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We've Heard from You |
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George Pollock. Hi Ed, Only new thing is I had a big 70th birthday bash and am still going strong. I follow developments in Kenya, my greatest life adventure by far. As for news, my latest blog post is a half-serious, half tongue-in-cheek piece on how to live to age 120. Click here: http://patientsprogress.blogspot.com to see it. The article is quite long, but excerpts may be of interest since all of us TEAAers are now old and I would guess that most of us, considering the alternatives, would like to get a lot older and remain viable as we do. Ed, thanks for keeping me in the loop. Take care, George Pollock, Homa Bay, Kisumu, 1963-65 Ward Heneveld. Dear Ed, At Brooks' instigation and with his organization, the following members of Wave IVB and some spouses will have a reunion at our rural farmhouse in Enosburg Falls, VT, on the weekend of August 22-24: Cheryl and Ward Heneveld, Joan and Robin Wilkins, Brooks and Jeanie Goddard, Frank and Martha Manley in their RV, Charlie Guthrie, Jay Jordan, and Cathy and David Newbury. While we are together we hope to have a telephone conversation with Mike and Judy Rainy in Kenya. Afterwards Brooks has promised to write a piece on our reminiscences. I suggest you coordinate with Brooks to get a written report. Yours, Ward Anita Hayden. Ed, There is a wonderful book I just read about Rwanda by Rosamond H Carr, LAND OF A THOUSAND HILLS -- MY LIFE IN RWANDA. A Peace Corps friend, Joanne Zywna, visited Tanzania in May. She visited Machame, which is regarded as the best girls school in the country now. They have added dormitories everywhere. She was pleasantly surprised about the strides Tanzania has made in education. She said Arusha was considered a very dangerous place. The small tour company she was with said they should not walk around Arusha. That was the only place they had any concerns in. Ron and I are off to Egypt this year, having visited the Amazon and the Andes this past February. Stay cool, Anita Hal Strom. Dear Ed, My wife Nancy and I are now in Baku, Azerbaijan having transferred from Chisinau, Moldova. We are still with Quality Schools International. With best regards, Hal Dave and Jeanette Hummel. Hi Ed, This from Dave and Jeanette Hummel TEEA/Wave 6/1969-1971. We have just returned from another African teaching adventure, this time in Namibia - a beautiful country ! We were stationed at Caprivi College of Education (a 3 year teacher training program) in the town of Katima Mulilo, in the Caprivi Strip Region. The most north eastern part of Namibia on the borders of 5 other countries. We lived on Campus, and the Mighty Zambezi River was just out the gate and across the road. Katima is a very small town, but by the time we left we had 3 SuperMarkets and 5 banks!! No amenities for folks like theaters, bowling lanes, but a nice variety of restaurants and bars - and a lot on the River Z. We did a wonderful 34 day tenting trip, just the two of us, and really saw a lot of Namibia from Etosha National Wildlife Reserve (12 days) to the Skeleton Coast south ward, and inland to the Red Dunes, and a few days in Windhoek. Another school break we visited Victoria Falls from the Zimbabwe side, into Botswana, and flew into the Delta to celebrate our 54th wedding anniversary. It was a very enjoyable and exciting experience, and we were so very fortunate to ask for and receive donated biology, chemistry,physics, and math books from our local community college where Dave has taught for over 20 years, and our church Mariner Group gave us the money to ship them to the College. Our best to you, and as always, we look forward to the TEEA Newsletter and all the wonderful stories, adventures, and updates on all our friends. Sincerely, Dave and Jeanette Hummel Robin Pingree. Hi Ed, you are the first to get any info out of me since I left Mombasa in 1966. I'm in Plymouth, UK. I rose from bwana snorkeler from Mombasa, Tewa, to Prof. in Oceanography. Can still hold my breath when sufficiently shocked. MBA stands for Marine Biological Association. There are a number of Marine Institutes in Plymouth. Plymouth has about 400 people working in Marine studies. Plymouth has a tradition of sea going greats -- there is a stone on the Old Quay where the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from to get USA going. And before that in "1605 here marks the spot where the Sea Venturer sailed" for Virginia but she was wrecked in Bermuda. I see in the news paper today that an expat was killed in Watamu. I know this region very well. Let's hope the Luo, Nandi and Kikuyu sort something out. Kind regards, Robin Ted Essebaggers. Dear Ed, Maja and I were in India for 4 weeks in Jan-Feb, her first time. I had to show her where I was born, grew up, lived and went to school. We were in Mumbai, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Chhatissgarh and Orissa. Saw a lot of beautiful and interesting places and met many wonderful people. We are now joining a 50th reunion of the class of 58 of Kodaikanal International School on Cyprus this coming week. Should be fun meeting old school mates! Best regards, Ted Dale Otto. Hodi bwana mkubwa, My time here [in Lesotho] has been very interesting; I've been fully engaged. The teaching I've done has been fun, but it has showed me directly how delicate it is to teach a component in the middle of someone else's class. I still don't have much idea about what the regular lecturer taught before I showed up, but I do know that she teaches by stand & talk, and gives each student a photocopied synopsis of each lecture. This means that many students don't attend, and those that do don't pay much attention or take notes because she gives them the synopses. I taught with PowerPoint (luckily the electricity was on most of the time) and gave no synopses, so all of a sudden the students had to take notes - and show up! My bit, 'conversation analysis' is an interesting bit, so the students (about 150) were pretty attentive. I also gave a 2-hr. workshop on 'communicative second language learning and teaching' yesterday. The audience ranged from professional linguists to students who were simply interested but who don't think much of anything called linguistics; it was tough to know how to work with such a wide range. Barry Sesnan. I recently met TEAAer Michael Twaddle in London, and he told me Margaret Macpherson has Alzheimer's. Margaret was the grand old lady who taught Literature in Makerere from the earliest days (could it really be the late 40s?) , taught the Kabaka of the day, Obote, Nyerere etc., was proud of putting on a production of Julius Caesar that had Ngugi wa Thiongo and Obote in it. She wrote THEY BUILT FOR THE FUTURE, the first history of Makerere. I brought her back to Makerere in the early nineties to do some work with my English students, and just to give her a chance to come back. (I was in a rare situation, in a project that had a bit of spare money!) . She was an odd mix, quite paternalistic towards Africans, but yet very effective in her way. And she had convened the first group of African writers in the early sixties. Incredibly energetic, and in retirement very much the country woman supporting all sorts of country activities. You probably have some idea of the formidable English countrywoman, sort of Miss Marple plus Women's Union plus vicar's wife -- going on long hikes in the Lake District. Ross Coates. Ed, I have several years of "African Arts" magazine from the late 80's and 90's. I would be happy to donate them to an appropriate program. Perhaps that could be listed on the site somewhere appropriate. Thanks, Ross Coates Uganda '68-'70 Canon Lawrence College. Malcolm Maries. Henry, You're spot on as regards acknowledgments for tax purposes. It's always surprised me, given how intrusive our government is in many ways, that for tax purposes it's "out of sight, out of mind." There'd be a major uproar if the British Government ever decided to tax us nonresidents on overseas earnings. Meanwhile, I know that my American colleagues here [in Saudi Arabia] are put through contortions every year by the IRS. I gather you went to East Africa with Bill Jones this time. Was he in the first wave 1B at Makerere? If he's the person I'm thinking of, he could run like the wind and ended up in a rugby seven that we entered in a tournament, - I think the Nile Sevens in Jinja. Incidentally, I've just been to the TEAA site: 105 students in a class - it just doesn't bear thinking about! It's good to know that the computers are making a difference at St. Bernard's. All the best to you, Malcolm Henry Hamburger. Ed, I am sending the URL of an article I hope can at least be mentioned in the Newsletter. It concerns the relationship between population and sub-Saharan Africa's prospects for ever breaking its cycle of poverty. It is co-authored by a World Bank demographer that I saw in person giving a presentation in Washington a year or so ago. He was excellent - smart, sensible and evidently as well informed on the subject as anyone on the planet. Here is the title; click to see the article: Africa's greatest challenge is to reduce fertility Bill Cooper. Dear Henry, Through you I'd like to thank all who have made possible the prompt and informative postings [on the website] on the recent election theft in Kenya. I look at the website and Ed's newsletters occasionally but until recently have felt I have little to contribute. Maybe I do, and maybe you can suggest an opening. Since we last met at D.C. '01 I've turned translator and become interested in the living Latin movement, that group of Latinists who are reestablishing it as a modern world language with an unbroken literary tradition reaching from 500 B.C. through 25 centuries up to the present day. My particular interest is modern Latin poetry. If there are any E. African schools offering or interested in Latin, I can provide texts of short modern Latin poems (about 100 pieces 25 lines or less by 70 authors from 18 nations) written in this century and the last, of good literary quality, accessible to first- and second-year students, and dealing with dozens of modern topics as well as the human experiences writers have always addressed (love, death, God, etc). Although none of the pieces is about Africa itself, they provide living examples of the fact that Latin can express whatever needs to be said at any time in any place. Many of them I've translated into English so that they are bilingual texts and I would translate as many more as are needed. I can also provide bibliographies of current living Latin websites and modern Latin literature, as well as other evidence that Latin is alive and well in the 21st century A.D. There is a school in Nairobi that caters to the international community and includes Latin in its curriculum, but I'd particularly like to reach a native student audience to see if Latin can be planted in Africa to grow. If enough young African minds can be inspired by what they read and nature takes its course (e.g. Chinua Achebe), Africa may well enter onto the modern Latin literary scene. Wasn't it Pliny who said, "Always something new out of Africa" ? (Ex Africa aliquid semper novi). Do you know any schools where Latin is being taught, or any Africans interested in Latin? Whom else in TEEA might I ask about this? Lee Smith. Hey, Ed, Hope all is well with you and yours. Just returned from two assignments with the State Department--a month in Kingston in March and seven weeks in Mali from May to July. Yes, working--TOO MUCH. But we are off to play with a niece and her new husband from Paris who will come to Colorado (Cortez) so we can get together; then our granddaughters in NYC and PA while the kids are off on an anniversary getaway. I just got off the telephone to both Don Knies (said he sent you an e-mail for the newsletter and is off with all the family to Belgium tomorrow and perhaps with Mo, Leo and me to Egypt next autumn) and Catherine Scott 'Fair' Rose. "Fair" sounded a bit down with the arthritis which has her hands nearly useless, but pleased with the Full Care Home (I've forgotten what the PC term for these things is) in which she now lives in her native Scotland, Clyde-side and very near several of her relatives. She still has not yet sold the lovely house she built in Javea, Alicante, Spain which is on the market and going for about 500,000 Euro (if anyone is interested). I always look forward to reading your newsletter. Cheers, Lee David Newbury. Dear Ed, Many thanks for your note. Since our TEA days, I've fallen down the map, and have spend quite a lot of time in Congo and Rwanda; Catharine and I were married in Cyangugu Rwanda in 1970, and, through all the sadness and turmoil, we return every other year or so. After many years in Chapel Hill, NC, at the University of North Carolina (and before that at several other colleges), we both now teach at Smith College, in Northampton MA. As part of the Five College Africa Council, Catharine directs the African Scholars Program, which brings youngitors for the African Studies Review, the largest multidisciplinary academic journal on Africa in the US. (Our own TEA ringleader, Brooks, has a review (of two books) coming out in the journal in December!) . And . . . we continue to love our teaching. It is terrific to hear of the travels and activities of our TEA colleagues: I was delighted to hear of Henry's and Bill's fabulous trip, of Fawn's continuing engagement, and of so much support for these activities by TEAA. All best, David Newbury |