With mud hut and chickens, an ancestral village heals generational divide

The teenagers scramble up a terraced hillside of their own creation, excited to show off one of the thatched round huts at the top that they also helped build.

In Ethiopia, it’s called a tukul, its cream-colored walls fashioned from straw and mud.

“This is our Ethiopian village,” says Yavletel Endergay, a high school senior, sweeping his hand over the view below: rows of corn, lettuce, coffee, sugar cane, and teff – a staple grain in Ethiopia. Nearby roam goats and chickens.

The young Mr. Endergay and his fellow Ethiopian-Israeli students planted the crops working side by side with older Ethiopian men and women who come every week to their school to tend this model village they built together