Happy Birthday Charles from Nsanje!

          Right after graduation form Vassar College, Charles left for Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps volunteer, spending twenty-seven months in the bush in the guise of Gbinty Dibia where he was lucky to have cell phone connection despite no electricity or running water.  There he taught English and English Literature to secondary school students.  Almost half the class students did not have the wherewithal to buy their own books.  Oftentimes the students had to skip class to help out in the farms. The school library shelves were almost empty and later he learned that some of the books were locked and stashed in a room inaccessible to the students.  He connected to the outside world through the BBC on his solar-powered short-waved radio.  During his last year in the village he raised funds and helped to build two classrooms for the primary school and furnished one of them with his meager pay so the children would not have to sit under a tree for their instructions. In the end he was honored by the village and they bestowed on him a title in Mende or was it in Temhne?

Charles with Srudents

At End of PC

          I visited him at the beginning of his assignment having just finished my medical volunteering in Nigeria and spent two weeks in Gbinty and Freetown.  Every six weeks or so Charles traveled to Freetown, the capital for some socialization with other PCs and access to the internet.  The trip took a whole day on two changes of crammed minibuses frequently with the accompaniment of livestock and finally a shared taxi, a journey not for the faint-hearted.  We met the following summer in Addis Ababa after my medical volunteering at the Nakivalle Refugee Camp in Uganda and traveled for about two weeks in northern Ethiopia. 

St. George;s Church at Lalibela, Ethiopia

 

Awash National Park

Feeding the Wild Hyenas in Harar

      

          He ran his first marathon in Vermont when he was seventeen, one in Sierra Leone which was a feat running in the heat and the ill-fated Boston Marathon this year.  This past summer, like Cara, he biked across the country from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Vancouver, Canada raising funds for Bike and Build and getting a sore bum in the process.

Charles with Team at Niagara Falls

At 1000 Miles

          

          Charles is now at the Teachers College at Columbia University and teaching at the Academy of American Studies. Despite being the youngest and smallest, Charles is able to exert himself and builds up a personality uniquely his own.  He exudes kindness, compassion, enthusiasm and a strong sense of right and wrong.

First Day at the Academy

My Birthday Present to Charles Done at Nsanje

Happy Birthday BABY!

Charlesy Baby