Last year I had a student who I absolutely adored. For the sake of his privacy, I won't name him here. Suffice to say, he has a very common
name, but that was pretty much the only thing common about this kid. He was brilliant. He was one of the top kids in a class of test
taking dynamos, and, if I recall correctly, he ended term one with a perfect
score. He was always ready to
participate and came up with very creative, thoughtful answers to any question
I asked him. He challenged the others in
that class and made them better students as a result. He was my good kid who I could lean on to get
that class fired up and ready to learn. Not only was he academically bright, but he
also had this energy about him, like he was going somewhere with his life, and
nothing was going to get in the way of that.
Also, if you’ve ever heard me
tell the story of the kid who menaced a middle-schooler who was about to harass
me on the street, that was a story about him.
Towards the end of the first term, I noticed that he was getting
a little quieter and started missing some classes. This was true for a lot of my students, so I
didn’t think much of it at the time.
Then he missed the final due to “illness” and had to take a makeup exam
to pass the class. When second term started,
he was nowhere to be found, and no one could tell me where he went. When I brought up this sudden disappearance
of one of my best students to my Program Manager at Peace Corps, he told me
that sometimes these things just happen in Ethiopia, mostly due to family
problems. It made me sad to lose such a
good kid who seemed to have such a bright future in front of him, but there
wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Fast forward to last week.
I was milling around school on my first day back (classes had officially
started, but there weren’t enough kids there to start in on real classes), when
suddenly a kid walks up behind me and says, “Hi, teacher Jessie.” I turned around, and, to my complete
surprise, it’s him again. He looked a
little harried and worse for the wear. I
welcomed him back to the school, and we sat down to talk for a while.
It turned out that my PM had been right when he said that
the dropout was due to a family issue.
To the best of my understanding, this was what had happened. His mother had gotten ill during the end of
the first term, and had actually passed away from the illness during the
inter-semester break. His father was
already dead, so this left him and his younger sister orphans. He’d dropped out of my school and moved back
to his hometown Debra Guracha so that he could help support his sister in her
studies. (Note: It’s really common for
kids in Ethiopia to either live on their own or with members of their extended
family starting from their high school years.
The reason is the many towns do not have high schools, especially in the
rural areas.) He’d enrolled in the
school there so that he could finish the 11th grade. Now that his sister was situated with one of
their family members back in their hometown, he’d returned to Fitche to finish
the 12th grade.
When he finished his story, needless to say I was
stunned. I couldn’t imagine going
through a loss like that at his age and still having the fortitude to go on
like he had. He’d gone back home to
support his younger sister so that she could continue her studies. This from a young man who’d grown up in a
culture that, generally speaking, does not value girls’ education. Even given this new pressure of looking after
his sister with no mother or father in the picture, he’d still kept up with his
studies. Wow.
A lot of my students don’t really seem to value their
education. I know a lot of them probably
are not going to go on past the 12th grade. It’s disheartening, and sometimes makes you
feel like you’re throwing all your effort and energy on wasted ground. Then you have the ones like Tesfaye who are
going to pursue it no matter what hardship and tragedy they face. I guess that the best way to put it is to say
that I feel humbled, and I’m going to give this last year my all because of the
kids like him.
~Jessie
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