Monday, September 18 Mwanza Dear Pop, Mom and Carol, Girls doing their needlework assignment. (AF) We shifted classes around, expecting three teachers would leave for National Service but then the plans changed and they are still here and teaching, which is great for the rest of us. Right now I’m only teaching 20 periods a […]
Wednesday, February 1 Dear Mom and Carol, More Letters I hope you’re enjoying Rome, and your feet are holding up. Things are getting back to normal after the break. It was so nice having you here. Now you can understand what’s up when I write. Miss Inkpen is getting over the loss of her beloved […]
Sunday, April 9, 1967. Dear Mom, Letter 9 April Happy birthday to you tomorrow. Wow, 52 years! The boat to the little town of Bukoba, on the east side of Lake Victoria near the Ugandan border, shoved off at 11 a.m. last Thursday. My job was to escort the Bwiru girls from Bukoba home for […]
The Author at Sea on Valhalla After hours of trying to sail in a calm ocean with nothing to see but water and sky, the senses are dulled and the brain can be easily fooled. At sea, that can be fatal. Robert and I are anchored in our twenty-five foot sloop behind Punta San Hipolito […]
Chapters: Escaping the Heat | El Salto | Into the Valley | Dogs in the Night | Hiking the Valley, Hunger Lurks | Discovery | La Ciudad Waiting Out the Heat in Mazatlan Harbor July weather in Mazatlan can be unbearable, even if you live on a sailboat as I did with my husband. The […]
Privateer at Anchor It began in Turtle Bay, a well-protected and spacious anchorage, a popular stop for small boats traveling along the coast of Baja California. Several sailboats were anchored with us. Most were cruisers on their way south for the season, and the rest were racing boats being ferried north after a recent race […]
Eager for Adventure In 1968 after teaching for two years in an isolated town in Africa, I returned to Oregon to a tumultuous year of violence, civil rights marches and the killing of national figures, protests against the escalating war in Vietnam and women demanding liberation. My home state of Oregon was relatively calm but […]
Two grizzled men rocked and smoked on the porch of the weathered farmhouse in the Sonora Desert. Robert and I were tired, famished and relieved to find people on that empty stretch of Mexican highway. We coasted off the tarmac and climbed off our heavily loaded bicycles. The men watched our approach with no suggestion […]
A summer program with Crossroads Africa was my first trip out of the United States. In Malawi, I helped build a dormitory and discovered I could go to Africa and return safely. Leopards at my Door is the story of my two years in Tanzania as a teacher at Bwiru Girls Secondary School. […]
On birding trips, my first priority is the birds. Insights take a while to emerge. To enrich the experience I like to write what comes to mind after I return home. A recent trip to Northern Peru spawned the following two pieces. Birders Birding in Northern Peru Northern Peru draws birders for the birdy habitat […]
This Way The last of our group of fourteen birders straggle into the clearing. We are in a gully below Owlet Lodge, located on an Andean ridge in northern Peru. Nearby is a favored perch of the recently discovered Long-whiskered Owlet. Many birders come hoping for a glimpse of the tiny bird only to be […]
Birders Birding Mark Smith photo I found others bedeviled by same fascination with Madagascar. We were fourteen birders who ranged in age from our 40s to 70s and were generally fit and experienced travelers. We included several medical people, one keen botanist, four couples, six women traveling with one or more friends, and one woman […]
Beach Vendor Burleigh photo I am not a shopper, but I feel that one obligation a visitor has to a poor country like Madagascar is to be a tourist, spend to help the economy and demonstrate that leaving some forests for the animals means they will be there for everyone. I changed $200 into local […]
Cactus in Bloom Many plants grab with hooks and protect themselves with spines, but none we encountered brought on the itching poison oak rash that plagues me after summer hikes at home. Central and South American rainforests are full of pesky and dangerous critters, but Madagascar was surprisingly free of annoying insects and poisonous snakes. […]