Category: People I’ve known

Follow up on Mesfin of the ‘3 Teenagers’

boy's home
The home in which Mesfin grew up.

Mesfin, Tadessa and Solomon all have fascinating stories beyond what was written in A house full of teenagers. Mesfin was the first to come to us.

In countryside areas of Ethiopia birth certificates were not issued at that time when children were born. You could buy them and supply the details which you chose to have put on them. So it is a guess as to how old Mesfin was when he came to live with us. He didn’t know his birth date either, it not being the custom to celebrate birthdays; so we appointed my father’s birthday as his and guessed that he was maybe 16 or 17. I am writing this on his ’41st’ birthday! He was in grade 9 in the local high school. Schooling was for half a day – one group of students had classes in the morning and a second group had class in the afternoon. They alternated from morning to afternoon weekly. There were so many kids to be educated, and this arrangement allowed each school to double its intake! Mesfin was bright. He had a cocky, cheeky nature but was delightful and wanted to learn. His English became very good with an Australian accent. Continue reading “Follow up on Mesfin of the ‘3 Teenagers’” →

A house full of teenagers.

shopping

During a later overseas stint, although we had children of our own, they were by then all adults, and none of them were living with us. Fairly soon we took in 3 teenagers, let’s call them Mesfin,Tadessa and Solomon.

Mesfin and Tadessa  were cousins. They had families who lived about 400 meters apart and a kilometre or two from us. Once when we asked how close they had been growing up, they said ‘we used to dig one hole and go back to back’. They were good friends. Solomon was a double orphan.

How did we get them?

Mesfin had a much older half brother, who had left home, and a tribe of sisters. He had a gentle mother and a fiery father. He himself could get pretty hot headed. We already knew him because he gardened part time after school at a friend’s place. He used, from time to time, drop in for a chat. I think to get a drink and improve his English. One day he and his father had a real blow-up. Not fisty cuff wise but so intense that he walked out of the home. Later that day he stormed into our place, still seethingly angry, saying that he was going to live on the street.  Nobody should be street kids with all that implies. After some pretty stiff negotiating he became our first teenager. Later on we got to know his family and peace was made, but he stayed with us and one of the sisters became our cook. Mesfin is now the president of the bus drivers’ association of Addis Ababa, a city of about 8 million people; he is married with a small family. Continue reading “A house full of teenagers.” →

A little boy grows up

sunset

We can meet people in different and sometimes interesting ways. My wife and I met this person through a brother of his. The brother was ‘cheesed off’ because his mother had just delivered twins her twelfth and thirteenth children, and the family was already struggling. He was ‘cheesed off’ because his siblings kept tearing pages out of his school books for sanitary reasons. He was not the oldest but the only one of the siblings going to school, and the parents were talking about taking him out of school. Continue reading “A little boy grows up” →