It was a usual week at the East End Adult Education Center.

The forty or so GED and Basic Adult Literacy students came for their weekly classes in the storefront school. The eastern Cincinnati neighborhood was once working class, but now it struggled to survived on the few businesses, the nearby small airport, some jobs from the nearby Ohio riverfront, and public assistance checks. The neighborhood was just a shell of itself with a rundown grocery, a post office, a plumbing store, public school and a number of small houses which once held the families of the working class. A large and largely unused Catholic church served as an anchor for the community.

Our adult students, ranging in age from late teens to into their sixties came with their books, and lunches, and often children in tow, some because they were forced by a welfare system and others because the flickering light of hope in their dark futures had not yet dimmed. Black and white, many had come from the hills of southern Kentucky to the mecca of Cincinnati looking for fortune, but often finding despair and a realization that life was yet more complicated than they had imagined.

Mary and her daughter were like many. Mary was already in her forties and her daughter in her twenties, neither with a high school education, but always with the faith that the good times were just beyond the next hill or the next week.

Dave seemed out of touch with reality, but was a pleasant young man who always tried to be helpful. Fate had taken him from the poor, yet culturally secure home in the hills and placed him in the bewildering pace of the big city.

Teresa was in her early twenties, working in motels cleaning rooms, and trying to rise above her third grade reading level.

And here I was, spending a year as a VISTA Volunteer at the Center, shuttling between my parent's home in suburban affluence to the less impressive world of our little school. But it was my dream: to work with people here, a dream deferred, sidetracked.

It was 1989. Ten years before I had answered the call, but instead of inner-city America, I found myself in the Fiji Islands as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Working and living so far away made me aware of something that surrounded me as much as air: culture. I had never seen culture lived and used in such great amount and diversity before as in the South Pacific. And when I returned I realized than America was even a greater sea of cultures, a wealth of people and experiences, even in my own backyard. Here, in the East End of Cincinnati, was yet another cross-cultural situation, but there was to be no cultural training or guides, just past experience. I can remember the excitement of learning about that strange South Pacific culture, yet here were the people of Appalachia. It is the dream of many who volunteer for the VISTA program to work in the mountains of Kentucky, but the mountain was brought to me in Cincinnati. These were immigrants, as my recent ancestors had been, and they were trying to cope with the often foreign culture of industrial, commercial America. It is like comparing a plant in it's own native soil to one in a pot in someone's house. I had a college roommate from southern Kentucky who came from a family that managed to break the cycle, but the people in the East End were still working on it.

Appalachians are the great victims of stereotypes. Lazy, backwards, etc. Although, even the stereotypical perception of a person who can take apart an automatic transmission in their driveway or the street... Is that lazy or backward? I don't think so. The most impressionable item was the quiet pride and love of family which these people possess Sure there were arguments and feuds, but there was always the family and the concept that, although we may not have the most, we are together. Something to think about in the days when even in our "affluent" middle-class society the "nuclear family" is flying apart.

I was thirty-six years old. The East End Center was started back in the late 1970's by a group of community people with the help of VISTA Volunteers on a corner of a church hall down the street. In the mid-1980's it moved to the current location, two storefronts in a ninety-year-old building in the struggling business section of the East End. Our one storefront had been a small bank, and remnants of those days remained; bars on the windows, massive exterior doors and even a thick walled vault, where we kept the photocopier.

A daily schedule was from nine to three with the students in small GED classes, or in individual literacy lessons from their tutors. The atmosphere was easy with students at benches and tables with no desks or traditional classrooms. Many of the students said this was a welcome change from bad times they recalled from formal education days. The "backroom" was for classes, breaks, lunches, an occasional party. Another classroom was in the other storefront, in addition to Doris and her daughter taking care of the children in the baby-sitting room.

Our teachers included part-time professionals and a teacher provided by the Cincinnati school district. All of the days were full, but there were exceptions to the daily routine.

Wednesdays were our "guest speaker" days at the Center, with a parade of community workers, educators, job experts, substance abuse counselors, family healers, and others. But this week our "guest" canceled and someone suggested: "Greg, why not show your slides of Fiji?"

On the appointed day the room was darkened, the projector on and the show began. The mostly Appalachian and African-American crowd sat and stared at the images of that faraway place with dark-skinned people, often in strange rituals as the "Firewalkers of Beqa". There was a lot of humor, a lot of questions, and some thanks as the last image faded from the screen. After the show I passed around South Pacific artifacts, including Fijian tapa cloth, baskets, coins, paper money, and a white cowrie shell. In Fiji, the shells are attached to a rope of woven coconut fiber and then tied to a four-legged wooden "yagona bowl," yagona being the ceremonial and recreational drink of the Fiji Islanders. The shell is especially prized by the Fijians. And by a woman in the East End of Cincinnati.

Donna, an "older" student, saw the shell and began to study it. She then said that it was the most beautiful and perfect thing she had seen. Well, in Fijian culture, when someone admires a possession with such great reverence there is only one thing you must do: give it to them. I selfishly agonized over giving the artifact away. I had brought it so far and like all of my meager collection, it had meaning. But there was the cultural bond, a connection had to be made. So I took the shell home, cleaned it, put it into a small box and gave it to Donna. She was thrilled and happy, but I was more so.

I don't know what Donna did with the shell from Fiji, but I know what it did for me: It helped me reach a level of understanding and cultural awareness. In a brief moment two of the most exciting and rewarding experiences in my life were tied together and a circle was completed. From the Western Pacific to the banks of the Ohio. From culture to culture.

I don't know what happened to Mary or Dave or Theresa or Donna. We were not close friends. But we did realize that despite our differences, there was a sharing, a sharing which I shall always cherish and remember.