Educate Yourself! : Four Things I’ve Learned from Getnet

by Daniel Luttrull

When I explain Peace Corps’ mission to Ethiopians, they’re often surprised by the third goal: “to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans” or, as I explain it in conversation, “When we go home, we want to help Americans learn from you and your culture.”

“What do you mean?” Ethiopians often ask. “What can Americans [those efficient arbiters of wealth and power] learn from us?” When I’m asked this question, I normally respond with some mixture of these four lessons I’ve learned from my friend Getnet.

1.      Relationships Are More Important Than Jobs

Lack of work ethic in Ethiopia often frustrates me. A few times, I’ve been at a colleague’s house on a holiday and heard someone (after drinking a liter-and-a-half of homemade beer) say, “I’ll drink just a little more tela. I need to teach at 2:00.”

“But, Gebrehod,” I say, “it’s already 2:30.”

Silence.

“You should probably go.”

Silence.

“Just a little more tela,” he says, and the host fills his cup to the brim because you can never have just a little more tela.

But in spite of the Gebrehods, Ethiopians can teach Americans something about work. Last year, my friend Getnet’s father died. At the time, Getnet taught Tigrigna and was the language department chair at the college where I work. He left town and other teachers picked up his classes and administrative responsibilities. I’ve seen this happen in America before. The difference, though, is that the Ethiopians did it naturally—not expecting pay or thanks or anything—and Getnet wasn’t expected back anytime soon. His obligation to his family was automatically seen by his coworkers and employer as more important than his obligation to his job. It was unimaginable that he would need to apologize for his grief.

For Getnet, this relationship/work hierarchy doesn’t reflect how little he values work; Getnet takes great pride in his work. Rather, it demonstrates his greater reverence for those sacred people we call friends and family.

2.      The Elderly Don’t Have to Live Alone

If Getnet ever goes to America, a lot of things will surprise him. People don’t bathe in the rivers. People don’t pick their noses in public. Eating meat is normal, but lifting up your shirt to rub your belly after eating meat is not. His biggest surprise, though, might be how our elderly parents and grandparents rarely live with their families. Here we are living in huge houses with food spilling out of our refrigerators, but when someone in our family grows old they live alone or in a hospital.

I realize that many elderly individualists much prefer to live on their own and that illnesses often make assisted living the only option. Still, when I walk into a house here and see a family of ten living in four rooms, and the father of the house ushers me over to an old, hunched woman surrounded by grandchildren and contributing to the household by chopping onions or crocheting decorations or grunting angrily at foreign guests, I can’t help but think that this woman is able to keep more of her dignity and see more of life than the old women I’ve seen living in large, clean, comfortable, empty rooms in America.

3.      Grief Takes Time

Like I wrote above, Getnet’s father died last year, and he took a while off work to comfort his mother and grieve with the rest of his family at the funeral. So far this is pretty similar to the way we grieve in America.

A few weeks after the funeral, though, Getnet went back home for a second funeral. And a few months after that, he went home for a third funeral. At these later funerals, he told me that he was supposed to act the same way he did at the first one, mourning his father just as much the third time as he did the first time.

In America, we’re expected to gradually get over death. Depending on how close you were to the person who died, you might be expected to grieve for quite a while, but there’s a cultural understanding that you shouldn’t miss someone months after their death just as much as you did at their funeral.

In Ethiopia, it’s the opposite. You’re supposed to not get over death. You’re supposed to mourn someone at their third funeral just as much as you did at their first funeral.

The irony is that America’s way forces you to realize how little you’ve moved on, while Ethiopia’s forces you to realize how much you have. At least, I would imagine that months after the death, while you are at the third funeral, you would realize that you do feel differently than you did at the first funeral, that you’re beginning to heal. And if you don’t feel that way, then your culture is telling you that you’re normal.

4.      You Don’t Need Much Stuff to Have a Fulfilling Life

For our first meal in Adwa, Getnet took me and my wife Danielle to Almeda Hotel. We ate our fill of shiro and kay watt. While Getnet lifted up his shirt and rubbed his belly, I said something about how great the prices were. The meal, exponentially better than anything our host mom made for us, cost under one dollar a person. Getnet replied, “Yes, Almeda Hotel is nice for us middle-income people.”

He often says that: “us middle-income people.” He’s proud of his work and his income and his home. He often invites us over to his house to share a meal.

By American standards, though, Getnet is impoverished. He doesn’t have a car. For a house, he rents a room less than half the size of my parents’ living room. He owns a mattress that sits on the ground without a bed frame, a small suitcase full of clothing, a television, and an electric stove. His room does not have a sink or a refrigerator. He bathes using buckets and shares a pit latrine with the other tenants in his compound.

Thankfully, though, no one has told Getnet to be discontent with his income, and so he persists in believing that he has a nice job and a nice house, and he keeps inviting over guests, and he keeps happily riding the bus four hours south to visit his family, and he keeps smiling, and he keeps rubbing his belly after eating meat and reflecting on how nice it is to be rich.