Back To Work.

Before we finish up with language school, I want to share an anecdote from our friend Wendy, who was in the senior class while we were starting out. Wendy had come to Ethiopia a couple of years earlier to teach at Bingham Academy, the SIM mission school in Addis. She was learning Amharic to prepare for her new role as Bingham’s homeschool coordinator, traveling to remote towns and villages to help missionary families educate their kids at home instead of sending them to boarding school. 

Wendy was living at the Press Compound that summer, so a group of us would often gather for lunch at her little apartment. One Monday, she told us that she had gone with one of the language tutors, Solomon, to an Ethiopian church the previous day, where she tried desperately to follow the preacher’s enthusiastic sermon in Amharic. She was able to recognize a few of our basic vocabulary words, including the repeated phrase “siga menged.” We knew “siga” from our meals at the office, where on Tuesdays and Thursdays we had “siga wot” – stew with meat in it. And we knew “menged” (pronounced men’-ged, with a hard g) from driving directions – it means “road”. Siga menged, the preacher said, and Wendy could not for the life of her figure out what he meant by “Meat Road.” After the service, she asked Solomon, who explained that the preacher was denouncing “the way of the flesh.” Foreign languages make literalists of us all, I guess. 

Spoiler alert: Wendy married Solomon a few years later. 

As we prepared to return to the office full time, there were some changes taking place at FH/Ethiopia. J’s boss, one of the most senior Ethiopians on the staff, had been arrested that summer, accused of participating in the Red Terror in the late 1970s. In his absence, the organizational structure was adjusted and some new staff members came on board. The new guy in charge of administration – and J.’s new boss – was Tesfaye Habtiyimer, a local guy who was trained as an accountant, and who quickly won our respect. The new guy in charge of the program(me) side was Andy Barnes, an American expatriate with a background in forestry, who had been teaching at an agricultural college in Ethiopia. (Ten years later Andy became the Country Director of FH/E, and he still works for the organization. We have, alas, lost track of Tesfaye). 

Also, at the beginning of August, I had boldy told the big boss P. that I was not very happy in my role at FH/E. Part of my dissatisfaction was professional, insofar as it didn’t seem like there was enough work to keep both Joy and myself occupied on a full-time basis. Part of it was inter-personal, as by this time it had become clear that my supervisor E. and I were not, shall we say, simpatico. You may recall that the big boss P. was married to my supervisor E., which complicated the matter. As I wrote to my sister at the time, “talking with P. really cheered me up, not because he was extremely helpful, but because I needed to be clear about my frustrations and get it off my chest.” 

So what happened was, I became a teacher.