Letters from my Father
“By the way, a little idealism will go a long way in this world, or at least a bit more is needed.”
A few days back, my mom handed me a large manila envelope. I opened the fold and poured the contents on to the table. It felt like touching an elusive history. Usually lost. Seldom remembered. Infinitely valuable.
It was a stack of letters my father wrote 50 years ago from Ethiopia. The letters were written to one of my dad’s dearest friends. Many were sent “par avion” post — you know, the green and blue thin paper that folds into an envelope to travel the seas and arrive hopefully in four weeks…or never. The paper is beautiful and fragile, and has delicate Amharic script and stamps of Haile Selassie in the top right corner. The words inside are intimate, caring, irreverent and bit philosophical.
For those of you who don’t know me, my dad passed away many years ago. He died young — if you consider late-40s “young.” I do. He left behind my 12-year-old brother and me, who was eight at the time. The experience of losing my dad tore me apart and built me into the person I am today. I grieved, I cursed the injustice (lots of pre-teen angst), I aspired to be like him, I admired my resilient and loving mother, and most of all, I carried on. As anyone who has ever lost someone you can’t imagine living without knows, that’s what we do. We carry on.
I have recently moved to Nairobi, Kenya. So, reading my father’s reflections upon moving to Addis Ababa, 970 miles to the north, is particularly poignant. As I read, I can almost pretend that these letters were addressed to me — that my father and I are having a conversation about our new experiences living in East Africa. After law school in 1966, my dad joined the Peace Corps (only 5 years after the program was founded) and served as a legal advisor in the Ethiopian Ministry of Commerce and Industry. I have recently left San Francisco, and I’m now working on energy, infrastructure and sustainable urbanization in East Africa.
Even the simple parallels stand out: he talks about how learning Amharic is challenging and fun, as I struggle to learn Swahili and have similar reactions. In June 1967, he writes of the endless heavy rains, “Every day, wet shoes, cloudy skies.” I can relate. This year in Kenya, we’ve experienced the heaviest rains in 55 years! More fundamentally, he questions how to immerse himself in a new culture and how to be useful — questions I’m asking myself today.
In reading these letters, I learned a few things about my father.
My dad was striving to make a difference, and tortured himself a bit in the process
As a sign of the times, if my father hadn’t joined the Peace Corps, he would certainly have been drafted into the Vietnam War. Upon sending his acceptance letter to the Peace Corps, he writes about the opportunity to do meaningful work and contribute to something he feels the US “has a duty to perform which it is failing to meet, and the chance to learn about yourself and the world around you.” But, he struggles to reconcile his choice with the obligation to serve in Vietnam — a war he didn’t believe in, but he thinks of all the men like him who didn’t support the war, but “have made great sacrifices all the same.”
Many of the letters from Addis ponder whether he’s having an impact. He really struggled and beat himself up about it — questioning whether he was accomplishing anything for Ethiopia, wondering if he was just cheap labor in the Ministry. While he was writing new legislation and legal briefs for the government, he queries whether working on rural poverty wouldn’t be more fulfilling.
He seemed to be working very hard, but pondered the utility. “Things have been really busy here lately. That may be good for if one is given enough time, he may begin to wonder what, if anything, he is accomplishing. That could be fatal.”
My dad was wise
Many of the letters are a dialogue between my father and his friend, Rodger, about big life choices. He speaks of “the frantic quest for a ‘successful’ life,” and he pushes his friend with kind candor about orthodox definitions of success, of meaning. I know it’s easy to glorify the dead, but I see wisdom in his words. He tells his friend, “It’s almost as if you’re torn between your own definition and society’s — as if, almost, you are playing society’s game or playing by its touchstone and yet not quite sure if you’re comfortable in it.” At another point, he says, “I had a feeling that you might be looking outside yourself for an answer you can only find within, something I occasionally feel.” When telling his friend not to let money and stability be the main driver of his career decision, my father writes, “By the way, a little idealism will go a long way in this world, or at least a bit more is needed.” This reminds me of countless conversations I’ve had with my dearest friends about how to build a meaningful life.
At times, my dad got more philosophical. He read Hermann Hesse’s “Siddartha,” a book that affected me greatly during my days living in India 10 years ago. He reflects how, to truly understand the world, “one must experience, make up his own mind, however costly that experience may be. And a really deep understanding of life and mankind, this whole ‘little adventure upon the earth’ as Wolfe calls it, so often can only follow a really deep hurt.”
My dad was an adventurer
In his letters, my dad muses about East Africa travel plans, including trips to Mogadishu and Juba. He plans to do a trip in Sudan down the Nile by “paddlewheeler.” But, he later says that’s “unlikely — much trouble in Southern Sudan.” I’m sorry to say that trouble continues. In 1968, he traveled from Addis Ababa to Cape Town, “hitchhiking most of the way.”
In postcards from India, after his service with Peace Corps ended, he says, “Travel is damn good for posing a lot of basic questions about development, the best way, the more just way, the kind of society man should really try to cultivate.” Reading these words, I feel a wave of sadness for all the conversations my father and I didn’t get a chance to have. And, I imagine the type of adventures we might have gone on together.
“Travel is damn good for posing a lot of basic questions about development, the best way, the more just way, the kind of society man should really try to cultivate.”
My dad was funny
Upon return to the US, in 1969, he writes, “By the way, this country is screwed up — more than when I left. Have you been sloughing off?” I’m glad he isn’t seeing the US in its current state!
My dad often joked about his romantic life. In Addis, he lamented about the slow social life. “It’s times like this that could drive a guy into foolish decisions like getting married.” After returning from Ethiopia and taking the bar exam, he volunteered on a civil rights project in Jackson, Mississippi. His last letter closes, “P.S. Start gathering up the honies for me in DC. 5 foot 4in.-6in. Long hair. Socially committed. Hippy in spirit but not in reality.” (Did you catch that my dad said, “honies!?”) I personally think my mom fits that bill pretty perfectly!
What to make of all of this?
These letters bring a feeling of connection and sense of identity towards a father that I didn’t truly know, in the deeper sense of knowing someone (how well can an eight-year-old know anyone?). When I read these letters, I see much of myself — the striving for impact and meaning, the questioning of humanity, the desire for adventure. Is this really some special connection and inheritance that I have from my father? Or is this just what we look for, seeking a connection or pattern, our mind playing tricks on us — the way we see ourselves in the generic platitudes of magazine horoscopes? I guess I will never know for sure.
As I finish reading my father’s last letter, I wonder what he would think of Addis today. How much has it changed, or hasn’t. Ethiopia has been though decades of political and economic turmoil and, most famously, famine. But, in the last 20 years, Ethiopia has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It’s beautiful and endlessly complex — strong growth, ancient culture, ethnic tensions and a controlling government.
Addis recently completed a light rail for metro transport, a source of great pride and some controversy. I would have liked to ride around on its elevated tracks with my father and hear about the city that once was.
