No Need for Thanksgiving This Year

I didn’t need Thanksgiving this year. Not that I didn’t want the turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and family time, but I didn’t need an allotted opportunity to be thankful. From my first day in Ethiopia, when I accompanied Rick to see his patients in Addis, I started making a mental list of all the things that I am thankful for, which has continued to grow over my three months here.  I intended to present the list as a mini research project at some point at the end of this fellowship. But as I watch Americans supposedly spend a day being thankful and then beginning the next day (if that) dedicate the next three weeks to trampling each other for the newest and greatest gifts to add to all that they already have, I felt the need to share a condensed version of my list now that is based on my observations and not research. While living in Ethiopia has made me grateful for many, many things, I have decided to narrow down my list to just four: education, shoes, health care, and water. This blog post, part one, will focus on education and shoes.

Part One: Education Not in Gibberish & the Shameful Shoe Collection

I was lucky to go to an excellent public high school, which, despite facing budget cuts, was able to help me develop as a student and leader through well-taught courses and various extra-curricular activities. It was around this age that I also learned of public high schools with metal detectors, exorbitantly high drop-out rates, and budgets so over-stretched that programs I took for granted couldn’t be funded. At the same time, I also met people who went to private boarding schools that catered to every student’s need and cost as the most expensive colleges. This is all to say that the American education system is by no means perfect, but despite this, I am grateful for it, even with all its failings.

One day, I was sitting in the school courtyard in between class periods and started talking to a teenage boy who I thought was a student at my school. He proclaimed his English to be poor, but was very eager to practice speaking with me, and in doing so, demonstrated his English to be superior to that of most of my students. He proudly showed me an English language book that he used to improve his English in his free time. When he mentioned that he was not a student at the school, I asked which school he attended, presuming he was in a lower grade. He replied that while he really wanted to attend school, his family was too poor to send him. My heart broke for him – here was a smart, eager kid who wanted to learn, but because of his family’s economic status, he was deprived of the opportunity. And with more than half of school aged kids unable to go to school, he is by no means alone.

In Ethiopia, the percentage of kids who are out of school is approximately 55%, with that number being slightly lower in Gondar. Every morning, as the streams of students in uniform make their way to one of the city’s schools, there are those walking the other direction, with no uniform and no school to attend. Although the school that I teach at, a public school, offers subsidies for some families who cannot afford the nominal school registration fee (50 birr or $2.50), there are many families who do not receive subsidies and cannot afford the fee (as well as a uniform and school supplies). In addition, some families cannot give up the extra source of income that their children can provide by working during school hours. In rural areas, the challenges are compounded – one of my friends in Peace Corps told me that in the areas around her village, even if families can send their children to school, the closest school may be an hour and a half walk away. Thinking of these children, walking for three hours to and from school, likely without shoes (see below) and a decent meal, I cannot help but be immensely grateful for the school I attended, which was only a five minute drive from my house.

Children sitting outside their school in a rural area near the Sudan border

Even the kids who are lucky enough to go to school face an uphill battle – in 2010, the Global Campaign of Education released a report which listed Ethiopia as having the fifth worst education system out of the sixty poor countries it evaluated. Spend an afternoon in my school and it becomes apparent why Ethiopia ranks so poorly. Stepping into the bare-bones classroom packed with 70 undisciplined students, you’ll notice that every subject, Amharic excluded, is taught in English, as per Ministry of Education requirements. Complex topics like cell formation and the development of computer technology are all taught in English. Yet, when it is my turn to teach, the students are stumped by the difference of “when” verses “where”, or the meaning of basic words like “fun.” So how is it that when the other teachers write notes on the board using terms such as “generation” and “persecution” that the students comprehend? A quick test of walking into a classroom and asking the students to explain the notes left on the board from the previous teacher gives away the shameful truth –the students have absolutely no idea what they are “learning.” In almost every class, the teachers come in, spend the entire time copying notes with complex concepts on the board, which the students dutifully copy and then regurgitate for exams, often unsuccessfully based on recent mid-term scores. As a result, not only are the students not actually learning anything, but they are not developing critical thinking skills or creativity. For a laugh, I sometimes consider teaching an entire class in gibberish. It wouldn’t be too different from all their other classes.

Posted all around my school are signs which read “No child left behind the school,” which at first led me to wonder whether the field behind the school was dangerous. Yet, what these comically worded, George Bush knock-off signs are attempting to proclaim is that the school is dedicated to advancing the education of every child. Unfortunately, in Ethiopia, either from the poor education system or the inability to attend school, many children are “left behind the school.” While American students who go to the most cash strapped public schools often struggle to advance academically, let alone graduate, I can’t help but think that at least they can go to school and that the classes they attend are taught in a language they understand. Even without graduating, even if classes are poorly taught, there is at least the opportunity to glean a little bit of useful knowledge from one class, one day in school. Kids here, especially those who are poor, don’t have that chance. Those who are poor may teach themselves, like the boy who I met at my school, but even with the help of their friends who go to school, there is only so far they can advance. Those who can attend school face a similar fate – the teachers at my school tell me that after doing so poorly on exams, probably from the inability to comprehend what they are learning, many students will become disillusioned and drop out of school, feeling, maybe rightly so, that an education is unlikely to improve their socio-economic status and quality of life. With such a failure of education, how can the country ever hope to advance economically?

A rural elementary school outside of Gondar. Many of the students in the class didn’t have shoes.

At the same age that I was discovering the inequalities in the American education system, I also developed an addiction– shoes. I’m not sure what it was about them, but suddenly, wandering the aisles of DSW brought a sense of euphoria rather than necessity. Since my shoe size hasn’t changed in twelve years, and I’ve likely inherited the gene from my grandma that causes an internal struggle every time I try to get rid of my possessions, I have amassed quite the shoe collection. Maybe it is the thought of this collection or the fact that I can barely manage walking over the ground here in hiking shoes that leads to such feelings of anguish every time I see anyone, but particularly a child, with bare feet.

A little girl who I befriended on a rural site visit

When I visit the rural areas outside of Gondar, more often than not, the children I meet are bare-foot. Many of those who are wearing shoes are wearing plastic sandals, which ferenji often remark look just like knock-offs of the Jelly shoes that were immensely popular in the U.S. fifteen years ago. In the Simien Mountains, the gun-toting scouts who hiked with us trekked the whole way in these Ethiopian Jelly shoes, so they must be somewhat study, but given that they are made of cheap plastic, they cannot be supportive or particularly comfortable. Despite this, kids will keep wearing them even when the top part of the shoe has almost entirely broken off, leaving the kids’ toes protruding through the gaping holes.

If these rural children spent their days only running around the area right around their homes, then perhaps I would be troubled most by their worn, incredibly dirty, over-sized, and mis-matched clothing rather than the lack of shoes. However, these are the children who have to walk two hours a day to get to and from school, who spend their days running alongside goats and cattle, herding them over rocky terrain, and who trek long distances to fetch water for their families. If anything, they need the sturdiest pair of walking shoes possible. Yet, they are barefoot, and while their feet are likely used to such harsh treatment, I always flinch when I look down and see tiny feet so rough and worn that they wouldn’t look out of place on someone sixty years older. It makes me grateful to own just one pair of shoes, and forever guilty for the pile of shoes I know to be awaiting my return in the U.S. I’ve often vowed to pack up some of these shoes and ship them back to Ethiopia upon my return, but then I remember that stilettos won’t do a rural six year-old much good. Guess I’ll have to come up with another solution.

Next up, why I’m grateful for long showers and medical malpractice lawsuits.