Reasons To Rhyme

How abba and Humpty Dumpty helped me teach English in Ethiopia

- Aida Edemariam

THE SUMMER JOB wasn’t a rite of passage when I was growing up. Ethiopia in the eighties had a communist command economy, for one thing — jobs were scarce, government issued, and often held for life. Food was rationed and clothing basic, so there were no clothing chains or McDonald’s or any of the other places where Canadian teens typically find work. And summer — well, it was the rainy season, meaning there was a storm ( usually with thunder, sometimes with hail) nearly every day. All I wanted to do was hunker down, read stacks of Agatha Christies, and wait for the sun to return.