Dawn Eidelman Oral History

Interview Transcript
	   
INTERVIEW
Audio File: Dawn Eidelman Audio File
Transcribed: January 23, 2008


Interviewer:     This is just formality.  Now I'm David Sensor.   I'm
      interviewing Dawn Eidelman on the third of April, two thousand and
      eight at CDC.  Dawn knows that she is being taped and has signed
      permission.

      How old were you when you went to Africa?

Interviewee:     When we went to Africa I was five years old so I started
      my formal schooling in Lome, Togo at L'ecole de la Marina, not
      speaking a word of French on day one and it was a rather traumatic
      first day of school.  I about half way through the day had to use the
      facilities but didn't know how to ask.  They figured out what I needed
      but then when they showed me the facilities I had no idea how to use
      the drain in the ground.  So luckily we had a long school day and a
      long lunch and I went home for lunch and my ingenious mother noticed
      that I had an outfit that was almost identical, persuaded me that
      nobody would know the difference.  I went back for the afternoon and
      she clued me in how to use the little drain in the ground and
      astonishingly within a month I was starting to  understand the French.
       They only white kid in the class, pigtails, we had the little
      inkwells in the desk and by the end kindergarten my father was I think
      a little bit jealous that my French was pretty solid and quite
      effortlessly.  So, in my line of work now I'm a huge advocate of total
      immersion for English acquisition.  I don't believe in segregating
      students for a lingual education because I know that children are
      really like sponges.

Interviewer:     How long were you in school in Togo?

Interviewee:     In Togo I was there through middle of the third grade.  So
      kindergarten first and second, at L'ecole de la Marina, French system
      but African private school.  Third grade was an interesting
      experience.  The first half of the year we were still in Lome and the
      first house that we had lived in, the bottom floor - excuse me - the
      bottom floor had become Boutique Togo Agogo and the top floor our
      school house for the American kids.  And we used Calvert which is
      still in existence now for distance learning and one or two of the
      moms who had teaching experience facilitated.  And we had assembly in
      the living room and the two bedrooms were I think the odd grades and
      the even grades.  So we did distance learning in an American program
      and that's when I first started formal studies of English.

Interviewer:     In addition to learning about how to use the toilette what
      are some of your other interesting experiences in your formative
      years?

Interviewee:     So many.  As I shared on the way over here I really did
      not like the Sunday ritual of having to take Aralen.  It was really
      nasty and bitter and ugh I just couldn't abide it.  So, I didn't take
      it on a couple of occasions and I became quite ill with malaria and I
      remember that fever and sitting in the tub taking baths, trying to get
      that fever to break.  That one is definitely a distinct memory.  It
      was actually an idyllic childhood.  We didn't have TV.  I had a record
      player and a few records and I know those lyrics to this day backward,
      forward, inside out.  Just a couple of toys and what that really did
      was promote a comfort level with time in solitude, time for
      recollection, time to develop an expansive imagination and I regret
      that more children don't have that experience in childhood now because
      I think it's very important for really becoming who you're capable of
      becoming.  Having some quiet time and not being programmed all the
      time with activities.  And we had a lot of really cool pets.  A family
      of bush babies, we had a parrot, feisty Senegalese parrot Bud who came
      back to the States with my mum and lived another twenty years or so in
      captivity and remained feisty all the way.  We also had a podo and
      that was quite the dramatic story and a small python.

      We kept mice in a cage.  Every Sunday after waffles and Aralen we
      would in the afternoon watch the python devour a mouse.   That's what
      we did for kicks.  Some men came to paint our ceiling fans, let the
      mice out of the cage.  One of the mice bit the podo and the podo was
      probably our closest family pet.  She would pluck out my dad's chest
      hairs when he was taking a nap.  She got into my mum's birth control
      pills.  Very, very intimate family member and so it was really tragic
      when she got rabies and she also bit my mother.  So the whole family
      went through the rabies series and I remember Dr. Henn would clean up
      the syringes and obviously get rid of the needles and everything and
      make them suitable for water fights so my brother Dave and I would
      have water fights.  But Christmas that year we had a rabies shot
      because we were going through the series at that point.

      So memories of pets and lazy days, a lot of reading, listening to
      music, very few toys but the ones we had we really cherished.
      Halloween was fun.  We would -they thought that we were absolutely
      nuts.  My mum was a really fun hostess and I remember one year we put
      sheets over the clothes line to make a tunnel of terror and we dressed
      up in all kind of different costumes that our tailor made for us and
      wondered what the crazy Americans were up to.  I remember some
      rollicking fun.  There was some great adult parties and they never
      seemed to mind that we were kind of milling around.

Interviewer:     I remember visiting your house.  It was probably in
      seventy, no sixty eight, and George (Lithket) and Don Millar and I we
      were making our big tour of Africa.  It was a very pleasant evening I
      remember.  What was your feeling about life in - of other people in
      Africa?

Interviewee:     Of the Africans or the other Americans?

Interviewer:     Africans.

Interviewee:     Interesting again from a child's perspective.  I did have
      an awareness of being very privileged and I remember one day standing
      out on the balcony with my doll and looking across the street at an
      African girl who was about the same age who was also holding up her
      doll.  And just noting the disparity in the quality of the houses that
      we were living in and feeling that somehow that wasn't fair but I
      loved the experience of going to L'ecole de la Marina and I think that
      too has had a profound impact on my world view as an adult.  A lot of
      what I do professionally is - most of our charter schools that we
      start up and manage are in the inner city and Inc. magazine has
      something called Inner City 100 the fastest growing companies that
      serve, that revitalize, generate jobs for, really enhance inner city
      populations in the U.S. and our company for three years in a row was
      in the top five.  So the need is really great in neighborhoods where
      children live poverty.

      And so much of what I feel really deeply about is not prejudging what
      children are capable of accomplishing and really holding a high
      standard and a high expectation for everyone and rising to the
      occasion as adults to serve that need.  And a lot of it I think goes
      back to how I felt on that first day of school looking around me at
      the all these kids, African kids who understood everything that was
      going on in French.  I didn't understand a word.  It was a hugely
      humbling experience and I think that that childhood experience and
      being a minority having - really I recall that it was just a very
      happy culture.  It was a wonderful time in life and I think that that
      had an impact on the way I see these children in the U.S. living in
      poverty and not all of them.  We serve children in affluent
      neighborhoods too but I think that even as a child I was keenly aware
      coming back to the States in seventy two how marginalized African
      Americans were in this country and just being astonished by that
      because I'd really idealized the States living overseas and it was -
      it was a surprise.

Interviewer:     Were you stationed in any of the other countries in
Africa?

Interviewee:     We were in Nigeria for a year and we lived in Kaduna in
      the Hogan's house after they moved out.  That was - it was a huge
      cavernous house great for telling ghost stories.  There were parts of
      the house we never even went into and that was during the civil war so
      we stayed very close to home.  There we ended up going to a Catholic
      school, Sacred Heart and that's when I had my encounter with British
      education and it really for years I had some issues with my spelling
      as a result.  But it was - Nigeria was a positive experience for my
      brother and me as children but unfortunately that was the time that my
      parents' marriage was starting to come apart.  So that was for them I
      don't think nearly as positive as Togo had been.

Interviewer:     You were in a Muslim culture in Kaduna.

Interviewee:     Hmm.

Interviewer:     Did that hinge upon you in any way?

Interviewee:     Not in a way that I can recall.  I don't really - maybe it
      had to do with the fact that we were going to a Catholic school but I
      think I was a little bit oblivious to that because it was never much
      of an issue with my parents and I don't think that that really
      registered.

Interviewer:     I would think that the environment in Togo was a much
      happier environment then?

Interviewee:     It really was.  It was just such as positive place and
      really all the other expats there that we met I loved the peace corps
      volunteers for years as a kid that I aspired to serving in the peace
      corps and it just - it was a great culture.  Wonderful gatherings,
      great music.  The music too that my parents had on the reel to reel
      tapes that we played over and over again.  The top one hundred hits of
      nineteen sixty six Bob Dylan, Blood Sweat and Tears, Beach Boys, but
      they made for some really wonderful gatherings.

Interviewer:     You spent some time in Bangladesh with you father?

Interviewee:     We did.  My brother and I spent about half of the summer.
      The year must have been seventy five and we went to Bangladesh first
      and stayed in (Aham) and he was wrapping up some work and then we went
      together to Nepal and stayed in Dave Newberry's house in Kathmandu and
      we went to India and we were in New Delhi almost the whole time we
      were there.  We did a couple of side trips.  I think my brother and I
      went to see the Taj Mahal one day and we spent a week on a houseboat
      in Kashmir as well and that was an interesting experience because the
      only meat that one could eat there was lamb.  So we either ate lamb or
      things cooked in lamb's grease.  The left an impression too.  French
      toast in lamb's grease.

Interviewer:     Do you still like lamb?

Interviewee:     I really don't.  Not so much, not if it's gamey.

Interviewer:     And I think that's - to me that's one of the problems with
      lamb today is not gamey enough.  You hardly know you're eating it.
      Were you in Bangladesh long enough to have any feeling for the
      country?

Interviewee:     I remember the crushing poverty of the country and seeing
      a body on the street and I couldn't discern if the person was sleeping
      or dead.  It was, I was just really aware of the poverty and it was
      also so incredibly muggy.  That also left quite the impression.
      Almost hard to breathe there and in India and you know this was in the
      back half of the summer so it was incredibly hot and humid.  No I just
      - I remember Bangladesh as being - and I was a little older too.  I
      was fourteen when we visited Dad that summer so I was very aware of
      children living in poverty and begging and you know missing limbs.  It
      was very hard especially coming from living in the States for a few
      years then, living a very comfortable middle class lifestyle and then
      experiencing the poverty was - it was a lot more shocking at that
      point.

Interviewer:     Is there anything else about your experiences that you
      would like to get on the record?

Interviewee:     Yeah.  I think what's really most remarkable to me about
      those years besides the fact that it was truly an idyllic childhood
      and a time to be able to enjoy family, friends, gathering, time for
      reflection, time to really, to read, to sing, to get to know a few
      texts really, really well because there weren't a lot of other
      distractions.  And I'm very proud of having been a part of smallpox
      eradication as a child experiencing that because it was such an
      amazing endeavor and I remember upstairs in the bar you know the house
      in Lome dad kept scabs in the freezer of the things of that - we just
      never went into that refrigerator.  It was also a bar.  We weren't
      supposed to be there but I remember even at the time - I remember even
      at the time being very proud of the work that my dad was doing and
      really liking the people he was working with and finding it really
      interesting to hear the stories of when he was breaking bread with the
      chief of the village and trying to negotiate access to the veiled
      women so that he could vaccinate them.

      I loved the time that I got to spend with both of my parents with that
      lifestyle.  Dad and I used to play chess all the time and that was a
      lot of fun and we spoke French together and that was enjoyable.  From
      my perspective today it's - I'm very proud to have been a part of
      something so historic and huge and I loved doing the reunion a couple
      of years ago.  The reflections about how the young doctors and - what
      were they called?  The operations...

Interviewer:     Operations officers.

Interviewee:     Officers, operations officers, really in many ways didn't
      know what they didn't know.  That's something as an entrepreneur that
      I can really appreciate and it's something that I think it's what's
      truly remarkable about this global endeavor that was really impressive
      [inaudible 19.40] at the time.  Sometimes not knowing what you don't
      know, not knowing the magnitude of the project that you're taking on
      is a blessing and thank goodness, thank goodness we had courageous,
      bold, ambitious, tenacious, brilliant, dedicated people who with all
      those qualities didn't know what they didn't know and they kept at it
      and they chased this disease from the face of the earth.

Interviewer:     And most of them were very kind people.

Interviewee:     Absolutely.  Absolutely so.  It was, it was a great
      community to be part of and I remember that vividly even as a child.
      These were - several of these folks I called uncle for years to come
      and even at the time I knew that it was special and we were part of
      something that we could be proud of.

Interviewer:     Thank you.