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Sally Collier (Ethiopia 196264)
Monday, November 21 8:00 pm |
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Pamphlet announcing the Journals of Peace Instructions for vigil participants Vigil participants (alphabetically) |
I SERVED WITH the Peace Corps as a music teacher in Ethiopia with the first group to go there, from 196264. Geography, civil rights, music all those forms of education seemed trivial when I began to understand some of the essences of time. I stood in line at a bank for 15 minutes to get change for a dollar so I could put money in the parking meter. When I got to the front of the so-called line, I was informed they only changed bills for bills at that counter, and I would have to go there, pointing to another extremely long, amorphous line, to get loose change for my dollar bill. After enough of this kind of incident I began to wonder about the real value of efficiency anyway, what was I going to do with the time saved if I had been in the right line, and what could I do with the time I had to spend waiting again. Everyone else was talking to one another. No one was grumbling about inefficiency. It was a community of people being together while waiting for Godot, or at least for a few quarters. Time. I bought some wooden prayer beads from a shepherd in the Axum mountains. He wanted them for the next religious holiday, however, and did not want to give them to me right then. Somehow we negotiated that he would get them to the American Embassy in Addis and I would pick them up there. I forgot about the beads and the few dollars I had given the shepherd for them, when one day the Embassy left a message for me to pick up my package. The shepherd had waited for a bus going to Addis, hailed the bus, and given the beads wrapped in a newspaper with my name on it to the driver. How long he waited for the bus Ill never know. I do know that his honesty and commitment were more powerful than his need to get on with the next job. An old man was walking the streets of Addis, asking if anyone had seen his nephew Tadessa. Most people could not help him for they knew no Tadessa, but some asked for the last name, and asked where he was from, and asked where he was supposed to meet his nephew, and he said simply in Addis. When asked when the uncle had last seen his nephew, he said, Fifteen years ago, but they had promised to meet one day again. The Washington Post last week said we answer the question, Who are you, by identifying what we do. Would the man say I am the man looking for his nephew, or would we simply look into his eyes and see the belief and peace that transcends time, and momentarily join this man on his journey. For all the time I spent longing for the richnesses and delights of home, when I got there I found I was thrilled by three things besides family and friends: chocolate ice cream, enormous supermarkets, and the fact that people got out of the way of ambulances and fire trucks, instead of thronging into the streets to see what was going on. |
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