Brother Roger - Still Crazy After All this Years

I was walking along the shores of Lake Hora in Debre Zeit (a modest resort town about 30 miles from the capital) when I bumped into Bro. Roger, my old geography teacher and hiking guide from the St. Joseph School.

He was with about 20 students from the brothers' school in Nazareth. He was watching over them as they tossed Frisbees. Roger still looked strong as an ox without an ounce of fat on his body. He looked about 55. His full head of hair is still mostly brown. Roger, who was born in Switzerland of French parents, turned 70-years-old on Feb. 16.

Roger is the bursar, the money man, at the school in Nazareth, a medium sized town about 50 miles from Addis. He is unhappy with the resources available to the school. Forty kids are jammed into most classes; 70 kids are squeezed into the seventh grade, he said. Don't ask about kindergarten classes, Roger said, because they are so large. Roger is also unhappy with the local officials who put up all type of obstacles for the school administrators. I asked Roger what made him stick it out here in Ethiopia for 40 years.

The people, he said. "There is one thing I want you to know about your country that you should never forget. Whether they are Catholics, Protestant or Muslim, Ethiopians have a deep spirituality in their lives. They pray, they know there is something outside the physical life. Even the poorest people here have that while in the West people have lost balance in their lives. If you die here, your whole neighborhood will take care of you. If you die in New York, forget it. Ethiopians are social people. They like to be with each other."

Roger was devoting his Saturday to the students because he said extra-curricular activities make a tremendous difference to children. "We now have Pichines and Pichinettes," Roger said, pointing out that girls are now accepted at the Catholic school. "Pichine" is a word he invented to describe his smaller-framed charges. There are more Pichinettes doing extracurricular activities because they're more "pushy," laughed Roger. Roger is still using the same shtick he used when I was one of his students. When he saw a couple of the students stepping on the Frisbee with their feet, he exploded, "What are doing there!!" he thundered. He then added, "BOP PEREE BOP PA BOP...!!" breaking up the kids in laughter with his nonsensical explosion. "See the reaction?" he said, his furrowed, weather-beaten face breaking into a wide grin.

Roger told me that he thought I was so well preserved that he thought I was one of his students who graduated five years ago, instead of nearly 20 years ago.