Trip to Ethiopia gets grounded

By JACK RONALD
The Commercial Review
I am not going to Ethiopia.
Ordinarily, that would be a bit like announcing that I am not going to the moon.
But Ethiopia — unlike the moon — was in the cards for awhile.
It started back in August, and it started — as it usually does — with an email.
Would I be interested in taking on a six-week project working with newspapers in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Specialist? That was the question.
If interested, I was to prepare a two-page proposal outlining how I’d spend the time to the best advantage for Ethiopia, its newspapers, and U.S. policy in the Horn of Africa.
The prospect was intriguing, but I had to admit my track record with the Fulbright Specialist program has been mixed, to say the least.
While I feel I was productive and useful in Burma/Myanmar for four weeks in 2012, it was while I was on a Fulbright Specialist project in Kyrgyzstan in 2009 that I was deported, booted out of the country on arrival, thanks to a post-Soviet blacklist.
So, at best, I’m batting .500.
But Ethiopia was not only a new country but a new continent when it came to the journalism development work that I’ve stumbled into.
I did what any resident of Jay County would do under the circumstances: I emailed the Hudson family.
Barry, Elizabeth, Aaron and Mary Hudson have made more journeys to Ethiopia than 99.9 percent of the populace will make in a lifetime. They’ve helped build and equip schools, they’ve developed lasting relationships and they represent a deep well of practical advice.
And Barry’s advice was simple: Go.
It’s a fascinating country, and the people are wonderful, he said. Go.
A few days later, I put together a proposal for the project, though I had some misgivings.
The U.S. Embassy wanted a six-week commitment. For me, that’s a week too long, maybe two.
I’ve been doing this sort of work off and on for 15 years now, but for the most part I’ve been able to keep things limited to two weeks or three or four or five.
The only time I did a six-week project, back in 1999, my first words when I met my wife at the airport in Dayton were, “Never again.”
It’s just too long away from her, from family, from hearth and home, from the newspaper, from my co-workers and even from the headaches that come with trying to put out a daily newspaper in America in the 21st century.
So I proposed a five-week project. They were looking at January, a time that Barry Hudson assured me is optimum for Ethiopia, and the idea of getting out of the Midwest in January has enormous appeal.
The idea, which I thought looked good, was to work with a series of weekly newspapers as an embedded member of their staff, doing some consulting and in-service training for a week, then writing a report with specific recommendations for that paper. Then I’d repeat the entire process with another paper the next week, and so on and so on.
Re-reading my proposal, I thought it sounded pretty good. But I could find a few spots where I might have been stepping on some toes, maybe at the embassy and maybe at the host organization.
That could be what did me in. I received word last week that I’m not the guy they’re looking for to work with newspapers in Ethiopia.
I’m a little disappointed, but I’m okay with that.
After all, there’s always the moon.[[In-content Ad]]