Tadessa

Every Friday I participate in an interesting ritual.

Each week at around 4pm, Tadessa comes to clean the sanctuary and the chapel. Tadessa is a five-foot-tall Ethiopian aged about 60 years, who looks much more Eurasian to me than the typical African: he has fine bones and features, and eyes that crinkle sweetly until his pupils are barely visible. He is a member of the Oromo Seventh Day Adventist Church, and cleans certain parts of the building in preparation for their Saturday services. He vacuums and empties trash, wipes down a few surfaces and generally bustles around for about an hour. And most of the time, he lingers until my boss and whoever else is around will have gone. When it’s just he and I, he puts away his broom and comes to call.

First he greets me warmly through the window of my office, smiling and gesticulating from the other side of the glass. He raises his eyebrows, gesturing in a friendly and animated way, indicating he’s coming in. Then he sort of dances through the door, trying I think to be friendly but respectful at the same time, maybe a little comical as well. He grasps my hands warmly in his brown, long-fingered hands, and squeezes hard; he bows slightly, repeatedly, nodding and being as charming as an old guy can be. He often has a plastic shopping bag, from which he will extract one can of soda – Mountain Dew for a long time, but lately he’s switched to Pepsi. He offers me the can, which I gratefully accept. During this exchange we do a lot more nodding and smiling, because Tadessa speaks almost no English at all. He lets me know that it’s visiting time: “Always I am coming, coming; and I missing my sister. Here? You here? Oh, good!” What he says after that is anyone’s guess – but I get the picture. He’s glad to see me. He recognizes that I am busy (usually I’m trying to finish the bookkeeping by five.) He’s busy too, cleaning. I chat with him in the normal way, though he might only understand a quarter of it. I learned a while back that it’s better just to be yourself and go with the flow than to overcompensate for the language barrier.

“You fine?” he asks, “I fine, yes” he responds to the unasked question. He talks quickly, in a high-pitched chirpy sort of voice that I think he uses on me rather deliberately. And he’s very emphatic, in the way one must be when one doesn’t speak the language. After the initial greeting and the offering of the soda, with compliments (“my beautiful sister!”) Tadessa might bow out for a few moments to finish straightening up. Then he’s back. We chat a little more – once we talked about his family and the length of time he’s been in America, apart from his wife. “Five year. My wife, very sad I no see her.” He brought in pictures of his wife, his sons and their wives, and his Americorps English teachers. He has a tiny brag book filled with chronologically ordered photos. His unsmiling wife is posed in front of a small house with a beautiful garden. “Ethiopia,” says Tadessa. Mrs. Tadessa is a plump woman of medium build, his height, and wears a wrap upon her head.

Most Fridays we only chat a short while; then we move on to the next stage, which is hug-n-kiss. I used to stand up for this but grew uncomfortable after a while with the fact that he comes up to my chin, and therefore gets a face-full of bosom when he swoops in for the embrace. So now I mainly stay seated, and half-rise when he spreads his arms wide and lunges. He wraps his arms around me and angles in under my ear to smooch on my neck. He likes a long neck on a woman, I suspect. He always manages to pull this off without seeming genuinely predatory – just a touch more grandpa than dirty-old-man. Very occasionally he’ll indulge himself by doing this a few times in rapid succession. I sometimes wonder how close he’s come to giving me a hicky.

And after all this, we pray. Tadessa gets down on his knees by the door, gesturing for me to join him. He takes my hand, or rests his hand on my shoulder as I kneel beside him. And then: “Jesus, come! Always I pray you coming. My sister; my sister family, my sister husband, I pray. Jesus come! I love you, Jesus, come! You come!! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.” Tadessa prays fervently and with great intensity. I’ve heard him lead group prayer on Saturdays in the chapel: wherein he is much more solemn, even commanding, and his fluent Oromo is smooth and musical.

Then it’s my turn, to pray for Tadessa, for his family and his congregation. After the Amens we shake hands one more time, maybe with an additional hug, and he takes his leave. “Next week I come.” He says. “Bye bye!” He bows and smiles, puts on his giant parka and hurries away.