Growing up in the 1980s, Kassahun “Kass” Kebede did not know the luxury of computers, school buses or even a favorite book. Raised in Sendafa-Beke, located nearly 8,000 feet above sea level in the rural highlands of Ethiopia, Kebede and his family worked a farm tending cows and harvesting wheat. They struggled to make ends meet. As a child, Kebede often walked three miles to school on a dirt road in harsh winter conditions. Many of his peers made that same trek with bare feet and no gloves. “Most people think it’s hot there, but it is actually really cold,” he said.
At school, instructors taught by chalkboard. Books were coveted and rarely loaned out to students. Once, a teacher noticed Kebede’s passion for learning and sent him home with her sole copy of a textbook. Anxious to explore it, he spilled coffee on the book while reading under a makeshift kerosene lamp forged from a tin can.
“I was terrified to go back to school and face the teacher,” he said.
Embarrassed and ashamed, Kebede played hooky from school for several days. His parents eventually convinced him to fess up about the incident.
“The teacher said, ‘You’ve got to pay for it,’ ” he recalled.
The cost for a replacement textbook was less than two dollars, but nonetheless a financial hardship for his family. Kebede and his mother sold odds and ends to come up with the money.
It was a pivotal event in his life.
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