TEAA (Teachers for East Africa Alumni) Newsletter No. 40, January 2019. Please send any changes to your contact information and/or items for the newsletter to Ed Schmidt, 7307 Lindbergh Dr., St. Louis, MO 63117, USA, 314-647-1608,
TEAA website. New and past information can be found on the TEAA website, tea-a.org that Henry Hamburger continues to faithfully keep up to date. There you’ll find “What’s Hot?” including photos. Brooks’ book reviews, story project entries, past newsletters, and much more are also there. In this issue:
President’s Message, Brooks Goddard TEEA-UK annual meeting, by Clive Mann News from East African Head Teachers and Principals Cattle Keeping, by Mike Rainy Feeding the Basketball Gene, by Bruce Franklin Exploring a Cave in Kenya’s Meru District in 1965, by Dagmar Telfer Muthamia Culture Shock, by Joel Watne Our Best/Worst Experiences in East Africa, by Joel Reuben Your Stories We’ve Heard From You Friendship Demands: Remembering Jay Jordan, by Brooks Goddard The Unusual Story of Hal Sondrol, by Ed Schmidt Obituaries (omitted on web version) Directory Update (omitted on web version)
President’s Message, Brooks Goddard Dear Rafikis, As I follow literature about Africa written by all sorts of people, I find more and more people using such platforms as CreateSpace to draft their own reflections. I continue to have great respect for personal voice and encourage you all to write, whether or not you publish. I found satisfaction writing the description of my wave 4B, colleague, Jay Jordan. It helped me understand what it was about him that I loved, what difficulties life presented for him, and how I found humanity in both Jay’s life and my efforts to capture it. I found challenge in finding appropriate and righteous words, perhaps not perfect words. Another venture is finding homes for books and artifacts. I have found that there is no good repository for our “stuff.” Well, live long enough and maybe our grandchildren will be happy with a few books, pieces of kanga, and the odd Samburu gourd. If you have mingi books, try your local used book dealer. We in Boston have a fundi, Ken Gloss, at Brattle Street Book Shop. I have started to explore Afro-Centric schools, especially home schooling institutions. For your slides I recommend mass digitization which you may have already done. With the demise of DVDs and the emergence of “the cloud,” I am totally bewildered. My approach is two-fold: put the best into books and put everything you want to keep on big-capacity flash drives. For kitchen thrills you might consider a digital picture frame, then you can loop
TEEA-UK annual meeting, by Clive Mann On 22nd August 2018 TEAA-UK held its annual meeting at the Knights Templar pub on Chancery Lane on the western edge of the City of London. The 'Steering Committee' had selected this from a number of pubs in the City, and it was well-known to some of us. The building is a superb old bank converted very tastefully by Wetherspoon's public house chain. Not only are the surroundings splendid but the food and drink are very reasonably priced. It was not too crowded. Further east in the City the hostelries are patronised by folk in the finance industry who seem to take very long liquid lunches which can result in standing room only. Some of the group arrived before midday in order to secure a table, which as it happens, was only just big enough for our group which became eleven. Clive (TEA 1964) & Sachiko Lovelock from Japan, and Richard (TEA 1963) and Updesh Porter from Ealing, west London, attended for the first time. Jonne Robinson, Larry Woelk, Dave Marshall, Fred Nixson, Bob Gurney, Dave Smith & myself (Clive Mann) completed the party. Three sent apologies for absence, and two who suggested they would join us failed to do so. We toasted absent friends. Some of us had not met for almost fifty years. There was lots of yarning about the past, about what had happened in intervening years, and about hopes for the future. Strangely, given our age, nothing was said about NOT meeting next year. There was never a lull in the conversation, and when we dispersed at about four pm there seemed so much more still to discuss -- next time! The 2019 gathering will be in August at 'The Barrow Boy and Banker' which is on the south bank of the Thames just a short walk from London Bridge underground and mainline station. [Contact Clive for details.]
News from East African Head Teachers and Principals Okunya Milton in southwest Kenya on Nov. 14. Dear friends, We are doing well on this side of the world. It has been a while since I updated you about my going ons. You are already aware that I was transferred to take up a newly established school 35 kilometers away from Migori among the Kuria people who are known for cattle rustling and circumcision of girls who are then married off soon after. Ours is a mixed school with hardly any facilities but I am soldiering on and enjoying every bit of it. For the last week I have been putting up a gate and a temporary office in readiness for next school term. All around me are boys and girls of school- going age with either babies in their arms or heavy with babies. My crusade since I came is to seek all to come back to school even if it means having husbands and wives in class. I already have a few who are promising to come next term . This school particularly excites me because I think I have a pioneering spirit. This morning I am planting some trees in the compound. Next week I will be Nairobi for a month long grading of national exams which are currently being done. Just three weeks ago I was visiting local primary schools encouraging girls to proceed with school even after circumcised, the season for this begins next month. Exciting times we live in!
Maxwell Engola in Lira, Uganda, in Nov. and Dec. Hello Ed, The family is recovering from a breakdown but getting along fairly now. Pamela got serious attack of pneumonia that made her loose her senses for almost a week but later recovered on very strong medication. However, we had to lose the baby she was carrying. But gladly she is recovering fast and will be well soon. I send you regards from the O-level candidates who successfully completed their exams yesterday. The rest of the students will start their end of year exams on Wednesday 21st and will break on 30th Nov. [early Dec] Am glad to report that we closed the term successfully on Friday. The holidays will go until 4th Feb 2019, however, we shall have the S4 candidates reporting early on the 7th Jan 2019 to give us time to start preparing them well. Am on my way to Kampala for UCE UNEB marking exercise that may run for about 2 weeks.
Cattle Keeping, by Mike Rainy [Mike and Judy Rainy have lived in Kenya since Mike’s TEA years, built careers, and raised 3 children. They live in the house they built in the Malepo Hills just outside of Kajiado, 60 miles southeast of Nairobi, just off the road to the TZ border at Namanga. The following article is based on a Facebook response Mike gave to someone who asked him to explain his keeping of cattle. Specifically, the following was posed to Mike, "Maybe you can explain to the uninitiated why you keep cattle. Seriously, is it so the neighbors don't start grazing on your land? Is there enough rainfall in that area to buffer their environmental impacts? The culture of cattle destroyed the rivers of the American Southwest and now they seem to be destroying any hope for conservation in Kenya. This is not meant to be a loaded question, just an honest one." Mike’s response follows.] My perspective is East African, but until I was nearly 22 I lived in the USA. That’s where I first loved cattle. But as you blame cattle for causing what J.J. Cale sang concerning "Stone River" in the "American South West," I will start with the fact that cattle became ecologically important in North America only between about 1802 and 1875 when approximately 70,000,000 North American bison were slaughtered to fewer than 1,000 to deny North American Plains Indians their main means of surviving winter. Cattle in their rangeland-damaging millions came to the Southwest only after the bison were gone, and that was a cowboy effort led by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt who built up his Texas longhorn herd mainly by buying-in rather than breeding. After the terrible drought and winter of 1888 the longhorns were gone. By then, The Great Utah Basin had lost most of its very fragile topsoil. Cattle-keeping there continues under massive support by a few ranching families backed up by the policies of the BLM. In the moister parts of the Great Plains like where I was born in Miller, South Dakota, cattle are still important in the local economy and do not dry up any rivers that I know about. The Missouri still flows grandly into the Mississippi. Yes, the Ogallala aquifer is being drained much faster than it is being re-charged, but that is because of using it to grow crops which have very little to do with cattle grazing. My grandfather moved to South Dakota in 1903 to get away from what was about to happen to German speakers in the Ukraine and the Crimea after his people went down the Danube to take up homesteads on the great Russian steppe just north of the Black Sea in 1802, mainly to escape the armies of Napoleon. My great Uncle Andrew Neu told me in the early 1960s: "Michael, this land here in Minnesota is terrible. Here we can only grow hay for cows, but near Odessa we Lutherans ate wonderful fish from the Black Sea and grew wonderful grapes. We Lutherans made wine. Life for us was good in the Ukraine, Michael." When I worked on my uncle Ted Stapp's farm near Rockham, SD, for two summers in 1953 and 1954, our main effort was to cut and stack prairie hay and alfalfa to get the cattle through the long South Dakota winter. We worked long hours every day for nearly ninety days to put up enough hay for Uncle Ted's 400 cows and their calves. It took five of us. Uncle Ted stood on a growing stack making sure it had a moisture proof top. His son Leroy fed him hay from his tractor with a hydraulic stacker, while Tonse Maithiessen brought bunched hay to Leroy with his tractor. "Bucker" and Aunt Tillie did ALL the cooking. My job was to sweep up any runaway hay with a dump rake pulled by an ancient "RL regular" tractor which still had steel wheels. When we ran out of hay to stack, we went out to cut more, and more. Uncle Ted was NEVER going to run out of grass again like he did in the '30s when the Feds came to shoot the calves. Our noontime milk was on the kitchen table in a cleaned anti-freeze tin. There is nothing as good as cool fresh milk to drink after a long morning making hay in the South Dakota summer sun. That first summer I got $3.00 a day, the next year I got $5.00. I bought a Remington pump action .22 and a Smith Corona Silent Super typewriter. Even with those purchases, by the time I was 17 I had saved enough summer money to pay for my first year at Reed College. The next three years I paid just $500; the rest came from a scholarship. By the summer of 1964 I had submitted my senior thesis and decided to go to East Africa as a member of Teachers for East Africa program rather than continue further studies in molecular biology. I likely would have stayed on in NYC instead of flying to Uganda in September to do a Diploma in Education at Makerere University, but the Gulf of Tonkin incident launched the American/Vietnam War. East Africa offered me a better opportunity to use my college education as a teacher than I thought I would have carrying a gun for Uncle Sam in Nam. Compared to my summer in Manhattan I felt like a fish out of water in Kampala, but three trips out of the city gave me a vastly different perspective by the end of my first year in East Africa. The first was a couple of days visiting Budongo Forest with a small group led by Jonathan Kingdon who introduced us to free living chimpanzees in their forest habitat. For the second much longer road, the “Safari Six” of us chipped in to buy a very 2nd hand Rover 90 for less than 100 British pounds. We drove it across the Serengeti in Tanzania and through Tsavo all the way to Malindi. If you want to show a kid from the Great American Plains what heaven on earth might be like, take him to the Serengeti. The only things missing were cattle -- too many tsetse flies in the Serengeti. That trip was over our long Christmas holiday in 1964. By Easter 1965 three of us shared fuel costs to go through Uganda's Karamoja and on into Dodoth Country beyond Kidepo near South Sudan. It was there that I first spent time with pastoral cattle people. By then NYC memories had begun to fade. The closest cattle keepers to my school posting in Kenya between May 1965 and December 1967 were the Samburu people near Maralal, and I visited them during every school holiday in those years. They taught me to listen to and to speak Maa and in doing that they showed me the vital connection between life and rain and the blessing of a life living with cattle. In Maa life is “nkishon,” to live is “aishu.” A cow is “nkiteng,” cattle are “nkishu.” Rain is “nkai,” the main blessing of their god. Their god is also called “Nkai.” To understand these relationships, live with Kenyans in semi-arid country too dry for rain-fed agriculture with and without cattle. The link between some people and their lives with cattle began south of the first cataract of the Nile nearly 10,000 years ago. That’s why I still keep cattle. They keep me where I live 100 km south of Nairobi and a few people happy and healthy by giving us milk each and every day. I keep 12 cows and their calves on about 300 acres. I can sell all of the males after 14 months for $750—1000 USD to my Maasai neighbors who love good Sahiwal cattle. Their light grazing keeps the risk of a grass fire minimal. They also make our wild herbivores safe against being ambushed by lions (rare here) and cheetah (common). My neighbors also love life with cattle, and it’s good to live with people one agrees with. Leserena (Stay Peaceful),
Feeding the Basketball Gene, by Bruce Franklin In 1962 Kampala while students at Makerere, Tom Corcoran and I built a basketball court at the Kibuli Mosque School. Our manual labor with shovels and rakes was looked upon as unusual. Tom was a geography major and we leveled an area to cover half a court with the knowledge he had of a surveyor's plane table. There was some heavy lifting as we filled in declivities and lowered the mounds by following what the plane table told us, using murram clay from the hill next to the Mosque. Now the basket itself was another story. We had no idea of the dimensions of backboard and rim. Here is where the Marines at the embassy helped out. After a week we got a paperback with all the info we needed thanks to the Marines. The next task was to manufacture the backboard and the metal rim. The fundi at the school accomplished this task and suggested a way to affix the rim to the backboard. We managed to have students "volunteer" as players before our Makerere time was up and our group scattered all over East Africa. I recently used Google Earth to locate what is now the Kibuli Secondary School. Alas! No sign of the basketball court! Later in 1964, I built a half court at the Pumwani School in Nairobi. We joined in the competition with a few other schools run by the Catholic brothers. The students at Pumwani were all from what we now know as the Kibera quarter of Nairobi. Visiting the Alliance Secondary School and two Catholic-run schools was the first time out of Nairobi for many. And, when I was transferred to Narok School among the Maasai, I invited what turned out to be a truck-load of Pumwani students for an extended week- end to Narok. No basketball this time. Any lasting effects? Any legacy of consequence? I will never know! I was part of a basketball league in Nairobi with Rufus Sanders from Machakos, a Sudanese; a Scottish banker, Don Schramm, and Abdulla -- one of my students at Pumwani who picked up the game quickly. I always called the game "from feet to hands," soccer to basketball. We played against, as I remember, the British regiment called the Black Watch whose tattered and bloodied flag I saw was the one the British fought with in the American colonies. We were invited to dinner at the Regimental Mess after our game at the HQ in Kahawa. I still play basketball in a 60-and-over league, and as I get closer to 80 we divide our players into a group of 60+ and another group of 70+.
Exploring a Cave in Kenya’s Meru District in 1965, by Dagmar Telfer Muthamia ! It was a usual evening at the Sports Club. The Scottish Country Dancing had just ended. Most of the dancers and observers stepped up to the bar to order the night’s last drink. I was one of the few Americans among this group of expatriates. The others were from England. It was 1965, just two years after Kenya became independent and it was still very colonial in many ways. Tony Porter stood up and asked, “Who wants to go with me tomorrow to explore a cave in Tharaka?” I said, “Yes,” as did three others. Early the next morning we got into two cars and headed down the road from Meru Town on the northeast slope of Mt. Kenya to Tharaka, a lower, flatter, drier area. After traveling 25 miles we reached the village of Mitungu. There we found someone to lead us to the cave. It was a three mile walk. A short way out of the village we climbed down a river bank. Suddenly we were in a forest. I could imagine that it was the forest where Tarzan lived swaying on vines from tree to tree. This was not so far-fetched as I later learned that early Tarzan movies were indeed filmed in Meru District. The entrance to the cave was on the side of hill between an out-cropping of rocks. We were not discouraged that there was only a narrow crawl space. We were young and we could wiggle along on our stomachs in the hope of finding a cavern with stalactites and stalagmites. After half an hour or so, we were disappointed when the tunnel widened out and we could see a cavern. It was small with stubby stalactites and stalagmites. The cavern was full of bats hanging from the stalactites or flying around. I had read that bats can get tangled in your hair. Luckily none were attracted to my long thick hair. The air was suffocating -- not enough of it and it had a strange odor. Then I realized that we had been crawling on top of a thick layer of guano dropped by millions of bats. I began to wonder what we were doing there and how we would get out. It seemed harder to wiggle our way out. What a relief it was to get out without harm. Happily we had shared an adventure and had a tale to tell. We felt like adventuresome teenagers but we were all adults. We were all teachers, American and English, working in Kenya’s Meru District either as part of the joint British American Teachers for East Africa or American Peace Corps volunteers. I cannot remember exactly who went on this crazy excursion but the leader was Tony Porter from England who was teaching at the boys’ school across from my school. He was soon to become the Headmaster. He was the least likely of all the expatriates in Meru to lead such an activity. Looking back, I knew that the cave was near the village of Mitungu on the lower road from Meru Town to Nairobi, Kenya. It was well known throughout the district as it was one of very few caves on the eastern side of Mt. Kenya. Thanks to the internet I now know that it is called Tharaka Inanduru Cave, and it is near the Maara River. Today the area is much more developed. Small groups of tourists are taken to the cave which has probably had most of the guano removed. Tourists are told that the cave was dug by the people who would hide there when being attacked by the Maasai. Ever since that day I have been somewhat claustrophobic.
Culture Shock, by Joel Watne In the first wave of TEA in 1961, I found that with one exception—a guy who had spent six weeks in Ghana—I was the only person who had spent a significant amount of time in the continent. I was born in the portion of French Equatorial Africa that is now the Central African Republic, in a house with mud walls, mud floors and a grass roof. During our training at Teachers College and in London, we were introduced to the concept of “culture shock,” warned about it, and given the chance to quit. As we descended through the clouds on the approach to Entebbe, I could see the tin-roofed houses of farmers among the banana plants. My initial reaction was that Uganda seemed a lot more prosperous than my old stomping grounds in the Central African Republic. What I saw as we rode into Kampala, and around Kampala, seemed pretty good to me. But one of our colleagues, who name has long been forgotten, was so shocked by his first experience in Uganda, that he quit TEA the next day and took the next available plane home. Meanwhile, I thought how ironic it was that I, the only TEAer in the first wave to have been raised in Africa, was then assigned to Arusha, the tourist center of East Africa, where hardships were far fewer than many of the more remote places to which my colleagues were posted. There was Malde’s camera shop, where one could purchase top-of-the-line Nikon cameras and lenses; Naranjan Singh’s grocery store (scene of the “baby elephant walk” in the John Wayne movie Hatari which provided the name of Henry Mancini’s popular tune); an interesting assortment of ex-pats, such as a Hungarian Dr. Saska, whose 160-lb. Alsatian would greet me by putting his paws on my shoulders and looking down at me, an entomologist with East African Locust Control who modestly described his WWII experience as a “Lancaster driver,” a botanist named David Penn who had been a Spitfire pilot and answered my question as to whether he was related to William Penn by stating that William was the black sheep of the family; a shoemaker who proudly displayed an autographed picture of his customer John Wayne; an Australian priest at the local Anglican church, whose Northumbrian treasurer kept talking about the “boodget”; and scores of colleagues and students of Hindu, Sikh, Sunni and Shiite Muslim, Goan, Parsee and Jain backgrounds, a rich tapestry of humanity that demonstrate that despite all of the cultural and religious differences there may be, we are basically very similar and with similar needs, hopes and dreams.
Our Best/Worst Experiences in East Africa, by Joel Reuben Best. We arrived with the 1966-68 group of TEEA tutors in mid-August in Nairobi and were sent up to our posting at Chadwick TTC northwest of Kisumu in Butere. No one was there to greet us but the watchman knew we were due and which house was assigned to us. We asked him if there was someone who could go into the village and get us some food to put in the empty fridge. I gave him a hundred shilling note and gave him a list of basics like bananas, bread, milk, eggs, etc. and off he went on his bicycle. We unpacked and started organizing our stuff. The askari returned with the food we requested and the hundred shilling note! He explained that the owner of the duka knew we were coming and opened a monthly account for us. The staff returned from their safaris, and students were back by the weekend. The principal Mr. Bosley met us. We learned that he ran the TTC, and his wife ran Butere Girls High School next door. The place was their fiefdom. We were the second TEEA posting to Chadwick. The Bosleys were religious Anglicans and the first TEEA tutor assigned to the school in 1964 was a school principal from Chicago who was a Catholic divorcee! Although she lasted the two year tour her philosophy of life and teaching often clashed with the Bosleys. Now the replacement tutor was me, with my wife and two toddlers. In addition to having little ones on the compound we were Jewish! I consciously decided not to be a native New Yorker and set out on a path of working my tail off to become a valued staff member. An assembly was scheduled to welcome the students back. Mr. Bosley told me I was to be introduced as the new staff member and that I should prepare a little something to say. This turned out to be one the best experiences I had. I gave a brief summary of my education, and teaching positions I had held. Then to close, I added that I was happy to be in Kenya at Chadwick and that I hoped to learn as much about the students, their lives and customs as they hoped to learn about teaching and methods from me! When I put down the microphone and left the podium I heard a thunderous stamping of the feet from the couple hundred students. I must have looked stunned as Mr.Bosley whispered, “They really enjoyed your remarks and are giving you an ovation!” It was my first and only “sitting ovation.”
Worst. On a Bank Holiday weekend in October 1966, my family and I traveled to Kampala for our first visit. We were invited to stay at the home of a TEEA administrator who was away visiting new tutors in Tanzania. The offer was too good to refuse although Uganda was the least stable member of the East African Union. So along with a young British couple who were volunteering in Butere, my wife and I and our two children piled into our Ford Anglia station wagon and headed west. It was an uneventful trip until we reached the outskirts of the city where there was a fork in the road. All I had was an address for the house on Rubaga Road, and the fork in the road was unexpected. I chose the righthand fork which turned out to be the “wrong fork!” After a mile or so, we came to a walled property and were stopped by a group of armed soldiers. We were ordered out of the car and told to sit on a bench just inside an opening in the wall. The soldiers did not speak Swahili or English, so there we sat, wondering what we had done wrong. To explain our situation one must know a bit of history about Uganda at that time. The Kabaka (king) of Buganda, the largest ethnic and political group, had to flee Africa and live in exile in London. Many smaller dissatisfied tribes resented the Baganda and Uganda was nearing civil war under the leadership of Idi Amin and his soldiers from northern Uganda. It turned out we were on the property of the Royal Palace, home of the Kabaka, that was subsequently taken over by the rebels. We were captives of these soldiers, assigned to make sure the Kabaka would not return to reclaim his home and rule his country again. To make matters worse, there were rumors that he was expected back and the fighting would continue. It was hot on that bench and not very pleasant staring into the barrels of the machine guns pointing at us. Eventually, the officer in charge approached us and asked in perfect English what we were doing at the palace. I explained we’d been given the use of the house on Rubaga Road and that we took the wrong fork. He listened and then asked if we took pictures of the property or the palace. I told him that we took no pictures and showed him that my camera was showing it was loaded with film but was ready for picture one. He considered what I told him and then said the words I wanted to hear, “You may leave.” I don’t know what the world’s record for shifting into drive gear is, but I believe I might have set it. I returned to the fork I should have taken, found the house we were to stay in, and spent the few days acquainting ourselves with the city while nervously hearing gunfire and explosions each night. We felt better crossing the border at Busia and returning to Kenya. One final note about the incident, about a week later we read in the newspaper about two British men who were beaten in Kampala while trespassing on the palace grounds.
Your Stories.
Malcolm Maries. In some ways, TEA shaped my whole adult life. When I first answered the initial ad put out by the Appointments Board at Bristol in 1961, I had no idea of what I wanted to do long-term. I hardly thought about the teaching. Instead this was an opportunity to see a new faraway country for a couple of years before I did the round of interviews for Shell, Imperial Chemical Industries and government departments in the U.K. I’m really glad that didn’t come about. I even enjoyed my work in Saudi Arabia, but it improved a lot when I moved house to Bahrain! Of course, I did take jobs in England between overseas commitments, but they were essentially ‘fillers’ and not very interesting; I always suffered then from itchy feet.
Mike Rainy in Kenya. Judy and I would not choose to be retired Anywhere Else. Why? The climate is still brilliant; people here really know how to do almost everything. I took my and Judy's computers in to a kiosk in Diamond Plaza in Highridge recently; in a space similar to a phone booth x2 with a ladder to its second story the technicians did a total upgrade to both machines while we had a fine curry lunch. Good medical care is affordable and easy to find and for many cases we can go to clinics found in every Mall. Road surfaces and routes are much improved as are the trains and local flights. Kenya’s M-pesa just about does all necessary money transactions and remembers every one. When you need a quick lift, a boda boda is often the safest and best way to get through a long crowd. Nuff Said.
Jerry Atkin. My re-entry into the US in 1967, with two young children in tow, was kind of intense. Apparently a war had been going on in Vietnam while we were away. Having been out of the aquarium I was able to see the tank; it wasn't pretty. [Daughter] Catherine had grownup in Africa until she was four. She literally could not pick herself out in a picture as she and five of her African buddies did unusual things in a large packing crate. When we moved into a neighborhood she was very excited to see a couple of Black kids and wanted go play with them. Other kids told her, "We don't play with Niggers, if you want to play with them you can't play with us." She came in crying and wanted me to explain why she couldn't play with those kids. Something in me sort of snapped. So, we started helping to organize against the war and drifted into the political wing of the counter culture... sort of. We and some other older friends were the tempering influence. We did see a fair amount of tear gas along the way and Lee [Jerry’s second partner], whom I have been with for most of the last 50 years, ended up in jail for six months for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Her daughters were 8 and 9 at the time. There has been a certain saga quality to the intervening years, but in a good way. We've spent most of that time working with workers and unions. We eventually started an NGO called Center for Working Life. The Center brought Lee's training as a clinical social worker together with her experience in the UAW to create worker-centered mental health programs providing direct services and trainings. We ended up primarily doing trainings, through unions and joint labor-management programs, to take natural leaders from a workplace and train them to be peer advocates and offer peer support for their co-workers and themselves through the closure and after. A lot of work with auto and steel and eventually pretty much everything else. Lee ended up doing a lot of work in Bulgaria and Poland. Throughout the 90s, through the transition after the Soviet Union. This cursory summary doesn't really capture the excitement of the work and the impact that it had. Our work was effective because all of us who had created the Center in the mid-80s had worked in factories for at least five years. We knew what we were talking about and workers knew we knew what we were talking about. Our love and respect for working people was based on sharing our lives with them and working with them over decades. Always pushing for fairness and justice. Never thinking we had answers, but very certain that we had really good questions. Definitely a popular education approach, though it wasn't theoretical, it was organic to who we were and how we worked.
We’ve Heard From You
Jim Blair. Ed, if issue 39 is the last issue of the newsletter, consider this my personal thank you for the work you and Brooks and Henry have done over the years to create and maintain TEAA. I especially thank you for "finding" me in 2009. If issue 39 turns out to be the penultimate (I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence) issue, this message will give you something to print in the final WE HAVE HEARD FROM YOU section of Issue 40. Since being "found" in 2009, it has been my privilege to be a proud member of TEAA. I have read all of the newsletters, all of the submissions to teaki and both books. I returned to East Africa with Henry Hamburger in 2014. The TEA experience was life changing for all of us who lived it and TEAA has awakened and enriched that experience for me. Kwaheri rafiki zangu. Jim Blair
Moses Howard. To the Honorable Ed Schmidt, You have again produced a great TEA Report which was a joy to read. I only regret that I did not send a news item. I enjoyed your report and I want to thank you for your constant diligence. With regards and high esteem always, Moses
Kate Froman. Hi Ed, Each time I read the newsletter I am struck by how our African experience continues to resonate in our lives. What an adventure it was and how profoundly it has changed lives for us and for those we met in East Africa. I was married to Bill Cooper. We lived at Kamusinga School ( near the village of Kimilili) but our mailing address was Broderick Falls. Our daughter was born in Kitale in 1964. Thank you for all the time you have put into the newsletters. I will miss them. Sincerely, Katherine
Lee Smith sent in clippings from the Denver Post marking the 5-year anniversary of the Colorado rains and floods that occurred during the 2013 TEAA reunion in Estes Park. The flood is credited with taking 9 lives, destroying 1,852 homes, and causing $4 billion in damage in the two dozen Colorado counties affected by the storms.
Kay Borkowski. In her “seasonal” letter, Kay and Danny recall several trips from to Texas from their home in Ajijic, Mexico, for family visits, special events and doctor appointments. They have a big trip planned in March -- Dubai for 5 days and then a Saudi Aramco Reunion in Saudi Arabia for 10 days. Kay notes, “Speaking of Middle Eastern food, we now have a food truck selling Middle Eastern food around the corner from our house here in Mexico! The owner's grandfather was a Palestinian!
John Bing. I'm working in Malta for the year, teaching and administration.
Charlie Guthrie. Ed, I regret that we have never met. I always had a conflict when the meetings took place. I wanted to thank you (and Brooks, and others) for the many years of providing stories and news of our old stomping grounds and of fellow TEA/ TEEAers. It has meant a lot to me. Have a good 2019. Charlie
Edward Hower. Ed, I quit teaching Creative Writing at Cornell and Ithaca College 13 years ago, then taught it for six years at Auburn Prison, and now teach a course in opera at the local senior citizens center. I'm still active in Amnesty International and ACLU, and am on the board for Ithaca City of Asylum, an organization that brings to town writers whose lives have been threatened overseas. So far we have hosted writers from China, Iran, Swaziland, Republic of Georgia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, each getting a two-year stipend and a job teaching at local colleges. I'm one of the founding editors of Cayuga Lake Books, a small press with 25 titles in print and counting. I continue writing novels, articles, and short stories. I recently story published in American Scholar, https://theamericanscholar.org/voyages/#.XDzB9rUcC1s I enjoy reading about former TEA and TEAA teachers, and always look forward to the newsletter. Many thanks for keeping it going. best regards, Edward Hower
Emilee Hines Cantieri. Jerry and I spent the month of December on a cruise from Lisbon to Cape Town seeing the countries on the other side of the continent we all know so fondly. We were unable to go into Togo, because of political problems and street violence there, but otherwise everything went smoothly. We noticed that the ports in countries once British or German were more orderly and prosperous than the French. I'm planning to have surgery in March which involves peeling off a layer of the retina to correct a "rumpled macula" in hopes of improving vision in that eye. If anyone is interested in a TEAA "family reunion" here in the mountains of North Carolina, contact Jim Weikart or me and we'll see what can be arranged.
George Pollock. Hi Ed, After I taught in Kisumu, Kenya (64-66) through TEA and then taught another year in Maidugeri, Nigeria -- home of Boka Haram -- I spent 27 years working as a writer and editor in educational publishing. Then I spent several years writing a blog, patientsprogress.blogspot.com. Here is a story from my blog for YOUR STORIES: https://patientsprogress.blogspot.com/2006/09/artificial-knees-after-two- years.html These days at 80 years old -- imagine that! -- I play tennis regularly (running around the court like a crazy man, which I am of course), enjoy family and grandkids (after growing up in foster care, which I have written about in my blog), and doing what I damn well please every single day. I'm as healthy as a horse. I tell my tennis guys that I am going to live at least until age 120 and probably longer. I promise to be at their funerals. You can see that I have reverted to the childhood that I never had as a foster kid with no family. I was on the street at just turning 17 and entirely on my own. Of course, I wrote about that in my blog along with my experience teaching in Kenya under TEA. Keep up the good work!
Ted and Maja Essebaggers, from their home in Oslo. Ted notes that their main trip this year was to Florida. Closer to home, Maja's favorite pastime is quilting and stitchery. She has also kept up her part time job proctoring high school exams. She regularly volunteers at the local Senior Center in the kitchen and as a hostess in the cafe. The grandchildren were with them for Christmas baking with Maja and carving out pumpkins at Halloween with Ted. Ted sang with his choir on 17th of May, Norway's national day, and just before Christmas at the lighting of the big Christmas tree at the local shopping center and at a nursing home. He also volunteers for Språkkafe once a week in the local library to help foreigners speak Norwegian better. He is an active member of a local fishing club which has projects to maintain and improve a small nearby river.
Don and Mo Knies. Don reports in their Christmas letter that he and Mo were with daughter Holly and her family in Belgium for the Christmas holidays. The trip to and from their home in UK being by car via the Channel tunnel. The big event of the past year was Mo’s 80th birthday in May, the celebration of which became an international 2-3 day party of some 75 family and friends.
John Basinger, from Kakamega in ’62 or ’63. One thing I haven't forgotten. When Ogaye [a teacher at the school] was in his nightly cups, walking home from the local canteen, he would call out loudly, "Uhuru! Uhuru na Kazi! Jomo Kenyatta!" He was also the source of an indelible memory. A family member had died, so I drove Ogaye na Bibi yake down to the shamba in Luo country. There was the grave, a large mound of dirt with a beaten path around it in front of a hut and in the doorway the widow sat, shaved head and silent. Directly Ogaye and his wife began walking the path giving voice to their grief. After about an hour or so, their grief relieved and some other family matters resolved, back up the escarpment we drove.
Shelby Lewis. I have just returned from a trip to Uganda. I traveled to the places where I lived and worked in Uganda over the years and was photographed at each stop -- Nabumali High School and Mt. Elgon (1962-64), Tororo Girls's School and the Tororo Rock (1965-67, 2002 and 2012), Busitema University of Science and Technology (2010 and 2012), Makerere University (2012), Tieng Adhola:The Padhola Cultural Institution (2012).
Dan McNickle. Malangali is probably my favorite place in the world, and my favorite time in life. I did enjoy Tanzania. My wife and I just celebrated our 50th last May, and we are doing pretty good, though well advanced into mzeedum.
Friendship Demands: Remembering Jay Jordan, by Brooks Goddard When I saw him first it was in 1964, he was sitting in a white sweatshirt and bluejeans by himself in the corner of the room. Two months following his death in 2018 I’m not so sure that that first sighting wasn’t foreshadowing. At his death he was remembered in his youth by a younger brother and in his college years remembered by a longtime friend. To commemorate the rest of his life, no words. Not being able to tolerate that condition, I sit down to say who I think John Samuel Jordan, most simply “Jay,” was. First, he was a very good friend whom I had allowed to become distant. Yes, Jay was very much an enigma, but that wasn’t all he was. Jay was a teacher. He taught in a Tanga, Tanzania, secondary school, at Boston Upward Bound students, as a TA in courses at Teachers College, and for 34 years English, racial justice, and African Studies at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Jay was a scholar. He lived books and lived to talk about books. He had so many books that when I went to visit him I had to sleep on his couch rather than in the guest room because that room was full of shelves and tables of books. Jay graduated from high school at 16 but couldn’t afford college so he started working as a hospital orderly until his Aunt Babe found money for him to attend UCLA. And so began Jay’s migration to Los Angeles where he became friendly with activist Ron Karenga. It was an enduring friendship. Karenga knew exactly where Jay had come from. I see Jay taking from Karenga a sense of mission, of defiance, and of self- worth. Teaching for Jay was the vehicle for student empowerment although not all of his students understood that. Jay was a stickler for correctness in writing and precision in speech. “But, Dr. Jordan…” was a common response to Jay’s insistence on accuracy. Jay knew from his own experiences that students, especially black students, had to gain mastery to be credible. With his many academic proficiencies Jay was indeed credible. And resolute. He took this attitude especially with first year writing students in courses that many of his peers avoided teaching. With colleague Steve Hahn, Jay was “friendly and welcoming, in his always softly and precisely articulated mode of speaking.” He relished teaching the writing students because he realized that they needed it most even if they would acknowledge it the least. Jay was an activist who took on causes that emerged from his own experience, so it was natural for Jay to work with Arlene Scala in the Women’s Studies Department at Paterson to create a social justice project that began as a workshop in racism and sexism in 1982 which morphed into a “racism and sexism in changing America” course which was ultimately renamed the Social Justice Project (that became part of the university’s core curriculum and a requirement for graduation). Along with his colleagues Jay created and participated in faculty workshops to integrate theory and practice. Fellow Paterson teacher Bob Rosen has this distinct memory: “Jay played an invaluable role, especially in getting those of us who were white to not just understand but begin to feel what students of color might be experiencing. Once, in an effort to get ALL of the faculty participating to experience how students might feel when called upon to ‘perform’ in class, he turned on some dance music and ‘made’ each of us, one at a time, dance in front of the others. For the klutzes and nerds among us, this was a real wake- up call.” With Paula Roseberg Jay helped develop the foundational textbook Racism and Sexism: An Integrated Study. Jay was a Socratic educator at heart. He engaged the world with questions and with the conviction that the examined life was the life worth living. But he knew it was also a struggle. James Baldwin was his hero. There are many parallels: Baldwin’s life and pre-occupations were similar to Jay’s. He asked the same questions, and I would have given anything to film dialogues between the two of them, one raconteur to another. No boundaries to the talk, the sadness of marginalization. Interrogations beyond midnight. No, he was not your Negro. Jay Jordan’s legacy was that we can all carve out a life that we give meaning to even if others do not really know who we are. I wish that there was greater substance to that legacy. He grew for me to something larger than the man in the corner, somebody I wanted to understand more than he would allow any of us to do. But we should have asked him more questions, had more cups of tea or tots of whiskey with him. We should have attempted to access his library and not merely notice him in the corridor. We all have darker brothers, literally and figuratively. They are part of our story as we are part of theirs. Horseman, pass by.
The Unusual Story of Hal Sondrol, by Ed Schmidt It was a conversation with Hal Sondrol in 1999 about how important the TEA experience had been in our lives, that we pondered whether others felt similarly about their TEA experience. We concluded that exchange with, “Let’s see if we can find them.” Thus began my search for others from the program and, through the efforts of many, the eventual formation of TEAA. (Hal did not have a computer. Dale Otto was the only other TEA person with whom I had remained in loose contact.) Hal and I both taught at Kakamega High School. We were there at different times and and only got together in St. Louis in 1968 when we each learned of the other from mystery writer Joe Gores who had kept in touch with both of us. In St. Louis, Hal was in graduate school in history at Washington University and I was teaching in a suburban high school. We became quick friends and, since neither of us was much into cooking, often got together for dinner at inexpensive restaurants. Hal never finished his degree but moved back to his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he took a job teaching high school chemistry, chemistry being his undergraduate major. Sometime later he got into a confrontation with his principal which led to his firing and apparent blacklisting in the Cedar Rapids area. He never taught again. Hal’s parents owned a small hardware store in central Cedar Rapids and when they retired, Hal took over the business. Like many small urban businesses, the store eventually failed. In the meantime Hal purchased a couple of large two-story frame houses in an older part of town. He lived in one and rented rooms in the other to men who often had trouble paying rent. His motivation is unclear to me. Perhaps he planned to fix them up to resell for a profit. In any case, Hal became a local handyman -- painting houses, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and the like. People seemed to know where he could be found. On one occasion when Betsey and I were passing through unannounced, we were directed to a home where he was up on a ladder painting. Hal had not met Betsey, so while I remained out of sight, Betsey approached the ladder and shouted up to Hal, “Jambo bwana! Habari gani?” Hal’s response: “Who the hell are you?” The house where Hal lived was eventually condemned as unfit for occupancy, so early one morning when he answered a knock on the door in his bare feet, he was arrested by the policeman at the door, charged with contempt of court, and sentenced to a month in jail. Hal told me he enthralled his fellow prisoners by telling stories of Africa, based on his own experience, no doubt enriched, and his extensive knowledge of African history and legend. Hal was proud of his Norwegian heritage and maintained correspondence with relatives in Norway. He often spoke of making one more trip to see relatives and visit the area from which his parents had emigrated. In recent years, Hal cared for his aging parents, who both lived into their 90s. Through the years Hal maintained his interest in international and social issues, read widely, attended lectures at local universities, and wrote letters to the editors of a number of publications [see online]. He was active with Amnesty International and corresponded with prisoners on death row. His letters were always typed on an ancient typewriter, whose keys needed cleaning and whose ribbon begged replacing. Recent throat cancer and its treatment left Hal unable to speak and weakened physically. I often wondered how I would know if something happened to him. As it happened, Ted Essebaggers in Norway received word of Hal’s passing from one of Hal’s relatives, also in Norway.