Introducing Another Generous Mind

As I was walking out of our lobby at HCJB Global one day for lunch. A man was standing there talking with the receptionist. His name was Molla Tikuye and he wanted to share his new book Insight into Ethiopia with our ministry and see if there might be some opportunities to promote it.

I promised to take a look at it and I wanted to share a quote from the book:

“I have collected history of the area from many elder oral informants or shimagilewoch in Amharic . . . As time passed by, however; I hear that most of the elder oral informants have passed away. So whenever I hear news about their death, I become sorry, because I consider these elders as great history tellers and as my big history libraries. This is because it was do to the feed back of these oral informants that I have a good historical knowledge about Ethiopia. Now I can do nothing about these leaders. What I can do now is to transfer their legacy to the next generation. Hence if there is anybody willing to know history I am ready to share what I heard from oral informants and what I read from books and from what I was taught in schools and in Addis Ababa University.” Insight Into Ethiopia, Molla Tikuye, pg 14,15

This quote excited me because it was such a great example of a generous mind. Here is someone who took the time to connect with key elders and get their history from them. Then he made the effort to share it with the world.

Now this book is self published and so Molla did not have the editorial help that he might have wanted. But it is a wonderful effort to share what he has learned with others at expense to himself - not only money but I'm sure hundreds of hours.

Thank you Molla for being a generous mind.

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