Mohammed
An Ethiopian person
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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.
