Kirsten I. Russell - Tales from Tripoli: An American Familys Odyssey at a Libyan Boys School

Tales from Tripoli

An American Familys Odyssey
at a Libyan Boys School

Kirsten I. Russell

Copyright 2014, 2015 by Kirsten I. Russell

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

A photo identified as Ramadan Askar in 1965 is provided by Soufian Askar. All other photos in this book are from the authors family collection. The front cover photo shows the author in the Old City of Tripoli in 1953.

The names of some people portrayed in this book have been changed.

Contemporary transliterations of Arabic words are used except in quotes from letters written in the 1950s, when, for example, Muslim was spelled Moslem.

First edition April 2014. Second edition January 2015.

To my niece, Jennifer,
and my nephews, Steven and Michael

The following maps were drawn by the author for this book.

Based on Climatic Zones According to Fantoli 1939 in Handbook on Tripolitania, Issued by the British Military Administration, Tripolitania, Libya, 1947.

Seven hundred American good-will missionaries scattered round the world in thirty-three countries with 200 million dollars a year to spend... are there because the foreign countries asked for their aid and are matching dollars with American taxpayers.

Jack Williams, An Ex-Sedalia Editor Expects to Boost U.S. Trade by Point 4, The Kansas City Star, April 30, 1952

1. Memories

Our home leave residence overlooking Lake Taneycomo
and Branson, Missouri, in the 1950s and early 1960s

W e didnt talk about my childhood until one evening in January 1963, when our home in Tripoli, Libya, existed only in memories. That evening, as the clear sky darkened and the scent of evergreens wafted into the chilly air, I came home from school to our white clapboard cabin on a forested hill across a lake from Branson, Missouri, and joined Mother for supper. We sat at the kitchen table, relating memories wed never shared before.

She recalled our years in Tripoli as a bad time in our lives, particularly in mine. You were a happy baby here in Branson, she said, but you were an unhappy child in Tripoli.

As a fifteen-year-old girl, I couldnt hear the truth in Mothers claim. She thought she knew how Id felt as a child, but I thought her memory of my childhood was distorted. In my memory, my early years in Branson were shrouded in darkness, and even my darkest experiences in Tripoli seemed touched with light.

I dont recall being happy before we moved to Tripoli, I told Mother, and I wouldnt trade anything for having lived there.

Oh, but I remember how you used to laugh in your crib. Whenever I held you over my shoulder and patted your back to burp you, you made me laughyou patted my back, too!

Listening to Mother, I felt as if she were talking about another childnot me. I believed Id always been reticent to show affection. At the same time, I sensed she was relating an authentic memory; she looked younger, happier, even though shed noticeably aged in the past few years. We shared many memories of Tripoli that night, but we never resolved our conflicting views of my childhood. Long after she died, I remained in flight from painful memories, in search of forgotten joy.

My childhood memories began to revive after I inherited a carload of family documents, including hundreds of personal letters. The letters from Tripoli reminded me of my grandmother Mor Mor as Id known her before her voice faded in the chasms of illness and disability. Even more powerfully, these letters reminded me of Mother and Dad as Id known them before alcoholism took over their lives.

Then, too, the letters taught me much I hadnt known about Dads work in Libya. Not all of that story was documented; I used to hear some of his unwritten story in my adult visits with him. He would relate pieces of itthey were his drinking tales. Near the end of his life, he told me how his story begins, and I hung onto every word. He wasnt drinking then.

2. Call to Adventure

Ray E. Russell, January 1952

M y father, Ray Eugene Russell, hankered to go places. On January 20, 1949, his wanderlust stirred as he lay on our front room sofa in our hillside house in Taney County, Missouri, listening to the radio broadcast of President Harry Trumans inaugural address.

Mr. Truman spoke of the two world wars and the attacks on human rights in the first half of the twentieth century, and he stated the supreme need of all people to learn to live together in peace and harmony. (Dad had served in the Pacific in 1945, the year World War II had ended, and hed seen frightful wreckage and skeletons of battle.) Mr. Truman then proposed four courses of action to strengthen the free world and achieve global peace. The first three courses would continue foreign policy already in practice. The fourth course, a bold new program, would help the worlds poorest, most disadvantaged people to help themselves. Dad wanted to work for the new program.

For a year after he wrote to the US Department of State offering his services as a vocational agriculture instructor and a US Navy veteran, he received no reply.

He had already started a career and a family in the woodlands and waterways of the southern Missouri Ozarks. Branson had not yet gained national fame as an entertainment center; back then it was a quiet resort community where Dad taught vocational agriculture at the public high school. He enjoyed guiding students toward agricultural careers, and he went out of his way to help his graduating students register for college. His job had one big drawback: his salary was too low to support our growing family.

Ingrid is teaching full time at the School of the Ozarks, he wrote to his parents in February 1949. Its a good thing shes gone back to work, or we couldnt make ends meet.

My mother, Ingrid Almon Russell, taught high school English and music. Her mother, the Reverend Hanna Lindquist Almon, was widowed, still active in the Presbyterian Church, and known to us children as Mor Mor (mothers mother in Swedish). Mor Mor lived in the white clapboard cabin next door to our hillside house, and she took care of us kids while our parents worked.

In recent years Dad had started a small business, raising worms in the cabin basement and selling them as fishing bait and soil builders. The income from this business, from Mother, and from his teaching job covered most of our family expenses, but Dad could pay little more than interest on his debts. He owed his father several thousand dollars for his hillside property.

In February 1950 he received employment information from the US Department of State. For a year after he filled out and mailed the Foreign Service employment application, he received no reply, but in April 1951 he received an invitation to work for the Technical Cooperation Administration, informally known as Point Four, the bold new program based on the fourth point of Trumans foreign policy. The salary could pull Dad out of debt without Mothers help, and the travel benefits would extend to our family.