The Elephant – A large bull may weigh 3-5 tons and the ivory tusks, which are enlarged incisors, may weigh 200 lbs.
Postcards from Kenya
africa
Postcards from Ethiopia
Hamal Mosque, Mitsiwa, Ethiopia
October, 1980
We are going to Alem Maya University today. Will fly to Dire Dawa and car will meet us and we will drive back, returning on Monday.
All going well, team gets along well. I probably am taking more of lead than I should but that’s my style. Weather perfect here . Hope all will with you.
Love, Bill
Monk from monastery of Debra Dam, Ethiopia
January 1966
It was nice to hear from you. Pep is leading an Agriculture Edu. mission of FAO at the request of the Ethiopian govt. Thanks again for pulling him out of the Univ. of Minnesota. He said in 1958 if they had asked him to do what he is doing now he wouldn’t be able to without his experiences. It’s summertime here. I’m enjoying the weather, relaxing and having a wonderful holiday. The people are friendly. It is so different from other places.
Love, Pep and Ay
1986
I arrived on schedule and was met at airport. Got a couple hours sleep at hotel in London and have had a nap today. Will go to the World Bank, Res. Rep’s home tonight and have tomorrow to read and relax before starting schedule on Monday. Weather is just like Mpls. Very nice.
Love, Bill
Oct 1989
All goes well here, I will fly to Dire Dawa tomorrow to visit the Alemaya agricultural university and then return by car. A four day trip.
Later a four day trip to the Southern part of the country.
Love, Bill
1985
Greetings from Addis! I hope your trip to California and the cruise were wonderful!!
Will see you soon!
Love, Bill
May 1986
I had my first meetings today and all went well. I am well received. Starting tomorrow I will start visiting research stations and will be traveling until Saturday.
For now, Love, Bill
October, 1986
I had a good trip to the East and this weekend will travel to the South Central region. Weather is very nice!
Saw lots of camels on the trip east. After the 1st of Nov. we will be in Addis for the balance of our time here.
Love, Bill
Echoes of a Global Life
Enjoy a trip around the world.
Friday Photos
I am featuring random photos each week that pertain to my upcoming book, Echoes of a Global Life. My photos seem to be fewer and farther in-between during this period. Can’t find much. Here are a few of Africa during the 70’s.
Books Books Books
Lives and the Courage to Live Them: Thoughts of a Third Culture Kid Therapist by Dr Rachel Cason
Dr Cason is a British therapist who is also a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and caters to TCKs. In this book she touches on all the things TCKs celebrate and struggle with. Trauma, change, moving the furniture, resilience, loss, boarding school, language, relationship, balance. It is a very real and helpful book that is easy to read without a lot of professional mumbo jumbo. I highly recommend it to anybody with a nomadic childhood.
Africa in my Soul, Memoir of a Childhood Interrupted by Cheryl King Duvall, PhD
Cheryl moves to Nigeria with her family when she is eight. Her parents joined a Christian Mission and are sent to Lagos. Soon she is sent off to boarding school at the missionary school in Miango northeast of Lagos. The school is very strict and confining with no privacy and even her letters are censored. She has a difficult time adjusting. But when not at school, she takes every opportunity to soak up the sights and culture of this African country. She falls in love with it. She also lives through the start of the Biafran war and sees people gunned down in the streets. She struggles to come to terms with her family’s decision to move there, her difficult time at boarding school, and her return to the US. Even through all the heartache, I came away with a positive feeling.
The Black Attaché, Vignettes from a Life by JK Cheema
JK Cheema was born in northern India when India and Pakistan were still one country. She shares her loving memories of visiting her grandparents in a small village when she was a child. And the confusion when her mother managed to get them on the last train out before the border was closed on the newly formed Pakistan. As an adult she is accepted into a PhD program at the University of Michigan in International Development. From there she joins USAID and works in Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Eritrea. She shares memories of each country along with visits to her own India. This book is a lovely stroll through JK’s life.
Fall is in the Air
My photos look a little out of focus today. Kind of psychedelic. Or is it just me? The sky is an odd color. A rainy, dark day. But color starting as the trees adjust to winter.
I actually got a story published this week. No money but think of the fame! The notoriety!
Today is also gloomy and rainy. But that’s okay. We need rain. Rain is good. Winter is coming.
I read today that scientists think mammals will die out in 250 million years. All the land masses will collide, the sun will get brighter, and carbon dioxide will rise. We will suffocate and melt. I wonder if we will really last that long. Will we morph into something else? Will another species thrive on the new atmosphere? Will we build bio-domes like our science fiction writers predict? It is hard to imagine what 250 million years looks like. The dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years and then all blew up about 65 million years ago. Mammals showed up about 225 million years ago. So we are almost half way through our time here. On the other hand the earth itself is 4.5 billion years old. We are but blips in time. It’s like democracy in Russia. A nanosecond. Apparently Earth has another 4 billion years to go. Don’t think I’ll be around to see it.
I’m reading Isabel Allende’s memoirs and in it she mentions the filming of The House of Spirits. I never knew it was made into a movie so I watched it last night. It was star studded, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas, Winona Ryder, and a million other people. Of Love and Shadows is another one of her books that was made into a movie. I haven’t read that one but looks interesting.
I read that people who are optimistic and have positive thoughts on aging tend to live longer. I’m feeling positive I am aging.
A friend just found out he is going to Burundi for work. The poorest nation in the world. The most unhappy nation in the world. I first heard about Burundi during the Hutu-Tutsi genocide of the 1990’s. So I have been trying to find positive things about it. It is in the African Great Lakes region bordering on Lake Tanganyika. This is what I found.
They make pretty sisal baskets.
They have pretty birds.
Nice landscape.
Drums are important.
Lake Tanganyika is big. It has hippos.
See, positive, positive, positive.
Adventurous Women
I recently read ‘Too Close to the Sun’ about Denys Finch Hatton and it reminded me of the amazing women through the ages who chose to spend their lives in foreign lands. Here area few of my favorites.
Karen Blixen and her brother
Karen Blixen was Danish. She married Baron Bror von Blixen and moved to Kenya in 1914. Unfortunately he gave her syphilis and she returned to Denmark after only one year for arsenic treatment. She lived through it, however, and returned to live in Kenya for another 16 years. She ran a coffee farm for a while but always struggled with it and eventually was forced to sell the land. Her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, was a big game hunter who died in a plane crash just as she was dealing with the loss of her farm. She returned to Denmark and lived there for the rest of her life. She wrote under the name Isak Dineson as well as a few others and a couple of her more famous books are:
Out of Africa (1937); Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) – includes Babette’s Feast which was made into a movie; Letters from Africa 1914-1931 (1981 – posthumous)
Beryl Markham
Beryl Markam was English. Her family moved to Kenya when she was 4 years old in 1906. She became friends with Karen Blixen even though there was an 18 year gap in age. Beryl also had an affair with Denys Finch Hatton and was due to fly with him the day he crashed. She had some kind of premonition and did not go. However she did go on to fly extensively in the African bush and was the first women to fly across the Atlantic from East to West. She briefly lived in California married to an avocado farmer but eventually retuned to Kenya and became a well known horse trainer. There is a new book out about her life called “Circling the Sun”.
Her memoir (a very good read) is: West with the Night (1942, re-released in 1983)
Alexandra David Neel
Alexandra David-Neel was French. She became an explorer at a young age running away from home at the age of 18 to ride her bicycle to Spain and back. In 1904 at the age of 36 she was traveling in Tunis and married a railway engineer. That didn’t last long since she immediately had itchy feet and set off for India. She told her husband she would be back in 18 months but did not return for 14 years. Her goal was Sikkim in the northern mountains. She spent years studying with the hermits and monks of the region and eventually, dressed as a man, snuck into the forbidden city of Lhasa.
Her account of her trip to Lhasa is a fascinating read: My Journey to Lhasa (1927)
Gertrude Stein by Picasso
Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in California, attended Radcliff and Johns Hopkins University, discovered her sexual awakening while in Baltimore and fell in love with another woman. She moved to Paris in 1904 where she collected art and held “Salons” promoting modern unknown artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne. During World War I she learned to drive and drove a supply truck for the American Fund for French Wounded. Her writing was revolutionary and influenced many modern writers including Hemmingway. She was a strong, opinionated woman and a copious writer with a great sense of humor. Her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas cooked and ran the household. Two of my favorite books by Stein are:
The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (1933); Ida, A Novel (1941)
James Joyce and Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach was a contemporary of Gertrude Stein and also lived in Paris. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was a minister and she grew up in Europe. She owned the bookstore Shakespeare and Company and published James Joyce’s Ulysses when nobody else would touch it, even though she had no money herself. She lived in Paris most of her adult life.
Her memoir is: Shakespeare & Company (1959)
Catherine II by Johann Baptist von Lampi
And just for fun… Catherine the Great. She was born in Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland), and traveled to Russia in 1744. In 1745, at age 16, she married Grand Duke Peter of Russia and became the Russian empress in 1762. She did not get on well with her husband and managed to “convince” him to abdicate so she could take the throne. Soon afterwards he was mysteriously killed. She continued to rule Russia until her death at age 67. I visited her palace outside St Petersburg a couple of times when I was living in Russia. One room I particularly liked was the Amber Room. The walls are covered in amber and other precious jewels.
A good book about her life is: Catherine the Great by Robert K Massie (2011)
Who are your favorites??
Trailing: A Memoir
There has been much discussion lately about the term “trailing spouse” and whether it is appropriate or even polite. It projects a sense of “other” rather than something that makes up a whole. I usually conger up a vision of a dog’s tail. Other terms being used are “accompanying partner”, “expat wife”, “support partner”. Expat Lingo says she had been called a ‘stakeholder at home’. I have used the term ‘world juggler’ before.
But in the end, whatever you call it, the trailing spouse is usually the support system, the glue that holds it all together. Sometimes the glue falls apart and life can be rough.
In Trailing: A Memoir by Kristin Louise Duncombe, things fall apart. Kristin grew up all over the world so when she met her Argentine husband, the thought of moving overseas didn’t seem so strange. Although she did have her reservations about putting her career on hold, she didn’t have a passion about what she did and had not clearly defined what she wanted to do. Her husband, a doctor with Doctors Without Borders was passionate about what he did and had no questions about what he was going to do. She was in love. She married him and went to Kenya.
Being a TCK (Third Culture Kid) myself, I also thought following my husband overseas would be no problem. Even though you have lived in many places around the world, the child TCK and the Adult TCK have different experiences and challenges. I had no support system behind me as we just up and moved. Kristin had a small “family” of doctors but it did not help much since most of them were single and always on the road. Her husband was gone much of the time.
On the other hand, I think she showed remarkable resilience. She found herself some work at a Nairobi hospital helping teens and eventually found a position with USAID at the US Embassy. Unfortunately the Embassy was bombed and she lost her job but by that time her husband had taken a position in Uganda. After having a baby, she finds a job in a small village outside Kampala. She never sees her husband and the marriage starts to unravel.
I found myself identifying with this book on several levels. I had a difficult adjustment when I moved to Russia. My husband was a freelancer. There were no benefits or perks. As soon as I landed I was expected to find a job and help with financial support. If found jobs mainly doing clerical administrative work but I also fell into a writing position for the American Women’s Club and was able to improve my writing skills and help other expat women at the same time. I edited and produced a newsletter that helped to build a community.
Everybody has a different experience when they live overseas. I knew couples who were both professionals in their own right. I knew women who moved around the globe on their own and met their husband along the way. One woman was a very successful diplomat and her husband did his own thing in another country but was able to work remotely. Some people take the time to write books. There is always something to do. I found my way and started writing and wrote a memoir.
The current challenge for international organizations is to find the balance and provide options for accompanying partners. With today’s technology, there are much more possibilities available.
Kristin’s happy ending was her husband accepted a position in Paris and she managed to set up a successful counseling practice working with expat families who are trying to cope with life overseas. After having gone through the worst of it, she now had all the tools necessary to help others in similar situations.Trailing: A Memoir is well written and engaging. It makes me want to know more about her. It is available on Amazon.com.
Books from Asia, Moscow and Turkey
BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS
I’m always interested in expat stories, expat memoirs, and third culture kid stories. I usually pick them up, get a few chapters in and set them aside. I don’t know what it is about them but they just don’t grab me. Maybe it’s the writing, maybe it’s the focus. Although I usually finish them at some point even if I just scan through them. Here are a few I read recently and liked.
The Sullivan Saga, Memoires of an Overseas Childhood by M.H. Sullivan, was an interesting story about a girl growing up in a Foreign Service family in Asia and Africa. In the TCK stories I can usually find some personal connection that keeps me going. The thing that grabbed me about this book was she started out talking about returning to the US for college and wondering if she was “American” enough. Her family was very different from mine but there were some similarities in the experiences she had. I could totally identify with the story about her father having to go into the bushes and take his pants off because he was being attached by army ants in Africa.
Lenin Lives Next Door, Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow by Jennifer Eremeeva is about a woman married to a Russian and her experiences living in Moscow for twenty years. She fell in love with Russia at 13 when she read “Nicholas and Alexandra” by Robert Massie. She studied Russian history and language and eventually ended up in Moscow running tours and hosting trade show delegations. A fellow tour guide introduced her to her future husband and she has been there ever since. Her book is all about the characters she meets along the way and the challenges of living in Moscow. It is very funny and some things are hard to believe since truth really is stranger than fiction. I could identify with a lot of what she talks about having lived in Moscow for nine years myself. And funnily enough I actually knew Jennifer when I lived there. I recommend it – it’s fun and fast paced.
Yesterday I picked up Perking the Pansies by Jack Scott. Yes, you can read it in a day. It is fast paced and light reading. Two married gay men from Britain decide to chuck everything, quit their jobs, sell their property and all their belongings and move to Turkey. Most people thought they were nuts. It is something many people dream of doing but would never actually do. They did it. The book covers their first year in Turkey. They were not completely prepared for what they were getting into and it seems they should have done some more research on the weather but they manage to keep a positive attitude and stick with it. After making some adjustments, and meeting some unpleasant expats, they eventually find their way and their own group of friends. It is a fun read.