"ARE THEY TOYS?"

We visited 4 schools today to see about putting Nati and possibly Lydia in school. The classes are taught in Tigrinya, but the teachers understand English and can supplement the children's learning in English for their benefit. The main motivation would not be academic, but rather to give them the best chance to learn Tigrinya and make friends with other Ethiopian children. We are not sure yet what we will do, but what happened today at the last school was quite funny. We were coming out of the school with our taxi driver, Kibrom, who is a funny guy and speaks relatively good English, so he translates well for us when we go places. We usually contract him to drive us for an hour or two at 50 birr per hour ($6 US)when we need to do errands that are farther than 2 miles away. As we got into the car, a small neighborhood boy who was part of the many kids watching our actions closely (again, a common event) said something to Kibrom. Then Kibrom acted shocked, said some words to the boy in Tigrinya which we couldn't understand, then shooed the boy off to his house. Then Kibrom busted out laughing and could hardly compose himself. We begged to know what had happened so Kibrom enlightened us. "He said to me about your children, "Are they toys.for the school children? Are they toys?" Kibrom had scolded the boy, telling him what an embarrassment his naivety was to Mekelle, and sending him home. Our family thought it was absolutely hilarious. We knew we were a rarity in these parts.but to think that someone wondered if our kids were even the same species.that was really cute.