By Pat Lawrence
Janie Wetzel |
Janie Wetzel had a plan for her life, but stories don’t always
end the way they begin. “There were two things I promised myself
I’d never be –a schoolteacher and an old maid,”
she says with a smile and no hint of regret. “Life has been
exciting for me but I ended up as both.”
Raised in Florida, Janie traveled to Texas to attend the Dallas Bible
Institute and become a missionary.” When Janie’s application
for the Sudan Interior Mission was accepted, she packed her bags for
Africa. It took thirteen weeks to get her visa for Ethiopia. “We
took a cargo freighter. The crossing took three weeks. We’d
go ashore when they unloaded so I got to see parts of the world I’d
never have seen.” One stop was the Holy Land. Even fifty years
ago, Janie could feel the enmity of Arabs and Jews just walking down
the street.
“We were a small group, and naïve. I struck up a friendship
with the second mate. It was the first time I’d ever spoken
to someone with no love for America. I was shocked.”
They arrived in Ethiopia to “a sea of tall, dark skinned people
speaking language we couldn’t understand. I was blond, blue
eyed and short.” The language was Amharic. “I was terrible,
but they never laughed. Ethiopians were so gracious- if you accepted
their offer of coffee, they gathered the beans, ground them and then
made coffee just for you.”
Janie never had time to master the language. Four months into the
eight-month language class she was put in charge of 200 students at
an existing mission school. Replacing a teacher who became ill, she
taught through an interpreter.
Students ranged from age 5-51 and everyone started in first grade.
Some walked three hours each day to and from class, bringing the single
cup of grain that was their noon meal. None had any opportunity for
education without the mission school. “They liked to start promptly.
They didn’t want recess. Sometimes they came in a group-we could
hear them because they sang all the way. I was called ‘the short
one’. ”
The Ethiopian Government determined the curriculum, which included
science, math and two languages “plus an hour of bible each
day.” The school had been open 5 years, so some students were
up to fifth grade. Promising students were trained to teach. When
the original teacher returned, Janie went with a mission nurse to
start a new school.
“The villagers were polite, but guarded. I was the first white
woman most had seen. It took months to dispel the rumor we were going
to get their children, fatten them up and boil them.”
The women opened a clinic and taught students to garden “That
helped change perceptions. Ethiopians are proud people. They’d
take vegetables and flowers because they’d worked for them but
insisted on paying for small pox inoculations, even if it was just
a nickel.”
Janie returned home for medical reasons, but completed her education
at Barrington College in Rhode Island and taught for 30 more years.
She and a fellow teacher combined resources and families to buy a
house in New England. “She had two children, who became my children,
too. My mother became their grandmother.” When Janie retired
from teaching, she entered educational publishing, spending ten years
“living out of a suitcase on an airplane.” Tired, she
took a job at Macy’s selling jewelry enjoying the contact with
people and young couples.
When a stroke convinced Janie to quit Macy’s, a phone call
from West Virginia opened up a new career. Her friend from Barrington,
Priscilla Leavitt, needed a resident manager for The Manor, a beautifully
restored retreat in Parkersburg. “I never thought I’d
do something like this. But, whatever happens, you go with it and
do the best you can. There’s so much stress in the world, people
need a peaceful place to come. I’m happy to make this a warm,
welcoming experience.”
Janie retired from teaching, but not from learning. “I looked
forward to every experience and I learned a lot from all of them.
I still do.”
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