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Hank Chase - The real Texan deal

Mom and dad had a new friend, a Texan Maoist - at least he was in those days. He was a young man in his early twenties called Hank Chase, who came to see us at the Upanga flats at the flat we had taken over from Augustino Neto the future president of Angola and his wife Maria Eugénia. Hank wore close cut drainpipe jeans with boots and an open collar red checked shirt. At that point we were studying at the American School in Dar-es-Salaam.

To my shock, the next day he appeared in my geography lesson and drawled away in his Texan accent:

"I'm supposed to be teaching you about geography, but I am not going to do that. Instead I am going to tell you how the United States stole Texas from Mexico."

And he proceeded to tell us about the traitor Santa Anna and how the Alamo was merely the death of a few obnoxious colonial adventurists and how the treaty ceding Texas was forced out of Santa Anna at gunpoint in 1836.

According to Hank the US had messed with both Mexico and Texas. I'll never forgot that "geography" lesson and little did I know he was speaking about what would one day be my adopted country.

Hank looked after us one evening while my parents were out partying. I was 12 and the twins were 10 0r 11 and I was to do the cooking that evening: steak. I made a tomato salad with yoghurt and then prepared the steak my way, slitting the meat and inserting crushed peppercorns and slivers of garlic into it and then frying it in butter - without overcooking it, so that it was still juicy and red in the middle.

Hank asked me to give it all to him and then declared that he was going to eat it all in front of us and not give us any in order to teach us what it was like to go hungry and see other people eat. He was sure, he said, that we had never had this experience before. And so he did. Lesson learned. Of course we complained like mad when our parents came home, but they just shrugged.

We saw Hank around, but then we moved to Nairobi and I moved to a Quaker school in the North of England and so we lost track of Hank. But Mom and dad said that he he had gone to the Sudan and was living and working there.

Decades passed. A few years ago someone said that they had passed through Khartoum, perhaps it was dad, or perhaps it was Pam, I can't remember. The news was that Hank was still there and that he had married a beautiful Sudanese women. It was surprising. He had such a breezy manner. I had imagined he would breeze all over the world. Of course his peasant politics came in for some stick. Since then Sudan has been in the headlines and I wonder how he is. Every time I meet someone who has lived or worked in the Sudan I am convinced they must have met Hank, but so far no-one has.

I turned up a letter he wrote to me when I was 12 years old, a month before my 13th birthday. I was in darkest Great Ayton at the Friend's School. He was the only one of mom and dad's friends who took the trouble to write to me.

* * *

7th October 1972

Dar-es-Salaam


Phil -


How's life away from home? What is your new school like? How was your summer vacation? School here goes from bad to worse. The new principle is a But who has been heading school in Uganda, is very strict. Makes sure all the upper level kids are wearing the correct color socks. Needless to say that means he's even stricter on things like shirts and shorts. He sent around a notice to the teachers telling them to say "Yes, Mr" and "No, Mam" etc.

I'm teaching 6th grade science to 6C - wish I had Andy and Chris' old class. Mostly I teach History which is the only thing that makes the school bearable. In the 8th grade I am teaching the beginning of European colonisation of the Third World and the Rise of capitalism.

I may very likely quit in December and travel a bit around Ethiopia and Egypt and, maybe, Morocco. Then I'll head back to the US.

Not much has been happening here lately. It looks like Tanzania and Uganda are settling things now in Somalia. Recently there was a big march in town on the 8th anniversary of the beginning of Frelimo's armed struggle. Lots of people took part and Marcelino gave a speech.

Frelimo also recently announced that they had opened a new war zone in Manica and Sofala Province. So things are looking good there.

Your mother came down last weekend to get the Renault back. I had really got used to having a car and now I've got to readjust to walking.

Write when you are not too busy studying.

Hank

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