County, Maryland standards.  I think there are more stringent rules one generally follows when painting the third story exterior of a house. He's none the worse for wear, and the building is now complete.  But man.

The last thing I want to talk briefly about is how well things are going at Operation Rescue.  Mark and I, assisted by the boys, have been asked to teach English classes.  During the meeting when the teaching schedule was being discussed, I heard the comments of the staff regarding the behavior of the children in class.  I'm telling you, their words could have been lifted from a transcript of any US public school staff meeting.  Students are the same everywhere, ya'll!  That is to say, they're not particularly fond of rules.  We're still trying to figure out how hard we're prepared to crack down in our classrooms.  In the first place, we are not teaching in a traditional school.  In the second, we're becoming Mekelites, man! You can't stop the Dude-ization of the Woodward crew!  Okay that's not true at all.  You can stop it easily.

But I guess there's always a time and place for rule-breaking.  Never, in a million years did I ever think I'd write such scandalous words.  But in all seriousness, this place has loosened us up.  It's made us appreciate that the world is not such a dangerous place, that the risks we used to think of as out of the question aren't always risks, but just a way of life.

Not that I want to stand on that sort of scaffolding.  No one should, let's face it.

P.S. 

Um, ok.  I know some of you will tune out here.  But can you believe that Hazal met a guy on facebook, rode off on a motorbike, shacked up with him and had to be rescued by her estranged grandfather who ended up killing the motorbike guy in order to get her away from him?  I'm sorry, but she could do with some rule-following.