Technically, I am still in Africa. I am somewhere over the Sahara desert.  I can see it from the window of my plane.  It is a vast expanse of uninhabitable land.  From the air, it looks as barren as my soul feels.  By the time I post this however, I will be either in Europe or the United States.

On my last day in Africa, all the difficulties that I had there in the past couple of weeks seemed to converge and I went through the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.  One of the horses had died in the middle of road, it was New Year’s Eve, my internet didn’t work and I was missing my family dreadfully so I went to the internet café, ready to talk to my family and friends, ready to leave Ethiopia.  There was a lot of revelry on the street because of the New Year’s holiday. There were men in traditional African dress with sticks, jumping and singing and dancing…the soul of Africa.  It was wonderful and at that moment, I thought my doubts and misconceptions were unfounded.  I thought that the celebration was enough to sustain me through the pain of the dead horse and the lack of access to my family, but it wasn’t.

On the way home as I walking by myself down a deserted section of sidewalk between the café and my apartment, I heard a sound from behind me that didn’t register and at the same time a man swerved near me.  At first I thought the man was just drunk, imbibing too much on the holiday, but he wasn’t.  He was completely naked even to the point of being minus any shoes. I thought it might be someone playing a joke on The Ferengi woman.  After he went past me, I realized that it wasn’t just that he was naked but also his hands were tied behind his back at his forearms.  It looked extremely painful.  My heart leapt to my throat as I tried to figure out what to do. I kept thinking it was a joke or maybe even an attempt to get me to stop to rob me.  I couldn’t quite get my head around why his arms were tied behind his back. He kept swerving near me.  I heard the sound again as someone yelled and it finally registered to me what the sound I kept hearing was…the sound of a whip. That was why the man kept swerving toward me, not to poke fun at me but because, near me, the naked man was safe. No one was going to whip someone with a ferengi nearby who would possibly get whipped too.  I didn’t know what to do. I was a white woman, unfamiliar with the customs, not speaking the language, and not understanding if this was something that was cultural that I shouldn’t interfere in or if it was staged to catch me off guard or maybe if a crime was taking place. I didn’t know.  All I knew was that if I stopped and turned, I would be faced with a man with a whip.

Because I was so upset by it, I did what seemed right to me in that moment and crossed to the other side of the road. The naked man ran that way too and stayed with me, loping along as well he could with his hands tied behind his back.  The man with the whip started yelling louder.  His yelling combined with my obvious upset caught the attention of three men standing on the corner where I needed to turn to go to my apartment. One of them started yelling.  When he did, the naked man, who had never uttered a sound, went back toward the middle of the road where the median was. He did seem to be limping on his bare feet and couldn’t go very fast with his arms pinned behind his back. He was a young man, probably early twenties.  He seemed to be scared but that might be my own fears projected onto him. His silence was deafening and it condemned me.

My shame in the whole experience was that I did nothing … and it makes me sick.  I don’t speak the language so I could not tell what they were yelling to him, I was the only female around and the only ferengi  (foreigner).  I was scared. So I did nothing…I just crossed the road to where other people were.  A man was being driven down the street naked by a man with a whip and I DID NOTHING.  And the truth is, in my life with all its hardship, I have never been so close to total insanity where I just wanted to start yelling at the top of my lungs to get them to STOP.  It was a surreal moment of madness. At that moment, I was broken.  

I am sad to say I wasn’t strong enough to do the job that Ethiopia needed me to do.  I lied awake most of the night and have cried most of the way to Europe. I had wanted to make a difference in the lives of Ethiopian children with my understanding of math education and technology.  I wanted to learn and grow as a human being from the wonderful people I met like Dawit and Baruk.  I had hoped I could give back to all the people who have given so much to me and helped me on the journey of my life.  I wanted to pay it forward.  Instead, I am on a plane back to the US.  I failed. I will have the images of that dead horse, of the beggars with unspeakable deformities that medical science could easily treat if they had access, and of a naked man with bound arms being driven down the road with a whip…I will have those images with me for the rest of my life. They are seared on my soul.  And all the while…I could do nothing.

I was hoping that Africa would heal the wounds in my soul. Instead, Africa opened the wounds of my youth, my marriage, and the subsequent exploitation of my marriage therapist.  Now those wounds feel open and raw, like festering, weeping sores.  Africa ripped the bandage off them and exposed the infected remnants my soul.  So I am going home, to heal, to try to find peace, and to figure out what to do with the last third of my life.

I will leave the work in Ethiopia to those who are stronger.  I leave it to Jen, Ellen, Panos, Dawit, and all the other teachers who keep the idea going.  I am sorry I wasn’t stronger or ready for the experience I was thrust into.  I just wasn’t strong enough or the woman you needed me to be.  It wasn’t the right time of my life.  I am sorry for failing you.