The Ethiopia Reads-Tesfa School and Library in Kembata Tembaro, Ethiopia -The Details

 “To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.” - A. A. Milne

For the first time ever Ethiopia Reads and Tesfa are collaborating on a project; to build a library and school in the Kembata Tembaro region of southern Ethiopia. 

In my experience, kids from this region really like books and school.

From Jane Kurtz:

"Recently, I talked on the phone with a mom who told me the group that recommended she be in touch with Ethiopia Reads thought we were a big organization.  That cracked me up.  In these tough fundraising times, we've cut back to one--count her...one--part time office manager as our only paid staff in the U.S.  In Ethiopia, we are making the best use of raised money by moving to a collaboration model, to make sure administrative costs are as low as possible.  That's great because it means most money raised will go straight to projects that are thrifty and community-supported and sustainable.  It's bad because it means we operate without much infrastructure.  Ethiopia Reads = mostly a group of very determined volunteers/readers who take time from their own work, hobbies, families, and other dreams because we can't NOT try to get books to kids in Ethiopia."

By partnering with other NGO's, Ethiopia Reads will have more opportunities to fullfill its mission of creating a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books.

Tesfa has planted a school every year for the last seven years in Ethiopia. The founder of Tesfa has a very sad story. He, remarkably, has found a way to turn his grief and loss into something beautiful. Dana Roskey, like Jane Kurtz, is an everyday hero.

Here is the info about our school from Tesfa's homepage:

Project Summary:
To build, furnish, supply and staff a school and library for 250 primary students in the Kambata-Tambaro region. This school will likely be a kindergarten combined with nonformal primary school that serves a broad spectrum of children with primary level literacy and numeracy. Nonformal schools follow specific curriculum and school-year schedules prescribed by the government to best serve rural, farming communities. Many of the children have farming duties, depending on the season. The curriculum is a concentrated primary curriculum meant to provide basic literacy and numeracy. The nonformal paradigm allows for training up local youth to perform as teachers, thereby building local capacity. Nonformal schools are best structured around a base student population of 200-400 that can be taught in split day shifts.

Locale:

The Kambata-Tambaro zone is one of the nine administrative zones in Southern Ethiopia, with a total surface of 2,434 km² and a population close to one million. The region is situated about 175 miles (280 km) south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. More than half of the total area is classified as hilly and mountainous.

Like most of the surrounding regions, such as Hadiya, Gurage, Wolaita, Sidama, Gedeo, Kambata's economy is based on enset, a perennial crop resembling false-banana. Used as staple food crop, enset covers about one-third of the total area of land in Kambata. The Kambatas are one of the most dynamic, hard-working, and highly skilled agriculturalists in Ethiopia. And yet, like many regions of Ethiopia and other developing countries, Kambatas suffer from unemployment, mass poverty, food insecurity, illiteracy, and communicable diseases. There is deep-rooted chronic food shortage and widespread starvation among the population. Check out this very informative link for more information about the region.

Scope:

The school complex itself will include six classrooms, bathrooms, an office and a library. Depending upon the choice of building materials, the build could take as long as four months and would be best planned for the driest months of October through January, though any time before June is optimal. June through early September is the rainy season.

The final budget will depend on building materials -- the current package price is an estimate. We recommend wood framing and mud walls as being cheap, functional and conforming to local standards. But there are degrees of scale and finish that will affect cost. We expect to have a good discussion with donors about the variables in the build.

The project package includes classroom furniture and the first year of operations, all provided for by the original donation. Planning will have to include options for ongoing operational costs beyond the first year. The usual strategy is to make plans for support through individual child sponsorships, forging links with US schools or churches, or among a group of project supporters. Several Tesfa schools are supported through sponsorships, costing $21 per month. The average school budget requires 12-20 sponsors, country schools requiring the least.

Donor Base:

So far, the base of support for this project is provided by U.S. adoptive parents whose children come from this region. We are very proud to be working with them, and with Ethiopia Reads on this project.

Ripple Effect:

The school will serve approximately 250 children. The average family in Ethiopia is 7, so your impact serving 250 children expands to 1,750 children and family members. Extend that impact ten years into the future, with a new class coming in each year and total reach is to 4,550 children and family members. If you consider extended family, which in Ethiopia can be very close, then hope and success in the lives of 250 children might touch a community as large as 12,250.


A library and a school, obviously I am going to need help. The financial goal is 45k. This is the approximate cost of the library(10k), plus the school(35k). Thank you to all of you who have already donated to the library. Again, the way to do that is to go to HERE and when donating, add "Mudula" in the 'in memory of' field. Tesfa has a button for the school, and I will put it on the sidebar here as well. I'll add a fundraising thermometer as well for Meghan. ;)

There will be a fundraising event in Los Angeles this spring. Jane will come, and Dana too, if he is back from Ethiopia. I have asked a famous actress with an Ethiopia daughter to co-host the event with Jane, (no not THAT actress), although she certainly would be welcome. It may end up just being me, Jane and Meazi and Melese that night, but we will give it our all. If you would like to host an event in your city on the same night (perhaps in Canada?) let me know. If you would like to help in some other way, please let me know too.

Melese is pretty excited about it.

I am too.

The Reason For A Blog.

I have been writing this blog for three years. First it was me blathering about loss and longing. Recently it has become me blathering about loss and having. I am 'having' a lot these days. So. Much.

My chairs are full.


I have two special someones tugging on my apron strings. I have become something that I didn't ever imagine myself being.

I have become a happy person.

There have been several guest bloggers on this blog. One of them wrote this:

Here is something I think about which falls a bit outside the usual discussion: whether adoptive families will in time become engaged advocates for Ethiopia. It isn’t sexy, the long term business of pushing for a democratic government or good US foreign policy in the Horn or advocating for infrastructure or the development of good farming practices. It isn’t nearly as clear-cut or gratifying as responding to a heart-breaking famine or loving a beautiful child. But Ethiopia desperately needs such advocates. I don’t mean to say that adoptive families have a special obligation – I know that decisions about what causes to support and how are personal ones informed by many factors. But if such families do help raise awareness about Ethiopia, or if they do become involved with these issues, then that, I think, would be a significant and very welcome consequence of adoption.

I think about this a lot. I have absolutely no idea how to help bring democracy to Ethiopia. I recently read an article about Obama putting pressure on Zenawi to clean up his human rights policies in Ethiopia. Zenawi basically told Obama to suck it. I'm paraphrasing here, but the gist of the article was that Zenawi is perfectly comfortable getting anything he may ever need from China, and really doesn't need the good U.S. of A to help him with anything. If Obama has no influence, how on earth would someone like me attempt to change anything? Someone whose concerns lie more in the mundane challenges like, "How do I get M&m to ingest one green vegetable this month?" Not bloody likely that I'll be able to do anything to help Ethiopia become more democratic.

Nine months ago I wrote an e-mail to another guest blogger, Jane Kurtz. I asked her if Ethiopia Reads would ever consider building a library in M&m's hometown. Fast Forward.

She said yes.

She said yes!

Ethiopia Reads will build a library in my son and daughter's hometown. I just need to raise the money.

If every person who hit this blog yesterday sent 50 bucks, it would be done. Just like that. Now I know that a lot of those hits were people Googling things like, "What kind of family picture should I absolutely NOT include in my homestudy?" and "What do you do if you accidentally feed your child spoiled sweet potatoes?" and that about sixteen of those hits were most likely my mom looking at these pics over and over, but nonetheless, it is worth giving it a go don't you agree? I know that folks are tapped out, and this is a terrible time economically. I know that everyone has their own cause too. That's why I don't imagine we will raise all of the money here on the eyes of my eyes site, but maybe we will raise some of it.

Last summer Meazi turned to me and said, "Mom, can you believe in Ethiopia I never even had one book?"

If you would like to make a donation to the Ethiopia Reads Library in Mudula, Ethiopia

Go HERE.

Scroll down to 'one time donation', pick an amount, and in the 'in honor of' field type- 'Mudula'.

And so we begin. The Reason for a Blog, Part I- A Library.

Heroes, Idols, and Books.

We went to the Festival of Books. I got to meet one of my heroes.

Meazi got to meet one of hers.



Something for everyone.

Trouble

Yes, that is my son wearing his sister's tutu.

Recently, Ruth and Aster's mom posted about meeting Jane Kurtz. (I didn't know who to be more jealous of, Katy for meeting Jane Kurtz, or Jane for meeting Katy and the twins).

There is a new version of Jane's book Trouble. It is a bilingual version (English and Amharic), and all of the proceeds continue to go to Ethiopia Reads.

Also, did you know that Jane Kurtz has a blog?

It seems that for about 10k you can sponsor your own library in Ethiopia.

I'd like to put one here, in the area where my kids are from.

In other news, Ms. M continues her campaign for a trip to see Dr. LaBootie...

She said she'd like to go for her fifth birthday.


She's really laying it on thick...

Friday Friend or Family Feature: Guest Blogger Edition-Jane Kurtz, Part Three: Life as a Circle: Ethiopia Comes Around Again

From the outside, it appears as if the publication of Fire on the Mountain made my life click into gear and roll sweetly down the hill. I had at least one new book published every year…a current grand total of 27 once Martin’s Dream (Simon & Schuster), my new ready-to-read book comes out this month.


The view from inside was considerably messier. By the time my first book was published, I knew exactly how rejection felt—I just didn’t know how much rejection was lined up and waiting for me after publication. I naively thought once a book existed, readers would find it. And read it. And buy it. And love it. Actually, most of us only have to ask ourselves how many new hardcover books we buy in any given year to realize what a chilly world it is for books, especially in a time of pinched funding for schools and libraries.

Still, the day came when I stood up to begin a school visit, glanced at the table beside me, and thought, Whoa…I have a LOT of books published. I even started to be brave enough to put “author” on forms (along with “teacher”). I experienced the thrill of speaking at schools or conferences where students and teachers had either no picture or only grim pictures of Ethiopia in their minds and, after reading my books, let the sunshine in. Once, I was in a school that had done a terrific job of crafting a big author celebration. A girl turned to the boy next to her and asked—in my hearing—“Are you from Ethiopia, too?”
The boy nodded uncertainly.
“Wow,” she said, breathing out with a small sigh. “You’re lucky.”
For a long time, her words made all the agonies of travel feel fine.


With my own children growing up in North Dakota, I found myself more homesick than ever. I imagined I would never see Ethiopia again. My brother went back as a teacher during the time of the Marxist government. Then my older sister. Another sister went to Togo to repair helicopters used to spray for river blindness. I was stuck in the frozen northland. Then, to my astonishment, in 1997 I was asked by the international school, the British school, and a mission school to come to Addis Ababa as a visiting author.


I’ve written on my website about what it was like to go back for the first time in 20 years. That event launched a period of international speaking for me. I’ve gotten to talk to book lovers in Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Romania, England, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Indonesia, and Cambodia. India and Morocco and Norway are on the horizon. One year, educators in both Uganda and Nigeria asked me, “How can we begin to plant a reading culture here as you have in America?”


I began to mull the answer to that question, thinking about the role that libraries, public education, publishers, writers, illustrators, and literate parents play in the children’s book world in the United States. It was an interesting question, but a somewhat academic one, until the day I got an email from Yohannes Gebregeorgis, a children’s librarian in San Francisco. He told me he’d never held a book, outside of school, until he was 19. He wrote, “I want to go back to Ethiopia to start publishing books. You know how much Ethiopian children are deprived of the joys that books bring. I know that you have great love for the country you grew up in, and I want to ask you if you can join me in making this idea a reality.”


I was fascinated…and stunned. Such a huge problem. Two people with little power or money. But as he wrote, “We have to start somewhere.”


Start somewhere, we did, with the help of an adoptive mom, Maureen Evans, who interviewed Yohannes and wrote down some of his ideas for beginning. The story has been told beautifully—by Melissa Faye Greene in last October’s issue of Good Housekeeping and a recent article in Rocky Mountain News, and on my website and at Ethiopia Reads.


The dream that is now Ethiopia Reads has showed me the amazing power of ordinary human beings to do something important. Something big. We started by publishing the first color children’s book for Ethiopian kids and opening the first free library for children in Addis Ababa, a city of five million people. A few years down the road, we’ve planted 16 school libraries; we operate two community libraries; we’re the proud owners of a donkey mobile library; and we have funding for 12 more school libraries and several more donkey mobile libraries. The staff in Ethiopia has recorded more than 100,000 visits from children per year.

We want more, more, more.


The dream has also gobbled up a chunk of my life. We’re a tiny group trying to do so much. Never again will I make snarky comments about money that goes to administration. No, I’ve seen the light: without creative and thoughtful administration—without money for infrastructure—programs may have heart-stopping impact but they are always piecemeal, often herky-jerky, inevitably only an experiment. We’ve shown ourselves to be a great experiment. Now we have to see if we can turn ourselves into an organization that will change the future for Ethiopian children everywhere.


In the dark, hard moments, I have several thoughts I hang onto: Need is everywhere, opportunity isn’t. And Money isn’t always the answer; in this case, it is.

I also take comfort in what teachers everywhere know: the reality of ripple effect. Andualem, the shoeshine boy from Only a Pigeon did so well on the test students take after high school that he got to attend Addis Ababa University and went on to work for Ethiopian Airlines and Northwest Airlines. One of the young Ethiopian women who worked for Ethiopia Reads loved translating my first book, Fire on the Mountain, for children at Shola Library so much that she approached Simon & Schuster and got permission to publish an Ethiopian version. You can read about her work HERE.

The most important ripple effect? Two Ethiopian-American grandchildren. (When my son and daughter went to Ethiopia to volunteer at Shola Library, my son fell in love with one of the young women working there.) Could anything be sweeter?



























I’m often asked what adoptive parents can do to help their children celebrate their Ethiopian heritage. I wonder the same thing with my own grandbabies. A few completely biased answers are here: 1) Bring my books and any other books you can find about Ethiopia into your homes, your schools, your libraries, so that your own family members and community will see positive images of Ethiopia. No book stays around forever. Grab them while they’re in the world! (I, myself, was caught without any copies of Trouble when it went out of print.) 2) Support other people’s efforts. Treasure the adoption camps that are growing up in different geographic areas. Get to know your local Ethiopian community if one exists. Bring beautiful images of Ethiopia into your homes and lives. When my son, a photojournalism major at KU, went back to Ethiopia last summer, I asked him to remember adoptive families as he traveled around looking for stories to tell. Some of the results are HERE. 3) Healing for me, a bi-cultural child, has come as I reach back to the land of my childhood and believe I’m making a difference for those children I once felt helpless to help. Come on over. Give me a hand with Ethiopia Reads. (If you don’t know how, just email me and ask.)

As Yohannes says, “"The real heroes are the children who collect pennies, the people who help us bring books to Ethiopia. It was my idea, my dream. But the people who help us, they are the dream realizers."


* Note from Julie...

There are still a few days left to vote for Yohannes, although I think the nomination committee made a mistake by not including Jane as well. The winner will be announced on CNN on Thanksgiving. You can vote more than once.

To Donate to Ethiopia Reads, click HERE.

Jane,
Thank you such much for doing this series. You are truly an inspiration. I can't wait to share your books with my children.

Jane Kurtz....

is having a very busy week working for Ethiopia Reads! I will publish Part III of her story just as soon as I get it!

Happy Friday.

Friday Friend or Family Feature: Guest Blogger Edition-Jane Kurtz, Part Two: On to publication...agony and joy.

By the time I was in high school in Ethiopia, I thought of myself as a writer. Good Shepherd School, where I got most of my education, existed thanks to the Presbyterian, Baptist, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, and Mennonite churches, and—while most of my teachers might not have known some of the things many teachers today know about writing (thanks to superb advice from Lucy Caulkins, Katie Wood Ray, Ralph Fletcher and others)—my love of reading was nurtured during elementary school through lots of read-aloud time and a visits to our small library. In high school, though, a new teacher came into my life. Stan Kano.


As the only freshman to be invited into Stan Kano’s Honors English class (full of vigorous conversation about novels), I was shiny with pride. At last I was on the edge of the circle that included my older sister, someone I actually wanted to be but at least was thrilled to be around. Stan roared with a great belly laugh when any of us had an opinion that was outrageous but well-supported. He encouraged me to take risks in my writing—not play it safe—and to quit using the word “it.” I took umbrage at all the red-pen marks on my papers, but now I know he did me the favor of being a tough editor and critic.

I headed off to Monmouth College to be an English major. But I was only seventeen when I dived into a sophomore level course in Old English Literature—and promptly switched my major to psychology. Still, I enrolled in creative writing as many times as the college would let me, and I emerged from my early academic years thinking of myself as A Writer…only with no idea how to get a book published, no clue about how to craft the plot of a novel, no practice in deep-to-the-bones revision, and no guess that one day I would long to write a picture book.

Having children changed all that.



My early story ideas were drawn from my children’s lives. Some of those ideas did eventually turn into books, although not before ten years of rejection letters, which led to my giving myself an immense, lengthy course in really becoming a writer. The initial idea for Do Kangaroos Wear Seatbelts? popped into my head as I zipped and buttoned and buckled in my toddlers. (Ironically, it didn’t get published until I had my first baby granddaughter.) Rain Romp, my hymn to family love--even when we don’t want to get up, even when we’re having grouchy days—was inspired by my six-year-old daughter but didn’t click together until she was in middle school and our family was living in a FEMA trailer after the Red River flood of 1997.


In those years when I was slogging the path toward becoming a published author…convinced that Americans weren’t interested in the world outside of their noses…tired of feeling like an outsider…I rarely talked about Ethiopia with anyone. But, to my astonishment, in 1994 I was given the gift of my voice. Fire on the Mountain was published by Simon & Schuster, illustrated in moving and memorable scenes by an artist who had never published a book before, and chosen as a Book of the Month Club alternate selection.


I had discovered that by writing picture books and, later, novels for young readers, I could offer glimpses of what I knew best and cared about most when I was a young reader. Luckily for me, in those days librarians and teachers were asking for (and had budgets to buy) books that showed the lives of children in other countries. So editors, one by one, agreed to bring my Ethiopia-connected stories into the world: retellings of Ethiopian folktales (re-cast with the children of my childhood)--Fire on the Mountain, Pulling the Lion’s Tail, Trouble-- my contemporary stories—Only a Pigeon, Faraway Home, Water Hole Waiting, Jakarta Missing--my historical fiction—The Storyteller’s Beads, Saba: Under the Hyena’s Foot—even a fantasy novel that drew heavily on my memories of Ethiopia, The Feverbird’s Claw.

Here are answers to a reader’s (Cindy's) questions about Trouble.



1.) "Tef" and "hyenas" are things I've learned to associate with Ethiopia and both are noticeably absent in Trouble. Did you have any experience or run-ins with hyenas growing up in Ethiopia?

I fell asleep listening to the weird cries of hyenas almost every night in Addis Ababa—where I lived on what was then the outskirts of the city--and captured that memory in Faraway Home. Outside the city of Harrar, I long ago watched the Hyena Man feed hyenas at dusk (something my granddaughter also did last summer). And I used real stories of hyena encounters (though not my own) in Saba: Under the Hyena’s Foot. Although I usually ate injera made from tef, I also lived and traveled in areas where injera was made from corn or where people ate foods that weren’t wat and injera, including bread made from false banana roots. Ethiopia is diverse…in cuisine, in climate, and in terrain.

2.) Both Notes from the Hyena's Belly and Trouble give the impression that a childhood in Ethiopia could well be wrought with mischief. From other sources, I've learned that Ethiopian mothers are charged with raising children to have deep respect for their elders such that it is considered disrespectful even for children to look at the eyes of an adult when being spoken to. How do you reconcile the theme of childhood mischief with the obedience and respect that the Ethiopian culture demands from kids?

It’s so true that children were traditionally raised (and to some extent still are raised) to respect elders. (Although, as in many places, boys always have been given more leeway than girls.) In fact, I used this reality to help me shape the plot in my retelling of a folktale, Pulling the Lion’s Tail. One could argue that a similar culture prevailed in the times Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about—yet in the Little House in the Big Woods and other books, the author doesn’t give a picture of children behaving perfectly. I think kids everywhere will find some ways to fly under the radar and make mischief.

3.) How do you feel about the reported tension between Eritrea and Ethiopia even now, given that it is not uncommon to read news stories about conflicts between the two countries?

Yes, it’s my impression, too, that the undercurrent of tension is still strong. After all, the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia existed—sometimes in a bubbling way, sometimes in a ferocious way—for more than thirty years. I am no expert on Eritrea, having only been a visitor there, myself (in the days when the Ethiopian boundaries included Eritrea). I was inspired to set Trouble in Eritrea because of Ethiopian-Eritrean friends who feel torn by their love of both countries. A former Eritrean classmate (and roommate) of my sister Cathy looked over both text and rough sketches before the book was published and caught some picture errors.


In 2005, I was asked to write a book for older children, teachers, and parents that would show how I have used my real life in my fiction and would also highlight some of the skills I learned and practiced over the years of becoming a published writer. Jane Kurtz and You is a book I’d love to see in every library where Ethiopian-American children go to school. It’s full of pictures and the true stories of my childhood, and I hope it will also inspire those children who struggle—like me—to know exactly where they belong and encourage them to write about their experiences, to try the approaches and techniques that helped me share my world.


However, it seems all good things come to an end. For a variety of reasons, big publishers became less and less able to take a chance on what’s often called “multicultural literature.” Pulling the Lion’s Tail, Trouble, Only a Pigeon, Jakarta Missing, The Feverbird’s Claw and Saba: Under the Hyena’s Foot all went out of print, something that happens whenever sales drop under a certain level in a given year. In some cases, I have a small stash of my own books; volunteers for Ethiopia Reads sell both Saba and Only a Pigeon on amazon.com. In other cases, I’ve scrambled to find copies. People pass along ideas of books they want me to write, but I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to publish an Ethiopia-connected book again. Sheer economics is not on my side. Thus, I often remind parents and teachers and librarians of Ethiopian-American children to be sure they buy the books of mine that are still around, since I’ve learned from bitter experience that any book, alas, can go out of print very suddenly.




In the meantime, I treasure all the contacts I’ve had with adoptive families and Ethiopian-American families who’ve written to say such things as, “My child fell asleep with his hand on your book every night.” Those who read and treasure my books feel like my extended family, a family I couldn’t survive (literally and emotionally) without.

Friday Friend or Family Feature: Guest Blogger Edition-Jane Kurtz, Part One: My magical, confusing Ethiopian-American childhood.

With World War II raging and sacrifice a word thousands of families were learning from the inside out, my father and his four brothers, each one in turn, left their family farm in the dry, sagebrush hills of eastern Oregon (a place that seemed so isolated my dad, as a boy, assumed he’d never even get to see the capital city of Oregon) and headed to Europe. My dad’s turn came when he was 18. Later, in an interview, he said, “When I came back, the world was on my heart.” Having seen a world at war, he thought there had to be a better way.


In Monmouth , Illinois , he met my mom at a small Presbyterian college, which he was able to attend thanks to the G.I. bill. On a recent author trip, the husband of my librarian hostess (a history buff) told me that as the original G.I. bill nearly stalled in Congress in 1944, presidents of major U.S. universities argued against it and the riff-raff that would flow into in the American college system if it passed. I’m sure my dad was more-or-less the type of riff-raff they had in mind. After graduating from college and a Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh , my dad—who was a challenged but motivated student--headed to Portland , Oregon . That’s where I was born.

During those years, a lot had been happening in Ethiopia . The emperor Haile Selassie had returned from exile to discover that the Italian occupation of his country had resulted in the wiping out of a generation of educated Ethiopians. This place--fiercely proud of its independence, a country that had long fought to keep outsiders out—began to invite outsiders in. TWA advisors and pilots came to help with what would become Ethiopian Airlines, often named one of the best airlines in Africa . Church groups also responded. Each was assigned a different section of Ethiopia and charged with starting schools and hospitals where none had ever been. The Presbyterians, who had already established the country’s first school for girls (in Addis Ababa), were asked to concentrate on part of southwest Ethiopia, a rugged area of multiple distinct ethnic groups and languages.

Someone in the United States heard about this opportunity and told my dad he’d be great in this kind of role—a storyteller, an idealistic but pragmatic person with lots of skills in patching things together and making them run. My dad agreed. He also saw a way to respond to the world on his heart. A family photo shows two-year-old me in chilly post-war England …on the way to Ethiopia …on a leash.


We landed in a capital city where hyenas provided garbage-control, skulking along the streets at night (as they still do) and where we trundled here and there on my dad’s bicycle or in a small, horse-drawn taxi called a gari. My mom had to figure out diapers for two toddlers, household necessities and food for all of us, and a hospital for the baby on the way. When my first little brother, died at four months—crib death, it was assumed—my parents’ neighbors and Amharic tutors came to simply sit, silently, in our living room. Ethiopian customs dictate that people should be not be left alone with their grief. Later, my father said it was a strong message that the people he had come to minister to would, in fact, minister to us.

I say I grew up in Maji, a magical place of fog and waterfalls, of frogs and fern-tips we picked and called our water babies, of mule trips and stories around the fire at night and bursts of music and spear-shaking dancing. Maji is where my mom taught me to read and to love books and words. It’s the place where I had Ethiopian playmates until I was about six or seven. After that, Ethiopian girls had to work in their own houses, not come to play, not go to the school my mom and dad helped with. It’s where—without television—I learned to invent games and act out stories with my siblings, eventually four sisters and one brother.


My childhood was really more complicated than that, though. It included two initial language-study years in Addis Ababa where I picked up Amharic from hearing it around me—and dashed in, during a rainstorm, to announce, “It’s zin-ah-bing..” It included two awkward trips to the United States (when I was 7 and when I was 13) where other kids asked, “Did you see Tarzan?” and where, in a New York City elevator, my sisters and I struggled to know how to answer the man who asked, “Where are you from?” (finally deciding the correct answer must be, “We’re from America ”). It also included five years in boarding school in Addis Ababa, where I loved getting the chance to have classmates, teachers (who were not my mother), and a library, but where I learned about pillow-crying at night and homesickness.


Even after I, too, trekked to college in Monmouth , Illinois , I didn’t lose the idea of Ethiopia as home until my parents left in 1977, three years after the Marxists overthrew the last emperor--His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, who had first invited my mom and dad (and others) in. During those mid-1970s years, I was a visitor, a question-er, someone still scrambling to find an answer to the question, “Where are you from?” Once my parents were back in Portland, Oregon , I tried to put Ethiopia away in a little memory box and simply learn how to be an American—a teacher, an aspiring writer, and a mom.

To be continued...

A Message From Jane Kurtz...

"Hi Julie,
I wanted to be sure you knew about this (article below), I believe in all my bones and cells that education of the next (or NEXT) generation is going to ultimately be the only way Ethiopians are going to start solving their country's problems. This is the most heroic person I know to come along to tackle the issue of literacy--and we've planted 16 libraries where children used to have no books. But we're also really on the edge because the more our donations grow, the more we try to DO things in Ethiopia. Please let everyone know to vote for Yohannes (it literally takes minutes--and people can vote more than once). We have volunteers who've mobilized schools and Girl Scout troops, and colleges, and churches and other organizations to vote, too. And will you ask people to consider even a small donation to Ethiopia Reads? We're on the edge of great things but it feels more like purely on The Edge :> Hope you might get to meet Yohannes in star-studded LA. Thanks! Jane"




Yohannes Gebregeorgis, a native of Ethiopia and children's literacy advocate, has been named a Top 10 Hero of the Year by CNN. Mr. Gebregeorgis was selected from more than 3,000 individuals nominated by viewers throughout the year. Finalists were selected by a Blue Ribbon panel of judges that includes Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall and Deepak Chopra. The Top 10 Heroes will be recognized in CNN's "All-Star Tribute" to air on Thanksgiving.

Yohannes was first recognized as a "hero" by CNN in May for his work championing children in Ethiopia.. A former political refugee who worked as a librarian at San Francisco Public Library, Yohannes is the co-founder of Ethiopia Reads, a non-profit organization that works to create a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books. In a country where 99% of schools have no libraries, Yohannes and Ethiopia Reads are improving lives, one book at a time.



Here is a cool video about Yohannes' Donkey Mobile Library...

For more on Ethiopia Reads go HERE.


For more on Jane Kurtz go HERE.



Jane has agreed to do some 'guest blogging' here. If you have any questions for her, please e-mail them to me!

I will post this over at Eyes on Books too.

Oh, and check out this inspirational family. I am in love with the Chilly Ethiopian family ! They are amazing.

Happy Monday!