Thursday, March 28, 2013

Mohammed: An Ethiopian Person Profile



Mohammed
An Ethiopian person profile

Mohammed was the first person we met in our town Alemgena. He was a teacher at the local      kindergarden. Like many Ethiopian teachers, he did not stay in one town for very long. When he recently got a better job at another school closer to his hometown he left our little wheat farming town. We will greatly miss his company here.
To me, he typifies the local young Muslim man: very affectionate, proud, devout, and longing to go to America. He was the only person in our compound who spoke any English. He helped guide us around town and thus people referred to us as “his foreigners”. He loved to play the card game UNO and could play for hours strait, sometimes he even lost on purpose to prolong the games and I would have to force him to leave.
After the first time we met he sent me a text message saying “how are you, I love you”. I learned later that this is something male friends commonly say to each other (as well as holding hands in public). He listened to music videos on his cell phone with the volume turned to maximum and wondered why I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the music.
He was a talented artist and his painting inspired us to do our Africa map at the school. The day before we were to begin our map he offered to carry our paint to the school, so I let him. The next day I was sick and one day delayed in arriving at the school and during this time he used most of my paint to cover a good portion of the school with his murals (I discovered the hard way that he is a very fast painter). 
He was not shy about bragging about his personal character being “higher” than another teachers’. And he would never admit to not knowing something, if he didn’t know he would still make something clever up. It always amused me.
Mohammed is now 23 and unmarried and constantly joked (I think he was joking) about marrying every attractive woman he saw. Thankfully he did not ask to marry Jill. ;-). We hope he will find a wife or two someday soon. 
 

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