BY SOLOMON WASSIHUN
Goitom never ceases to amaze me. A man of many unexploited talents and an architecture school dropout, he makes ends meet by trading used household furniture. After sipping 3 glasses of beer, he usually swears he would have been excellent surgeon like Prof Asrat or Prof Mitiku, had he had the chance to study medicine.
“Doctor! That is what I am cut out for! Look how I give life to the old damn furniture!” Since he is the usual sponsor of the ‘beer garden feast’, none of us [his friends] dare to speak out against his eccentric views and claims.
Almost always, there is a faint smile on his beard riddled face. Even when his friends tease him about his Toyota Pickup which, they say, is twice as old as him, he just laughs it off and tries to hit back with funny comments. He cannot say enough about his wife.
He carries her picture in his wallet and is eager to show it off to customers or any stranger he strikes up a conversation with. Those features of his character remind me of Charlie Pride’s greatest hit song titled “Kiss an Angel Good Morning”.
He knows all corners of the capital city like the palm of his big hands. Where ever in Addis you may be, if you are in the company of Goitom, rest assured that you would dine and wine in the best place affordable. Among other things, he has introduced me to several backstreet unnamed specialized restaurants that usually serve only one type of traditional dishes tasting like home-cooked food: Ketfo, roasted lamb, fried goat, fried fish, and more.
It was Goitom who introduced me to my favorite traditional coffee house which I patronized for almost half a year now. I prefer the cramped traditional coffee houses, jebena buna, over the spacious high-end coffee shops, as I feel at home seeing the coffee-making ceremony with all its paraphernalia while enjoying the mystical aromatic mixture of the coffee fumes and frankincense smoke. Besides, I feel that both the owners and the helpers in jebena houses are more attentive and polite; they know many of their customers’ names; even most of the customers in the traditional coffee houses tend to be easier to talk to.
In this coffee house, I am a patron of, the owner of the house herself makes the coffee, assisted by two waiters always dressed in traditional white shema. There is also a small boy aged around 10, who is busy running errands and helping with minor physical works in the café. In addition to his service to the café owner, he also runs errands for us, the customers, bringing us things available at the nearby convenience store.
But last week I notice that the boy, Seyum, a relative to the café owner, has been absent from the café the whole week. When I inquired as to his whereabouts, I was told he, a 5th grader, has returned back to his parents to resume attending school. That was when I remembered what I heard in the evening news a few days earlier about the resumption of classes for pupils. I remembered also noticing, a few days ago, the slow return of the morning spectacle of pupils on the streets, which I missed for about eight months.
Before the advent of COVID 19, it was a common sight in the morning to see numerous pupils in uniforms marching to school. Unless I am late or have to get early due to special circumstances, I usually walk to the office. And to cover the 20 minutes walking distance, I leave home by 7:30. This gives me a chance to walk along with the segmented crowds of pupils on the narrow pedestrian walkways overhearing their silly jokes, funny slangs, and innocent conversations.
I have not met Seyum since school began. I wish I could ask him what does it feels like to be back to school after several months of absence. However, I am confident he is happy to attend school after such a long time because disadvantaged children like him that represent the majority of pupils in the nation are far better off spending much of their days in schools than elsewhere.
Basically, for Ethiopian children, over 80 percent of which is located in rural areas, schools are not just places of learning. They are places of sanctuary and freedom for children where they spend a considerable portion of the day enjoying in the company of their peers.
It is a place for children where they are temporarily free from household works or even exhausting and hazardous outdoor works in a family business. Some children are expected to supplement the family income by making money during their off-school hours doing menial jobs.
Studies conducted a decade ago indicated that over 80 percent of Ethiopian children aged 5 – 17 years were involved in economic or housekeeping activities that prevented or impeded school attendance or performance. But thanks to concerted efforts made by the government and civic societies [both the indigenous and overseas] things have now improved considerably. But still, there is a lot of work that needs to be done.
Children would be vulnerable to face physical and sexual abuse by members of their community when they spend more time away from the relatively better safety and protection of their school. The unusual
spike in crime reports regarding child molestation, as well as the rising cases of child marriage in rural areas during the school closure periods due to the Coronavirus pandemic, can be considered as evidence for the vulnerability of children to abusive experience when staying away from school for long periods.
The other challenge, undernourishment, is a major public health problem in Ethiopia. A study indicated that, in 2015, about 31 percent of the school children were undernourished out of which 19.6 percent were stunted, 15.9 percent underweight. With the increased incidents of manmade and natural disasters, the aforementioned figures could worsen now even further.
The absence of children from school would also mean they cannot benefit from the school feeding program, an important undertaking by the government authorities that have been launched in recent years and has already made a huge difference in the lives and education of children that benefited from the program. So there is no question about the critical importance of investing in schools, making them better refuges for children, and ultimately generate a lasting impact that can shape the future of our society.
While we are happy to see the return of school children back to their safe haven, we have also strong concern over the recent report of the worsening situation of the Coronavirus in the country. If the virus spread is progressively exacerbated, and a second wave of the pandemic occurs as seen in other countries, there is a potential for school children’s condition to regress back to where it was months ago where schools would be forced to be closed again, dashing the renewed hope millions of children to return to normalcy.
To avert such dreadful scenarios, schools across the nation are implementing the COVID-19 preventative protocols with all the resources available. Local communities are actively involved in the efforts to ensure the effective implementation of COVID-19 prevention protocols and keep schools open for children. We expect community associations and civic societies to pay due attention and contribute their share to support schools in their neighborhoods with the right to control the spread of the pandemic.
Making schools a safe, comfortable, and delightful place for children is not a task that is to be left entirely to government authorities. Everything we see today in the nation’s politics and socioeconomics is significantly affected by the education policies and strategies and actions implemented in schools over the past decades. What we do in our schools today would hugely determine the future survival and success of the nation in realizing its potentials, hopes, and aspirations in a generation’s time.
Few weeks after the reopening of schools, colleges in various regions also have reopened their doors to their graduating students last week. The remaining students are expected to follow suit soon. These moves serve as a testimony to the nation’s resilience and determination to carry on with implementing its development goals, no matter what hurdle, natural or manmade, it encounters on its way.
The Ethiopia Herald December 20/2020
