I can trace a lot of the best things I’ve done back to the three years I spent in Uganda and Kenya with TEA, from l963 to 1965.  

     My first teaching experience, at age twenty-two, was in a refugee camp in Bombo, Uganda, while I was getting my Dip. Ed. at Makerere.  My students were from the southern Sudan; they’d protested the mandatory use of Arabic in their schools and had to flee when northern Sudanese soldiers had massacred their families.  I’ve never forgotten these students’ stories, which I’m sure influenced me to become a counselor for five years with at-risk kids back in the States. 

     While living in Nairobi, I developed the meager skills I’d learned as a folk-singer in Greenwich Village coffee houses and became a star of Sunday Star Time on Voice of Kenya TV, which put me in touch with all the entertainers in the city.  They became great friends; we had many unforgettable parties and night club jams.  In those days, anyone who could play an instrument could be a star. My career fizzled when I got back to New York, but I’ve kept performing for fun. 

     Africa fascinated me, and I returned to graduate school to get an MA in anthropology.  Though I never taught it, the degree helped me get two Fulbright grants to India years later.  I used my field work skills to gather folk tales for a book (The Pomegranate Princess, still in print.) and lecture on folklore at colleges in South Asia and the US.

     In Africa, I found that I loved teaching and have made it one of my careers, working in inner city programs, and later, at universities in the United States and abroad.  

     Mainly, Africa got me focused on a writing career I’d started in college.  My first novel, The New Life Hotel (also still in print), was set in Kimilili, on the Kenya side of Mt. Elgon where I did my practice teaching at a Kamusinga Friends School.  I’m still writing, finishing my tenth book, and see no reason to ever stop.   One of the first stories I published, “The Educated Billy-Goats" (http://www.tea-a.org/billy-goats.doc), is about a young American teacher visiting one of his students in a rural village, an experience I had many times.   The story, which became part of the novel, is attached, and is included in my collection, Voices in the Water.   

Thank you, TEA—for starting me off on so many fascinating careers.