December 1990

Dear friends and loved ones,

In June of 1970, Sharon and I quit our jobs and left New Jersey for the first time to go to the University of Hawaii for graduate study.  That simple but momentous decision started us on the road to a new and, we feel, exciting life of travel and experience which we are still enjoying to this day.  Now, 20 years, many grey hairs and 5 graduate degrees later, we find ourselves in our third year in Burkina Faso, surely the most challenging environment in which we have had to live and work.

The past 20 years have been very good to us.  Through having attended graduate school in Hawaii, South Carolina, Athens and Mallorca, we have managed to keep our careers in education on track, although we did make a few detours (insect research, renting cars, etc.) to keep us in tuna sandwiches when adventure but no jobs called.  Ken is now the director of a small school, and Sharon is the principal of the primary grades in the same institution.  Happily, we have been able to work together for 11 of the past 20 years.  Sharing responsibilities, triumphs and disappointments (disasters?) has been of enormous importance to us.

Moreover, we have been able to enrich our lives with an array of experiences that we never thought possible when we were living in NJ so many years ago.  Without sacrificing our careers or financial security, we have been fortunate enough to peer into the bowels of a live volcano in Hawaii and watch glaciers calving in New Zealand.  We have felt the earth tremble under our feet at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and touched snow on the Equator while climbing Mount Kenya.  We have hiked on the Matterhorn in Switzerland and strolled among the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.  We have cruised the Nile, sipped cocktails at sunset on the Zambezi, and sailed to Rarotonga and Suvorov in the South Pacific.  We have SCUBA dived among sunken warships in Truk Lagoon, frolicked with dolphins in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and driven our small boat through pods of humpback whales playing in the Lahaina Roads off Maui.

We have been able to celebrate Carnival in Rio and Bastille Day in Papeete.  We have seen first hand the great monuments of Western civilization, such as the Parthenon, the Coliseum and the pyramids of Giza, and also witnessed the incomparable natural spectacle of the wildebeest migration on the Serengeti plain and walked among the million pink flamingoes of Lake Nakuru.

We have taken the low road, the high road and seemingly every road in between -- from camping in a flooded tent, to crashing in a fleabag hotel in Tahiti, to luxuriating in the posh suites of the Mount Kenya Safari Club.  We have had elephants chase us away from our picnic lunch, we've quaked at the roaring of lions outside our tent, and we've been startled by sharks circling us just at the edge of our view.  We have been arrested by greedy border guards in Tanzania and terrorized during 22 hours of captivity.  Healthwise, we have suffered through malaria, pneumonia, bronchitis, appendicitis, food poisoning and enough forms of intestinal parasites to keep a lab working overtime.  As you can see, it has not all been a picnic!

Through sickness and in health, however, we have not regretted the time nor money spent, and each time that we return to the States, we seem to value our home and the U. S. even more for having been away.  We do not know exactly what the future holds for us.  We do know that our contracts say we will be here until June 1992, and then we will most likely leave for another part of this continent or to another continent entirely.  Or, if trouble should erupt here, maybe we'll be back in the States sooner than we thought!  We have learned to live with uncertainty and insecurity -- something which is both unnerving and invigorating.

Until next Christmas season, we wish you all a glorious holiday and a super New Year filled with challenges and good cheer.