Jane Kurtz -- Trip to Ethiopia

What Does a Book Do?

Article index

What Does a Book Do?

Books Offer Adventure

Getting Ready to Go

The Workshop

Nearing the End

People tend to answer quickly when I ask. It imparts knowledge. It teaches facts. It offers skills.

My father’s reading taught him how to install a mill in Maji that used the power of thundering water to grind grain.

This power replaced the back-aching power of thin arms—women’s arms, girls’ arms—rubbing stone on stone, trapping kernels and slowly breaking them down. The mill worked fast, filling the air with floating particles and the smell of flour.
One day, I stood with my head tipped back, swallowing my heart back down my throat, watching my father dangle from the cliff beside the waterfall. That night, and every night after, my father’s ability to read combined with the power from thundering water gave us the gift of electricity. Now we no longer had to read our good night stories to the fuzzy glow of kerosene lanterns but clicked a switch to have light.

Decades before in Ethiopia, the advisors to King Menelik had watched skeptically as the first faucet in Addis Ababa, Menelik’s new capital, was turned. Bursts of air coughed and sputtered. Then…behold! “See what a great king we have,” one advisor said. “This king can even command water to flow uphill.”
Because my father knew how to read, he, too, knew how to command water. When we first moved to Maji when I was four, water had arrived on the backs of donkeys plodding from the river. After my father read the right book, it was pumped uphill by an energetic little machine we called “the ram.”
My sisters and I tagged after my father to the river every time the ram clogged, which was often.

King Menelik
As Daddy worked to remove the leaves, we stuck our hands into the spot where a thin stream of water shot out and stung our palms, making us jump and then giggle. The specifics of how the machine worked? Like Menelik’s advisors, I was happily content to leave that up to my fix-everything father.
In fact, frankly, I’d have preferred the answer to be “magic,” anyway. For me, books were far more than fact-receptacles. I always heard them calling and took the bait, diving deep, the hook fixed quickly into my skin. They slid me away to grand worlds I’d never touched with my real fingertips. Real worlds faraway. Imaginary worlds. Worlds that had once existed and no longer did.

(cont inued)

	What Does a Book Do?
Article index What Does a Book Do? Books Offer Adventure Getting Ready to Go The Workshop Nearing the End		People tend to answer quickly when I ask. It imparts knowledge. It teaches facts. It offers skills. My father’s reading taught him how to install a mill in Maji that used the power of thundering water to grind grain.
This power replaced the back-aching power of thin arms—women’s arms, girls’ arms—rubbing stone on stone, trapping kernels and slowly breaking them down. The mill worked fast, filling the air with floating particles and the smell of flour. One day, I stood with my head tipped back, swallowing my heart back down my throat, watching my father dangle from the cliff beside the waterfall. That night, and every night after, my father’s ability to read combined with the power from thundering water gave us the gift of electricity. Now we no longer had to read our good night stories to the fuzzy glow of kerosene lanterns but clicked a switch to have light.
Decades before in Ethiopia, the advisors to King Menelik had watched skeptically as the first faucet in Addis Ababa, Menelik’s new capital, was turned. Bursts of air coughed and sputtered. Then…behold! “See what a great king we have,” one advisor said. “This king can even command water to flow uphill.” Because my father knew how to read, he, too, knew how to command water. When we first moved to Maji when I was four, water had arrived on the backs of donkeys plodding from the river. After my father read the right book, it was pumped uphill by an energetic little machine we called “the ram.” My sisters and I tagged after my father to the river every time the ram clogged, which was often.
King Menelik	As Daddy worked to remove the leaves, we stuck our hands into the spot where a thin stream of water shot out and stung our palms, making us jump and then giggle. The specifics of how the machine worked? Like Menelik’s advisors, I was happily content to leave that up to my fix-everything father. In fact, frankly, I’d have preferred the answer to be “magic,” anyway. For me, books were far more than fact-receptacles. I always heard them calling and took the bait, diving deep, the hook fixed quickly into my skin. They slid me away to grand worlds I’d never touched with my real fingertips. Real worlds faraway. Imaginary worlds. Worlds that had once existed and no longer did.