Ethiopian Visitors Rock Cleveland

This past week was very busy at work since we have a delegation of eleven people from Ethiopia visiting the campus. They are here to learn about American business and American education so they can go back and train their own business owners and students about ways to be successful. In the past, the delegations consisted only of two or three people and no women. This time there are four women in the group which makes it more interesting. One is only 22 while the others are probably fifteen and twenty years older than that.

The men are college professors at Addis Ababa University and business leaders. One named Johannus is the president of the Ethiopian Employers Federation, kind of a chamber of commerce for the country. He is interested in doing his PhD in Business at my college. Another is a teacher at AAU and requested a copy of my textbook to bring back to Ethiopia! Does that mean I am now an internationally known author? Maybe.

I went to an evening reception in their honor on campus on Wednesday night and the event was catered by an Ethiopian restaurant with authentic food. With my delicate constitution, I was a little leery of that, but the food was delicious! Later we learned from a woman named Seble that to her taste, the food was terrible—not authentic at all. It wasn’t prepared properly and the correct spices were not used. Now it would seem that I have fallen in love with bad Ethiopian cuisine.

This reception was my first chance to meet them all, so it was a little awkward at first, and kind of formal. We were impressed when some of them got up to address the group about one topic or another and bowed first to the assembly before they started orating. Johannus talked about their goals for the visit, Seble talked about the status of women in Ethiopia, a man named Alemseger talked about the recent history of his country, recounting the damage done by seventeen years of a communist government that came to power in the ‘70’s. When Johannus pronounced “Ethiopia” to my ear it sounded like “Utopia”, which I found quite amusing, though I did not share this insight with anyone else. Seble remarked that the membership of their legislature is about 30% women.

There was yet another party at my boss’ house—he and his wife put on a dinner for everyone and Kathy and I attended. This time was more fun because it was more informal, with some of us in jeans. I sat with Alemseger for a while and he seemed fascinated with Paul’s neighborhood. There were some African American kids, ranging in age from maybe ten to eighteen in the yard across the street. Alemseger said, “That looks like it could be one big family.” I didn’t know who they were so I said, sure. “Are there many accidents here? It looks dangerous for the kids to play on the sidewalk like that.” I said, well, you try to teach the kids to stay out of the street. He said, “But the ball—they will chase the ball into the street.” Yes, I suppose they could. He couldn’t get over that.

Kathy was a little apprehensive about going, but I told her that she would love them and they would love her, and it turned out to be just as I had predicted. She made a friend of everyone there. One of the younger guys, Yaschilal, asked her if she had another daughter that he could marry. Apparently he wants a green card.

He and I got into a discussion of capitalism, somehow. When he was growing up, the only thing he knew was what the communist government had told him. Even though they are gone now, he still carries images of the treacherous capitalists stealing from children--the posters he saw as a child. We were interrupted at that point, to go in for dinner, so we'll have to pick that up next time.

There was an older woman who sat between us at dinner, and Kathy kind of bonded with her, as well. Later, our host, told us privately that the woman had confessed to him that she was “not welcoming”, I guess she meant she was not outgoing. I had wondered if she was feeling well, since she seemed so withdrawn. She also turned out to be a very nice person.

They all invited us to Ethiopia, so who knows? Maybe we’ll go there some day. I mentioned to Seble that we were considering going on a cruise that stopped in Alexandria, Egypt. Earlier we had been talking about how the famous skeleton of “Lucy” had been found in Ethiopia, the oldest evidence of human life. She pointed out that Alexandria is located at the mouth of the Blue Nile, which has its source in—you guessed it—Ethiopia.