The children

Today on the way home I asked Dereje, our driver, if all school kids in
Ethiopia wear uniforms. He pointed to the sidewalk, "There, those four
guys. Those two girls over there. There's another one." I honestly
hadn't really noticed them before, but now that he pointed them out,
they were all over the place. The four boys, for instance, were all
wearing sky blue slacks. Apparently, kids in Ethiopia from grade school
to high school all wear uniforms, although university kids wear their
own threads. Then I asked him if the schools were co-ed or divided by
the sexes. He sort of laughed and said, "No, same school. Boys sit next
to girls. They sit together." From the tone of his voice, I could tell
he was wondering why anyone would ask such a thing. Why wouldn't you
allow them to go to school together, he seemed to be asking with his
eyes. I told him some private schools in America and Japan are all-boys
schools or all-girls schools and usually they were related to churches,
like Catholic schools. Then he said, "Ah yes," and that in Ethiopia
there were some religious groups, like Ethiopian Orthodox or Muslim,
that had their own schools, but that both boys and girls went there.