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| August 13, 2017 |
I’ve sometimes asked my AP Biology students to write letters to themselves at the beginning of the school year. In the letters I ask them to consider what their goals and expectations are, what fears they have, and what words of encouragement they’d like to give themselves. At the end of the year, they get their letters back. And then I ask them to write a letter to in-coming students. I love reading those letters.
Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve ever passed the end-of-year letters on to an in-coming class. But in those final days of the school year when the big exam has come and gone and the seniors have graduated and left the rest of us behind, I relish the chance to read those letters; I take in the self-confidence in their words, and their very specific pieces of advice. What’s especially cool to see in the letters is an almost universal instinct to encourage the in-coming students, whether the writer was an amazing, average, or poor student. The letters give even the most private of my students a chance to flesh out some thoughts - not just about the class, but about diligence, honesty, boredom, frustration, joy, excitement, and discovery.
As I’m thinking about all this, it’s almost 1 am on July 5, 2018. A few hours ago, Daniel, Elias, and Mikias landed in DC and are now beginning the process of becoming Daniel, Eli, and Micah again. Markos and Marta, who were in no particular rush to return to the States, will also land in DC eventually, and will go back to being Mark and Marta. It is a surreal notion. It truly makes me feel light-headed, just thinking about walking up to our American front door and stepping back into our old lives. In trying to wrap up these blog postings, I realize I just don’t have the right words available to me. They don’t exist. To even attempt to convey what this year has meant to us in a way that’s both readable and does our experience justice - it’s beyond my capability as a blogger.
So I’ll just write a letter to our family. I’ll imagine (because it’s a comforting thing to do right at this moment) that this year is spreading itself out in front of us again - and by some incredible, beautiful sorcery, I have the chance to lay it all out for us. Here goes.
Dear Markos, Marta, Daniel, Elias, and Mikias,
The rainy season is a b*#!h. But it will end. By September, the meskel flowers will turn the country-side yellow and there won’t be a day without sunshine. And while you may want to complain about the leaks in the house and how many towels you go through cleaning up the tile floors, you will have the opportunity to visit lots of homes where you will be served coffee on mud floors under corrugated iron-sheeting punctured by holes. And you can consider how little protects some people in Mekele from the rain storms that you will watch from the comfort of your shiny, four-story home and its solid walls. Sit back and enjoy the rain, consider it a blessing. Watch people walk through mud in plastic sandals like it ain’t no thing. Listen to them celebrate each rain drop because in this part of Ethiopia where famine hits the worst, it means a good harvest, and a promising year.
If you’re sick, don’t do what you would do in America and just make a throw-away comment about it. In America, people will sympathize and move on with their lives. In Mekele, they will call you every day and maybe even come to your house to see if you’ve gone to the doctor or otherwise sought treatment. Even people you’ve just met will do this. They will rain down blessings on your head and look at you with such concern that you feel sorry for them. So unless you want to alarm people and be spoiled by love and concern, don’t mention your sore throat.
Speaking of sickness, don’t assume you know everything there is to know about medical treatment in Ethiopian towns outside of Addis. For instance, the Mekele emergency room in which you’re being treated may look like a war zone, but the doctor who’s treating you may have done his training in Germany. Or you may lose your voice for two straight weeks and (after ten phone calls a day from concerned friends and relatives) finally agree to see a doctor. Because you’re still a beginner and will make a lot of ridiculous assumptions, you may assume that no doctor in Mekele will know what the inside of a throat looks like. But you will find that an excellent ENT is able to diagnose your problem very effectively using a camera and some good local anaesthetic. While you’re sitting in his practice waiting to be seen, you might notice that one floor up is a dermatology practice where you could have your age spots and wrinkles taken care of. If that’s the sort of thing you think about sometimes.
People will shout “Ferenji” at you from very far away when they see you coming. Often they’ll say it just loud enough so you can hear them and turn around. Little tiny kids will scream it so loudly that they bend over with the effort. But then they’ll run on their little toddler legs with their hands outstretched to say, “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”. Try hard not to feel self-conscious. Remember that often “Ferenji” just means “Hi”. Of course, you would think it strange if a white person in America greeted a person of color by yelling, “Foreigner!”. Cultures are different, and their ways of connecting are different. Also remember that those young men who love to tease you as you walk by are the first ones who would spring to your aid - even if what you need takes a whole day. If remembering these things doesn’t help, just put your earbuds in and keep walking.
Learn to read the Ethiopian alphabet immediately. It will be very useful in helping you pronounce words correctly. For example, if you can distinguish between the harsh Tigrinya “H” and the softer “H” sound in “howie”, you won’t make the mistake of introducing someone as your fire, instead of as your brother. And if you can distinguish between a harsh Amharic “T” and the softer one in the word “wetat”, you will correctly identify a youthful person as young, and not milk.
If you’re a middle-aged woman and always conscious of weight-gain, don’t feel bad when the women of Mekele call you fat. In the city of Mekele where everyone is small and thin, “fat” is a complement. In all likelihood this information won’t be helpful the tenth time someone smiles at you and says how lovely and plump you are. If so, look at pictures of people in America and feel confident that you’re doing okay.
You will grow very accustomed to using pit latrines and will wonder who invented the idea of sitting your body down on a toilet seat to begin with.
You will notice that no matter how dirty things seem and how unhygienic, no Ethiopian in his or her right mind would EVER eat without washing the hands. Make a habit of this.
If you get a dog, it doesn’t matter what he does, he will be a part of your family. If you can’t find an owner for him when you leave and mention that you want to put him down, be prepared for the looks of horror that overtake people’s faces. Be prepared for them to say that killing an animal is a sin. Don’t mention that the animals you sometimes see on the streets - the donkeys, horses, dogs - occasionally look like they’d be better off dead. Just nod and say you’ll think about it. And when you ask the roving “vet” if he’ll put your dog down and he refuses for religious purposes, re-double your effort to find a decent way of ending the dog’s life. Don’t be surprised if you discover that there are plenty of vets at the college who use very humane techniques to put pets down, and that it’s not the big deal you made it out to be in your head. But when an excited prospective owner shows up to take your dog, watch his eyes light up with delight at this beautiful, playful creature. Keep your cool as you muzzle your dog and help him into the car that will drive him away. Don’t cry so hard at night when the neighborhood dogs bark all at once and wake you up - and your dog is not among them. Take comfort that you paid attention to all the horrified protests and kept your dog alive - knowing that somewhere across town, he’s chomping on his dog toy and probably not thinking about you at all.
When you say your goodbyes, you have two choices, neither of which will prevent you from crying so much you literally feel sick for days. First, you can take the band-aid approach - a stealth goodbye that is sudden and complete. This will leave you open to many phone-calls in which children will demand to know if they’re seriously not going to see you again, to which you’ll find yourself promising to return soon, maybe next year, in fact definitely next year. The other approach is to keep returning to them every day and saying that you’ll return the next day, maybe. And if you show up the next day, great. If not…then you’ve fizzled out, supposedly. Just be prepared for children to shove letters and cards, little gifts and cookies into your hands. And as you read the letters and cry your eye-balls out, you should probably know that there’s really no good way to say goodbye.
On your last day in your house as you recall how much you first loved the view through the windows, consider how the country-side is turning green again, now that rainy season is just beginning. Again, be thankful for that. Look down at the road project that you’ve watched from your first morning in Mekele; notice how wide the road has become, how it’s just a matter of weeks before they begin the process of paving it and providing one more access from the city out to the country-side. Put your forehead on the window one last time and listen to the neighbor kids playing soccer in their driveway, the calls of the trader-man who trades goods with households once a day, the trucks in the distance hauling dirt from the road project. Open your eyes and look towards St. Gabriel’s church and its loudspeakers that stole so many hours of your sleep. Maybe it’s never been the most peaceful neighborhood, but this is the house where you will have built a home. Take in the view; try to trap it in your mind because you have grown to love it so much that leaving it is like leaving someone you love.
Then, when you go downstairs and put your shoes on and open the gate for the last time, be glad that your dog is not about to dash out behind you and maybe nip at a passing stranger’s calf. Hope that his new owners get him, and are throwing something for him to catch. Smile at the young woman who took care of you all year and hug her, knowing that your sobs are as much about saying goodbye to her as about you having to go home and do all the cooking again. And when you pull away from the house that welcomed you every evening after a day away - the house that caught every available ray of sunshine and filled your days with light - just be glad for the experience, for every blessed second of it. For breakfast, lunch, dinner, and Tigrinya lessons together as a family every day. For “shhhh” during an important TV show involving a certain character called Hazal (a show which will end its run while you’re on a road-trip, preventing you from knowing what exactly became of that beautiful and cursed young woman). For sitting down together and watching “The Office”, “The West Wing”, and “Brooklyn nine-nine.”. For blackouts and candle-lit conversations about school work, politics, language, culture, martial arts, inside-jokes, family history, future plans…everything you never get a chance to talk properly about in America.
As your plane takes off from the airport in Mekele, your head will probably be stuffy with tears and your heart so heavy it hurts a little to breathe. Think of all the years of planning your family put into this year away, look down at the city of Mekele as you rise into the air and point out the red roof of your house which is always visible from the plane. Hug your spouse, and say, “We did it.”
Love,
Mark, Marta, Daniel, Eli, and Micah
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| July 2, 2018 |
