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October 23, 2008
Letter #4 from Ethiopia
Dear Friends and Family,
Just a reminder: This is the time of year to order the PC(USA) Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study 2009, which will allow you to stay in touch with PC(USA) mission work throughout the United States and around the world. It will also allow you to “share” devotions with us every morning of 2009. Yearbooks can be ordered at (800) 524-2612. If you have questions, please contact Billie Healy. Don’t forget the Children’s Mission Yearbook, too! (It’s a great resource for Sunday school teachers.)
Meskel flowers line a country road near Addis Ababa. Rachel and Michael Weller, friends and PC(USA) mission co-workers, invited us on a day trip a couple of weeks ago. It was so refreshing to leave Addis Ababa and find that there really is a beautiful countryside out there! Meadows were still green from the recent rainy season, and roadsides were yellow with “meskel” (“cross”) flowers—the flowers that were scattered on the floor for New Year coffee ceremonies. Tiny plots of teff, the grain used to make injera (the staple, flat bread), were growing like short, small-headed wheat. Oxen were plowing other fields for the next planting of lentils. (The Amharic root word for “farmer” is “ox.”)
We went west about 80 miles and left the asphalt, then the gravel, and finally the four-wheel-drive Land Rover, too! We walked the last half mile up to the rim of a volcanic crater to an elevation of about 10,600 feet and looked down to the lake in the bottom where the village of Wenchi lies scattered on some flat islands like its own little Eden. The villagers were walking back from market day: a hike of maybe 1000 feet from Wenchi up to the rim, then 2000 feet down the outside of the mountain to the nearest town. To get home, of course, they retrace their steps. We shared the trail with horses and donkeys and sheep as well as villagers on foot, from 5- or 6-year-olds all the way up to grandparents. We hope to go back someday and actually visit the village in the crater instead of just looking down on it. In the meantime, it’s fun to wonder what it would be like to grow up tucked into a little, circular world where the horizons are so close.
This last week we had a short mid-term break from language classes (Yikes! We’re not half fluent yet!) and spent the time observing classes here at the Bethel Mekane Yesus School. We admire both the teachers’ and the students’ dedication. Twelfth-graders struggle with theories of economic development. Ninth graders memorize properties of math. Kindergarteners as young as 3 practice English greetings. They stretch way across the tables to shake hands with their partners and recite, “Ho ware you? I yam fine, sank you.” Lora and I have taken plenty of notes about possible areas of improvement in classroom practice, so we are feeling more and more deeply that this is indeed the right call for us, the place where we might contribute some ideas.
Meskel checks a fourth-grader's music notebook. One of our observations was in a fourth-grade music class, where a young woman named Meskel (yes, like the flower) was teaching basic Western scales. Traditional Ethiopian scales, which will be taught next semester, use a pentatonic scale, so the half steps of the Western scale, “fa” and “si” (“ti”) were difficult for the kids to hear and sing. Meskel, just graduated from the University of Addis Ababa, stood in front of her first class of students with no piano or guitar or even a recorder, and patiently sang, over and over again, “do, re, mi . . .” alternating group singing and giving individuals the chance to solo. Students were eager to volunteer, waving their hands at every opportunity, but with 58 girls in the class, only a few could sing alone. It became hypnotic after a while. “Do, mi, sol, do. Do, sol, mi, do.” I started to doze. Lora kicked my leg and the girls in the back row, disappointed (I suspect!) that I hadn’t fallen off my chair, turned back to the lesson. How embarrassing!
Sesay summarizes current events for civics class. Another observation was in an eleventh-grade civics class. Sesay (his name means “opportunity” and sounds like “sea-sigh”) is the teacher. He has been blind from birth and is led to and from his classes by his students. He memorizes his notes for each day’s lecture with the help of his computer, which has a “read-aloud” function, and then lectures from memory, including revision of yesterday’s classes, comparing the idea currently under discussion with previous points, and enlivening the class with humor. “Are you still alive?” he will ask if things get too quiet. “Are you breathing oxygen?” Sesay listens to BBC or Voice of America and begins each class by summarizing the latest current events. World oil prices are down, while Ethiopia’s are up. The Gulf of Aden has the most piracy in the world. Obama is leading in the latest U.S. election polls. It is humbling to watch Sesay maneuver the students through a classroom discussion and lead them to new insights. He’s a master! To me, though, the most interesting aspect of his classroom is the students’ conduct. Sesay cannot monitor their behavior unless it gets noisy, yet his class is the most focused, most on-task, most disciplined class that I have observed. The students take responsibility—because they must.
Sometimes I think mission work is like the Wenchi crater. It’s a long climb up to the world’s rim, where you can look back at the culture that nurtured you and see how tiny it really is. Then you can look the other way, outward, and the whole world stretches wide in new perspectives. But other times, mission seems more like just being invited into a classroom, where we witness our sisters and brothers struggling against handicaps that seem overwhelming and succeeding anyway. Being welcomed into an adventure like this is a gift, and sharing the work is an even greater blessing. I’ll try to stay awake!
Many of you have asked how you might help our work here. First, please hold us in your prayers. Second, don’t be shy about emailing. We find that letters of encouragement tend to arrive at the times we need them most—grace through the Internet. If it gets too quiet out there, we wonder if you are still breathing! Finally, if you’d like to send a small gift, it appears that the secret is to put it in an envelope instead of a box and keep the weight under 1.1 pounds (one-half kilo). Such a gift will arrive in less than two weeks and will sail through customs with no problem. Larger, heavier boxes can take up to six weeks and might require us to pay some tax. The kindergarten can use crayons (the simplest, smallest, eight-crayon box is best) and older kids can use good-quality water colors, which don’t seem to exist here. Colored paper is also useful since it’s very expensive. Lora has started teaching knitting to local women, and they can use yarn of any color as well as knitting needles. The current project is baby hats and sweaters for orphans, so even small bits of yarn can be used for bright stripes. This is an impromptu way for Lora to reach out to the community around us, so we would appreciate your help. If you’d like to learn of other ways that you can join this community, please just let us know.
We will be traveling “down country,” as they say here, to Gambella and Dembi Dollo from November 16-22. We will be out of email contact for that week. Please pray for safe travel and open minds as we are introduced to education in the rural, western part of Ethiopia.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 223 |
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