Searching for World Wide Web access in Tanzania

First time at computer today. We are at the Monduli teacher’s college in the computer lab. We have been waiting to come here, but the server has been down for ten days because they didn’t pay their bill.

Twelve of us are living in a duplex — eleven women and one man. All are good sports and the weariness of being in such close quarters is alleviated by our cook who prepares delicious meals. He is on loan from a safari company.

There many similarities in the attitude of the staff that I saw in my Zulu High School in 2003. Many want information on graduate schools and hope we can help them (i.e. find “sponsors”). We don’t have partner-teachers as we had expected and we have very small groups. Students were told the night before vacation that they had not passed their tests and would have to come to our Language Village. Many skipped out! Who could blame them!?

After three weeks, some are coming back early and want to join our classes, which is fine with us. I only have 3 “form one” students. They are wonderful and we work with our homerooms every day and rotate the other 10 groups for the remaining four periods. That way we only have to prepare “deeply” for a small number of lessons that we adapt to each group of students. I am having great luck using Maasai folk tales to build English comprehension. I prepare by using culturally relevant materials.

We walked to the market with our students yesterday. A colleague and I took a taxi home with four of our students. It was the first time that three of the girls had been in a car. They didn’t know how to look for the handles to get out.

Quick check in from Tanzania

Barbara’s daughter here. I received this email message today from one of mom’s traveling colleagues:

All team members are well & happy. We just have no email access now except for my iPhone. So on behalf of all, I want to assure you we are fine, and everything is as close to plan as possible. After all, as we say here, “This is Africa!” Please pass our message on to others as needed.

Ready or Not: Tanzania, Here I Come!

Tomorrow is the day I leave for Tanzania. It seemed like just yesterday that I still had three weeks before departure. This has been quite a trip to prepare for. I have had polio update, yellow fever, meningitis vaccines and started malaria meds today. The Visa for Tanzania is in hand and my clothing has all been sprayed with mosquito repellent that supposedly will last through six washings. In addition, we have gathered materials for all of the 60 lessons we are expecting to teach. I am hoping to read the manual for my new camera on the plane as well as the guide book to Tanzania. My travelin’ friend, Jean, who will sit next to me for 18 hours of flight has such a camera manual to read too. She says it guarantees we will sleep well on the plane!

We fly to Amsterdam, where we will meet all twelve of our group, who are coming from around the USA. Bette, the third in our local trio is flying an hour behind us all the way, so she will catch up to us in Amsterdam. If you happen to be in Schipol Airport tomorrow, you will know us by our not-very-discrete laminated name tags, about 4×7″ that have picture of African animals on them. Mine has a huge elephant on it. Makes me feel like a kindergartner on a trip to the zoo. After Amsterdam we fly to Kilimanjaro. We have a day to catch up in the town of Arusha before we begin our four-night safari. Sunday we arrive at the school and Monday, we meet our students and begin our teaching program.

Here is the school’s website. There is also a short video here that includes the girls singing.

A Poem for Jet-Age Travelers

I heard this poem on The Writer’s Almanac this morning. It helps me visualize what I can look forward to after the next few days of constant flurry, crossing things off my lists, adding to the list, consolidating lists, dreaming of lists. Eighteen air hours to Kilimanjaro will afford me lots of time to review my life’s ten million choices! Now to read the directions on how to soak my clothes in mosquito repellent and how to use the new luggage scale.Then off to Silver Sneakers at the YWCA. After I eat a well-balanced breakfast with plenty of potassium and sprinkled with flax seed. Do the Maasai elders eat flax seed?

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.

Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires

with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.

Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.

Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way

for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review

each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments

of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.

Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound

of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.

Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,

where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all

the things you did and could have done. Remember

treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes

pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

“Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads.© BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008. Reprinted on Writer’s Almanac.

A travel poem for you! Treading water as a metaphor for getting ready for the trip, the whale’s belly as a metaphor for jumbo jets. TT

LGBT Families…it’s not over

I am responding to Mombian’s request to blog for LGBT families today!

Most of you who know me are aware that 30 years ago my mixed orientation marriage dissolved when my then-husband came out. Our children were 5 and 8. But my identity as an ally and LGBT family member continues, as long as I have children and grandchildren, and someday perhaps, great grandchildren. It has been important to support my children in their relationship with their father and his partner, and now my grandson, who has always known he has two grandpas in the Midwest.

It is cute when a three year old says, “Gwampa, I called you yesterday and you weren’t home, and so I talked with Gwampa!” But how cute or easy is it for a sixteen year old when his grandpas travel halfway across the country for a visit and attend a picnic with the LaCrosse team? We don’t know. We have tried to make it possible to have a conversation about having a gay grandfather, but all attempts are met with “no problem.”

This is basically what my children told me when they were growing up. Now they are quite a bit more open about challenges they faced that they didn’t want to share with us when they were teens. Perhaps it will be a decade or more before my grandson wants to talk about feelings he may have about his family. In any event, I will continue to let him know the door is open for a conversation.  And I’ll make sure he always knows he has an ally in his Gram.

Reflections on Mike’s Memorial Day

We had a lovely day to go to Northfield and the service was a wonderful tribute to Mike. Olivers, Picketts, Dickinson, Legrands, Tony, Mary Kay, Terry and I were there. Becky Zrimzek from the Alumni Office was there, too. BTW, the church has been beautifully restored! What a pleasant place.  Mike’s touch was evident in ever detail of the service. Instead of reading from the Bible, the minister read sections of Mike’s cookbook that had amazingly scriptural messages!

The Star Tribune obituary was published today and except for the fact that Jim Fisher was not in our class, every thing was wonderful about it and Mike’s sister was pleased. Jim Fisher was there as well as the woman who teaches ag at the U of Mn, who wrote the letter for you. Mike Gill was not there but he and his son and Jim Fisher were at the farm about May 10 and had dinner/party with Mike. Mike said that night,”I’m going to die. pause..but then so will everyone else!” The pictures that day showed an almost unrecognizable Mike, compared to when we were there 8 weeks before. The last five days, his two brothers moved into the farmhouse and they shared the responsibilities with Mary Ellen. She looked tired, but said she had had several good nights sleep since last Friday, when he died. Jim Fisher started the tributes/remembrances, I did a bit of storytelling about our arrival in Pokhara, wearing our engineer hats..(I had mine with me and put it on,) and Mike waiting for us at the gate, laughing because some children had run down the hill among the babies and cows faster than we could maneuver, to tell Mike, “There is a whole bus full of old people up there!”

Several family members spoke, emails from all over the world were read, a young woman who grew up on the cooperative farm spoke, several Nepalis living in MN spoke. It couldn’t have been a nicer memorial service.

Ian Barbour and his wife were there, Bardwell Smith and his wife, and Ann Follansbee Wright, and Wayne Carver. Wayne told Terry he couldn’t hear a thing during the service, but that he laughed when the woman next to him did. A highlight was talking with Bardwell Smith. Rolf and Bill really had a good time, talking about Bardwell’s time in Japan in WWII and their Vietnam experience. We promised ourselves we will go down to meet with Bardwell again, at one of the coffee shops.

Another highlight for me was visiting with Ian Lessing, Mary Ellen’s handsome and kind son, about age 43. He is the computer something in Santa Barbara. He first went to visit his Uncle Mike in Nepal when he was 16.The church served sandwiches, potato salad, watermelon, and as we say in MN, “bars.” We were among the last to leave.

 Visualize the 108 oil lamps that are burning today for Mike at the Buddhist Stupa in Kathmandu and the108 lamps burning for him at the Hindu temple that we visited: think Mother Teresa’s hostel, monkeys suddenly darting among us, funeral pyres and the boxes of fabulous colored dyes for Holi. Then there was an open house at Mike’s Breakfast in Kathmandu from 10-12 am. The number 108 is meant to honor someone of great importance. The number decreases if you are less important.

In case you want to get a copy of Mike’s Breakfast Cookbook.

Mike Frame 1940-2008 Peace Corps Volunteer Extraordinaire

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. — Confucius

Michael Warren Frame, age 67, of Northfield and Pokhara, Nepal, died on Friday, May 23, 2008, after a seven-year battle with Multiple Myeloma.

Mike was born on Oct. 28, 1940, in Northfield, to William Gibson Frame and Minnie Errington Frame. He graduated from Northfield High School and Carleton College and did post-graduate work in agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota. From 1962–1969 he served two terms as a Peace Corps volunteer and worked for U.S. AID in agriculture in Nepal. For the next nine years he farmed at Bubbling Springs Farm near Menomonie, Wis., and did Peace Corps training. His love for Nepal brought him back as an associate Peace Corps director for Rural Development from 1980–1985.

In 1988, Mike opened the world-famous restaurant, Mike’s Breakfast, in Kathmandu, Nepal, where it has been popular with locals and tourists for the past 20 years. In 1997 he opened Hotel Fewa and Mike’s Restaurant in Pokhara which has become a destination for trekkers and travelers. Mike received the Distinguished Achievement Award from Carleton College in 2007 for his work in Nepal. He was a cook, gardener, farmer, builder and author of ”Mike’s Breakfast: Cooking in Nepal and Then Some.” Through his generosity and outreach he has influenced and changed the lives of numerous people. We will miss his rare sense of humor.

Mike is survived by his sister, Mary Ellen Frame of Northfield; brothers, William E. (Sandy) Frame of Pine Island, Minn., and David M. (Claire) Frame of Albert Lea, Minn.; five nieces and three nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents. 

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 31, 2008, at the United Church of Christ, 300 Union St. In Nepal, there will be a Bhuddist Puja all day Wednesday, May 28, and a memorial gathering on Saturday, May 31, at Mike’s Breakfast in Kathmandu.

Funeral arrangements by the Bierman Funeral Home.

Several classmates from the Class of ’62 will be able to attend the service. 

 

She knows I’m kidding. And maybe I am.

A [on phone]: Mom, are you at your computer?

Me: No, and I wasn’t planning to be. Why?  What’s up?

A: I wanted you to look at something I’m working on for a class project [for graduate school].

Me: I was just about to –

A: Oh, can’t you just take a peek at this? Super quick? Besides, you’re always telling parents that they have to be open to unexpected moments of parenting, even when kids need you at the most inconvenient moments.

Me: But you’ve been inconveniencing me for almost 36 years!

The Class of ’62 loses a lovely classmate

I received a notice of Brenda Brose Lazar’s death today from another classmate. Many of you remember how she and her husband organized an impromptu brunch at their home in 2001 when we held a mini-reunion in Tucson. I so enjoyed having a chance to view their magnificent Mexican mask collection.

Here is the obituary of this accomplished woman published in the Tucson Newspapers on 5/12/2008:

Dr. Brenda Brose Lazar Dr. Brenda Brose Lazar, patron of the arts, philanthropist, ophthalmic surgeon, and loving wife and mother, passed away peacefully May 10, 2008 at Tucson Medical Center Hospice facility after an eighteen month battle with lung cancer. She was 67. An ophthalmologist, Dr. Brose relocated from Chicago to Tucson in 1988. In Tucson she practiced with GHMA and then Tucson Eye Associates. She retired in August of 2006. An apt piano pupil, Brenda was classically trained by her mother in Mason City, Iowa. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Carlton College in Minnesota, she attended Northwestern University Medical School. She did her internship at Northwestern and residency at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Brenda met Burt Lazar while they were students at Carlton and renewed their friendship when they had both moved to Chicago. The couple was married in December of 1966, and Brenda went into private practice in Evanston. They moved to Tucson in 1988. Brenda continued her practice of medicine and Burton became owner and president of Arizona Stagecoach. Brenda was on the board of directors with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and a past president of the TSO’s Women’s Board. She was a past president of the Tucson Women Physicians Association and a board member of the Jewish Family and Children Services. She also supported the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA), the Arizona Theatre Company, and UA Presents. The TMA houses the Brenda and Burt Lazar collection of Mexican masks. She was an avid tennis player with Skyline Country Club. Brenda is survived by her husband, Burt, and their two sons in San Francisco, Adam, an environmental lawyer, and Larry, an internal medicine resident. A memorial service will be held at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, May 15, at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Rd., Tucson. Donations may be made in her memory to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and the Tucson Museum of Art.

mother’s day

This blog was a Mother’s Day gift from A and her sweetie, S. I have not been certain I really wanted a blog, but now I am intrigued! We’ll see! I already stay up way past my bedtime in my role as Google-geek.