We went to Widcombe Infant School in Bath today. Widcombe is one of the sister schools to our school Tsegereda in Shiro Meda. I delivered pen-pal letters from the Ethiopian children. We were lucky to get a half-hour with the kids at the end of the school day. Fifty children crowded into the classroom, and these are not shy souls. It was very fun. “Did you just come from Ethiopia?” “How long did it take?” How long do you think?, I asked them. “Ten hours.” “A hundred hours.” “A thousand hours.” We practiced a guest’s entrance Ethiopian-style. They stood up as I came in. I said, “Indamin nachu, lijjoch?” (How are you, children?) And they replied with some version of the proper response: “Dehna, igzabiher yemusgin!” They thought all this hilarious.
I took a few of their names and showed them what it looked like in Amharic script. I wanted to demonstrate how many names in Ethiopia mean something, but didn’t get very far. I asked them, “Who remembers their pen-pal’s name?” Many hands went up. “Um, it starts with an S.” “Mine starts with an R.” All rightie. But they remembered very well how old their pen-pals were and bits about the school. They found mud walls an irresistable concept. “Do they fall down?” one girl asked. No, not yet, though they do wobble a bit.
-- Dana Roskey
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