I first noticed Maceda Alemu '13 when she told our Spanish professor that her Spanish wouldn't be so great because she'd been speaking Amharic for the last two months. After seeing her third pair of neon sneakers and a few intercambios exchanging our hopes for the conditional future, I asked: "Puedo feature you in The Mirror?"
Trekking back from drill in the rain to her cozy dorm four floors up in Wheeler 402, Maceda told me about her last semester, which she spent in Ethiopia volunteering at NGOs and HIV clinics in the country's capital, Addis Ababa. "I'm pre-med and both my parents are from Ethiopia but I'd never been, so it was an awesome trip all around," she explained.
Back in her dorm, Maceda plops down on a bright futon with an equally colorful chemistry textbook on the nearby mini-fridge and a billowing tapestry of Ganesha overhead. Her walls are covered in kites made out of ribbon, wrapping paper and old photos. "My mom and I got to travel together while I was in Africa," she said. "It was great because she hadn't been back in 27 years, so she got to see all her family and old friends."
I notice the Amharic alphabet hanging on the wall. "Plus, I got to feel like a local," she adds laughing, before reading me a line off "The Dalai Lama's Instructions for Life" hanging on a poster above the top bunk: "Once a year, go someplace you've never been before."
Maceda's home in Long Island, she explains, is now filled with a lot of Kenyan art. In her home at Dartmouth, however, there's more evidence of this recent trip than anything reminiscent of New York. "Would you think of moving there after you graduate?" I ask. "Maybe I'd go back for a year," she says, "but my goal is to go to med school at Columbia."
Scattered between ID cards, bottles of Tide and cocoa butter on her dresser are beaded bracelets, key chains and religious figurines that she brought back from her recent trip. "I was surprised by how much I ended up going to church while I was away," she said, as I noticed a painting of a Greek Orthodox priest on her wall (the dominant religion in Ethiopia for the last 1600 years).
"[In Ethiopia] there are churches on every corner. They're like Starbucks in New York."
