Checking my voice mail a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving 07, I was startled to hear a voice I immediately recognized, even though I had last heard it over 40 years ago:  “Mr. Eadie, I am your former TMS student, Tariku Belay.  I am living in Minneapolis and hope you will call me."  What a rush of emotion I felt.  Tariku Belay and two other students had lived with me and my Peace Corps housemates for three years in the mid-sixties in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  They were students at Tafari Makonnen School, where my housemates and I taught.  Tariku and I parted in 1967, when I returned to the States for graduate school and Tariku began his senior year at TMS.  His photo on my bookcase, along with a flask made from animal horn – his parting gift – helped keep him fresh in my memory.

Tariku and I corresponded now and then for two years or so after my returning to the States, and then fell out of touch.  Ethiopia, you might recall, descended into a dark period in the seventies.  Emperor Haile Selassie, “Lion of Judah, King of Kings,” was overthrown in a military coup and eventually executed, and the brutal Mengistu regime came to power not long afterward.  From news accounts and talking with the occasional Ethiopian I met in the States, I was aware that thousands of students died during this sad era in Ethiopian history.  Hearing nothing from Tariku as the years passed, I assumed that he had fallen victim to the regime.  Until November 2007, that is.

When I returned Tariku’s call that evening, I learned that he was teaching high school math in the Minneapolis Public Schools and planning to begin graduate work in spring 08.  He had, he said, searched for me in his early (pre-internet) days in the States, but eventually gave up.  I also learned that his being alive, much less doing professional work and living comfortably in the States, was nothing short of a miracle.  Imprisoned for over a year in Addis (“Life didn’t seem worth living,” he told me), Tariku managed to escape, went underground in Addis for several weeks, moving from home to home just ahead of the police, and then walked for several days and nights to Sudan, where he lived for four years before coming to the States as a political refugee. 

My wife Barbara and I are looking forward to Tariku’s visit this coming summer, when we plan to invite several friends to our home to meet Tariku and hear his dramatic story, and also to learn a bit about Ethiopia.  I’ll let you know how the reunion goes.

One more thing.  My former student became my teacher only a couple of days after our telephone reunion, when I flew to Chicago to facilitate an association board retreat.  The board meeting went quite well, but the trip was anything but pleasant.  Arriving at O’Hare two hours late, I was already tired and irritated when I checked into my hotel downtown, only to find that there wasn’t any telephone service in the room.  Unpacking in my new room an hour later, I found that the heat wasn’t working (in November!).  When the heating unit was finally repaired, and I sat down to a room service sandwich, it was midnight, and my meeting the next morning was to begin at 7 a.m.  Exhausted and frazzled, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself – until, that is, Tariku’s amazing odyssey came to mind.  “Give it a break,” I said to myself, “quit whining and just appreciate how privileged your life has been:  a lovely wife, a comfortable home on the water, work that you love – and all of this achieved without anything remotely close to the kind of suffering that Tariku went through.”  I fell asleep feeling truly blessed, thanks to Tariku’s incredible story.  It will be so good to see him again and let him know how the student has educated his teacher.