EGYPT
D
Sprouting English
ad, Tom and Gladys Decker need a math teacher at Nile Union Academy in Egypt. Why don’t you apply?” asked our daughter, Sylvia.* “They wouldn’t want me,” Chuck replied. Having said that, he applied. Guess what? They did want him— and they wanted me, too! Chuck is a born teacher who taught most of his working life and into his retirement years. I had never taught secondary school, and I had few illusions about starting at the age of 74.
“You can just go along and volunteer at whatever suits you,” Chuck assured me. It didn’t work out quite like that. I was required to apply as a full-time volunteer as well. My assignments were to teach English as a Second Language half time and mentor the librarian and office workers the other half. Why would we want to go to Egypt at our age? To understand that, you would need to understand Chuck. He can change gears at the drop of a hat and run off to some remote place
If you were to watch a line of Cairo residents walking past the Great Pyramid at the rate of one person every five seconds, it would take six days before you saw one Seventh-day Adventist. Visiting in the home of two students in Upper Egypt.
22
for the adventure of it. If teaching is involved, he’s ready. “If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to,” he assured me. Right! I said to myself. For the next ten months he’ll be telling people he couldn’t go to Egypt because his wife didn’t want to. “One can do almost anything for ten months,” I responded with a smile. “After all, it’s not ten years!” With that, we were off. It wasn’t that I didn’t know anything about teaching. I studied secondary education in college. I taught
Janet and Chuck visit the Giza pyramids near Cairo. Chuck’s Algebra II students enjoy candy bars from England.
