Mary and Sandy-

It's getting even more interesting to me. I'm not really doing the tourist thing but more revisiting, and it's not that clear how the world that's there now correlates with the world I left in 1968. There have been three major shifts in government, a massive drought or two. The capital city has mushroomed from 600,000 to over 4 million (Maine's largest city has less than 100,000).

At the same time I have leads to all kinds of interesting people, some directing economic development in rural areas, some academics, and some former students. There are plenty of wild cards in this deck!

I'll also probably pay a visit to the newly re-established Peace Corps office; the new volunteers are specialized in public health issues. My generation of volunteers were more focused on teaching in the secondary schools. The net effect of what we did was probably to shift the system from traditional old line British rote memorization to critical thinking; no one told us to do this but it was what we were hard-wired to do! We were also a large portion of the secondary teaching staff, almost a third of the teachers. For better or worse we had a major impact on the educational system.

So I enter a time machine of sorts next Tuesday, emerge in present day Ethiopia and try to sort out the changes. The results will not be particularly critical (nor dangerous) but they will be interesting, and in some ways amusing!

Besalam,
Charley Noble