Fortune Cookie and Commentary

FORTUNE: If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

It’s probably about once a week that I see two blind students from the college or one of the primary schools walking arm and arm up Adi Haki (our street), white canes swinging in front of them. For a street that sees so little rain, Adi Haki has exorbitantly large concrete gutters—about four feet deep in places—and the possibility of the students falling into the ditch is quite real. Thankfully, they are adept with their guide canes.

When I see the blind leading the blind I invariably think of Christ’s proverb. It shows up in the gospels twice, once in Matthew 15 and once in Luke 6. In Matthew, the disciples tell Christ that the Pharisees don’t like it when he tells them that what you say, rather than what you eat, makes you impure. Christ responds that the disciples should “let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind.” In Luke, Jesus mentions the futility of the blind leading the blind just before telling us to take the beam of wood out of our own eyes before looking at the mote of dust in our brother’s.

It’s an especially significant parable for teachers. Too often, like the Pharisees or the man with a beam in his eye, a teacher can focus on a subject’s minutiae rather than tackling his students’ most obvious needs, letting his pretension win out over his compassion. Tim Esh once described a middle school English teacher to me like this: “There he is trying to teach Julius Caesar, while all the students can think about is how angry they are that no one seems to love them.”

I got to watch Danielle teach her blind and visually impaired students at Maria Luisa on Thursday. And her best trait as a teacher might be a complete lack of this pretension. She read the students Are You My Mother? three times and had them answer three questions about the book. Throughout, she showed compassion for these students, who are so often marginalized, calling each of them by name, encouraging them when they started speaking, and slowly teasing the answers out of them. At the end of the class they all clapped and rushed to shake her hand.

Last Sunday, the Salesian nuns we see in church each week were kicking off a weeklong study on the unity of the church, and so they invited us to eat with them and then participate in a short Bible study afterwards. The meal was great. There was tender meat, tasty cheese, and good wine—three things it’s almost impossible to find anywhere else in Adwa. After the meal we sat in a circle with the sisters and a group of Italian volunteers and talked and translated. An Indian nun led a short devotional on unity, and then they asked us to say a few words. I thanked them for letting us worship with them and joked about how I feel united with them because the kids in town sometimes call me Sister, Sister. Danielle got weepy (and even snot-nosed) talking about how grateful she is to have a church and how it seems to be a work of Providence that we were placed in Adwa. Once again I saw how much more compassionate vulnerability accomplishes than blind cleverness. One of the Italian volunteers started cheering while Danielle was speaking and later told us that he hopes his children grow up to be like Danielle. Several of the sister’s thanked her afterwards.

Most of my time in Ethiopia has been spent watching people adore Danielle.

LUCKY NUMBERS: 2, 4, 7, 5 (match the number with its corresponding item below)

times a coffee house we went to played Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” on repeat before the proprietors noticed

nationalities present when we ate with the Salesian sisters

times we’ve had doro watt in the last two weeks

years (or so we heard) since there was a height requirement for Ethiopian teachers

LEARN TIGRIGNA: bakwere lomi^† grapefruit; Ab jubaka tarantula alika doe?^§ Do you have a tarantula in your pocket?

* Correct order: 4, 7, 2, 5

^† This is literally translated lemon’s older brother.

^§ A question you ask cheap friends