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

Jumble!

 * First of all: Thank you so much for your generosity. Our current count of books: 134. We'll have a lot of packages coming our way, and you've just made 4 schools (innumerable students) and 1 public library very happy. We can't thank you enough.

* When I think about what keeps us here, a frequent audio example visits me: the sound of Girimkil and Misilal calling me “Danayitay” and Daniel "Danielay." How is Danayitay different from Danayit? They’re calling me “My Danayit.” They're calling him "My Daniel." And that beautiful neighborly sense of ownership and love makes me wonder in what state we’ll leave these people. Well, there’s really no wondering about it. I’ll have streams coming out of eyes and nose, surely. It will be most unpretty.

* What a joy to sit in on one of Daniel’s classes. It wasn’t until I sat in the back of one of his courses on poetry and metaphor that I realized I hadn’t seen him teach before (unless you count one of our Dr. Buck classes [pre-dating] where each student had to teach for a day). In the courses he taught at Baylor and IWU, I realized my only involvement had been my quota of two class-sets of cookies or muffins per semester for each class. And while I can’t do that here (I ventured to make chocolate-chip cookies for our anniversary for the first time, and while they were delicious, it took a lot of time and propane for very little pay-off: 3 cookies in the oven at a time), at least my non-9-to-5 schedule here allows for me to sit in on the goodness. If anyone is wondering, Daniel is an incredible teacher. I was quite amazed. Even his patient, slowness of speech for these students who are being taught in their 3^rd language was admirable: speaking really slowly and purposely for 2 straight hours is a more difficult feat than you imagine. And to see him teaching Richard Wilbur—poetry! This is what he wants to do: teach Literature, not Pre-Composition. It was wonderful to see his future hopes being fleshed out in front of 12 Ethiopian 18-year-olds. (And to see them “get it.” Teachers love this moment because a student’s understanding isn’t always guaranteed. Given the looks we receive when we have simple “How are you?” elementary-English exchanges with these students, seeing them in this classroom pass the language barrier and pick up on elements of poetical metaphor? I wanted to give him a standing ovation).

* Standing ovations. Every Thursday at approximately 3:58 PM (that’s 7:58 AM your time, for most of you), I feel like I’ve stepped into an over-sentimental, goose-bumping movie scene. My 26 blind students all stand and give me a thunderous and lengthy round of applause. I wonder if that’s how they think all English clubs should end? But for the past four weeks, that’s been the routine. And I can’t tell you how humbling it is. I don’t often feel so heavily unworthy—except for the times I talk to God or a person or myself about the husband I’ve been blessed with. Or when I consider God’s grace. But these 26 individuals whose names are quite the mouthful (I have 2 Letemikials, 1 Letegerima, and even an Egzaharia) are angels. There isn’t a better-fitting word for their sweetness. I can’t arrive or leave without shaking each of their hands and shoulder-bumping each of their shoulders; and this past Thursday Letemikial said, “Hello teacher,” slapped her hand in mine, and as I pulled it away, I had a stick of gum in my palm. Better than an apple on a desk. The students at my other 2 clubs are nearly as excited to participate in the native speaker’s lessons—though their excitement is demonstrated differently. I have about 10 students who hang in the tree branches outside the windows of my Adi-Mahleka classroom, calling my name, jumping up and down to get a glance, throwing items through the windows. Well. I can’t change my skin color.

* We’ve decided to start having our neighbor kids over for film nights. When we ask excellent English speakers how they learned—and if they’re not wearing a uniform from the amazing Catholic school—they say they watch American films. So we hooked our laptop up to speakers and played Aladdin in our living room this week for 12 neighbors ranging in age from 8 months to 20 years. We made popcorn and peanuts. Some background: every coffee ceremony at the Girimkils, we have to almost force the kids to eat popcorn. They are so polite and so trained that the entire popcorn dish is for the guests, that they will not partake unless we offer it to them, repeatedly, and only then do they take tiny handfuls. (Meron is a different case). So it was a lovely sight to watch them dig into the popcorn unabashed—we quickly had to make a second batch. But still, Luam continued to make sure Daniel and I partook; and Teddy held the bowl, passing it around to everyone, saying “Haz, hazi” (Capture) so diplomatically. When Freweyni, our 20-year-old outlier removed her pants-less little girl (clothed in something like a First Communion dress) from our floor, alas, there was a puddle and a whispered “shayna”—“she peed”. When we closed the door behind the crowd, we had a good, long laugh, staring at the puddle.

  

   

* We had a great New Year’s. Our Adwa and Axum ferenji friends came over for a spread of goodies (devilled eggs! We were in our heaven). Thanks to various packages among us, we had sparklers, glow sticks, peanut M & Ms, and a handmade 2013 silver ball. We attached it to string, swung it around a nail in the wall, and Daniel was our Dick Clark. He dropped it slowly as we counted down to midnight.

* Our wedding anniversary was lovely. Ni selesta amat hadar allana (We have been married three years). I surprised Daniel with one of his favorites, Cincinnati chili—it was enjoyable cooking it over the charcoal stove on our porch as the sun went down; a three-hour simmer time is not acceptable for our propane tank, which we have now nixed for an electric stove-top now that we’ve gone through 2 tanks in 4 months, when we’re told it should be 1 tank per year. Surprise, surprise, we cook too much. Without our fridge, though, Cincinnati could not have made a visit to Adwa on January 2^nd, because our anniversary was a Wednesday, a fasting day. No butcher in his right mind would sell meat on a Wednesday or Friday. So, thank you, refrigeration. As Easter draws nearer, we will need to consider freezing up some meat, saying goodbye to milk, and making shady egg deals door-to-door with neighbors. Word on the street is that if you’re in an Orthodox town (Adwa’s breakdown is 90% Orthodox, 9% Muslim, the rest Misc.), you can’t get any animal product during Ethiopian Lent. Not even from restaurants. Lots of volunteers go through heavy meat cravings, as you can imagine. So load up we shall.

* Ethiopian Christmas on January 7^th was great. Men and little boys alike dressed in white pants, white shoes, white sweaters over white dress shirts (and carrying a decorated whip of horse hair) and every woman with gold (fake?) draped in her incredibly Tigray holiday hairstyle. Our progressive Christmas dinner included:

-10 AM at Girimkils: Doro Watt (Ethiopia’s best: spicy, red chicken stew with whole hard-boiled eggs) and coffee ceremony. This was the gold metal meal of the day. And spicy chicken for breakfast, at that.

-12:30 PM at Sissai and Oatash’s: Goat stews and vegetables (6 dishes) and coffee ceremony + traditional home-made beer.

-3:30 PM at Maresa’s: Again, goat stew and vegetables and homemade yogurt and coffee ceremony. We nearly needed to be rolled home (picture Violet in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; maybe that’s how we felt). Turns out Teacher Maresa has an incredibly green thumb, evidenced by his courtyard garden: mango, papaya, grape, lavendar, licorice, roses, avocado, cotton, guava, coffee.

P.S. Wanna see a castle? This is belated, from our brief stay in Gondar after Christmas. Beautiul beautiful really old place (12th-18th century?). This is just one angle of a whole courtyard of castles. If you want to see it in real life, let us know and we could probably arrange something: