I have been fortunate to maintain a sporadic connection with Sean and Karla. The odd postcard from some foreign posting and a Christmas ever so often.
Written in 1970
"Sean was the English/Social Studies instructor.  He apparently led his classes with unbounded enthusiasm and a deluge of handouts.  I came to know him during the three weeks we stayed in Kohala.  He has a most remarkable amount of optimism that was required on our first day in Kohala.  There was a storm that day and we had to load the truck in it, then unload in it and then unpack in the filthy hotel and get stuck in cleaning it up.  Through out it all there was Sean, all smiles, encouraging words and 150% energized.  Wide awake every morning rushing us out of the hotel and into the truck.

Flexible that's a key word in describing him.  He was willing to be talked into field trips at a moment's notice.  And at the barbeques, who was it manning the pit?  Right, our den mother, Sean.

"You don't appreciate this person until you hear some of his history.  While we were chowing down at a buffet at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel he told us how he worked his way through college by playing piano at a lounge, serenading diners in the dining room and singing in a choir.  Another time he put on a slide show of Ethiopia where he was a PCV and he had a good story to go with each one.  It was amazing to hear him describe it in his matter of fact manner.

• Apparently before he could teach he had to build a school.
• He had a nice house located in a village on a hill, so that when it rained the water would come in the back door and go out the front.
• The first day there he cleaned the place and settled down for a good night's sleep.  While reading his book he noticed a bug on his arm and brushed it off.  Then he heard lots of plunks as they landed on his bed.  Looking up he saw that the whole ceiling was covered with bed bugs.  So, he got up shook them all off, tucked the sheets in to keep them out and crawled in and under cover only to be bitten.  Up, shake and this time sprayed DDT all over only to find that they loved the stuff and now he had even more with to contend.  He lasted the night somehow and in the morning his sheet was polka-dotted with blood stains from chunks torn out of his body.  He moved in to a hotel and and stayed there for two weeks while spraying his house daily with gasoline.
• He used a scythe he found in a shed to mow grass and quickly found himself infested with fleas.  He removed them by scrubbing them off in his bath tub (2'x1'x6").  It was two years living with the bedbugs and fleas.
• The people there use old rancid butter to keep their hair in place and travelling on a bus or sitting in a room with them is quite and experience.  They also throw-up while riding on the bus, due to their extremely spicy diet and wine drinking.
• Cabs in the larger cities are unbelievable; every cabbie is a maniac, they drive with lights out to save the bulbs, coast down hills with motor off, corner without braking.  Three times Sean was in accidents while in a cab.  Once a bus cut the taxi in half!
• He was out in the desert visiting a city that has obelisks.  He and his friends needed to to catch a plane at 9:30AM.  So they left at 4:30AM in the dark to do the 15 mile hike in the cool air.  They found themselves in the middle of nowhere, out of water and where the people spoke a different language.  Finally an old farmer led them to the airplane strip after walking all day in the sun.  A plane came, picked them up and tried to leave before a storm blew in, but was a bit too late.  Still in the middle of the downpour, going uphill in mud, it just barely made liftoff.  The pilot immediately threw the plane sideways to squeeze between two hills.  Passengers thought they were crashing.
• He was crossing Lake Victoria, 4th class (on deck) and a storm brewed up and poor Sean was drenched all night long.
• He was in a small boat that was lifted by a hippopatamus and he was thrown three feet from a crocodile.
• Time to time nomadic gangs would ride in from the wilderness and strike terror into the town".

Dr. Tate and artistic wife Karla

From a recent webpage   Sean Tate has worked for more than twenty years in international and development education with both high-level and grassroots experience in delivering and managing activities related to governance and education. His wide-ranging expertise encompasses policy development, institution- and capacity-building, organizational development, strategic planning, management, training, community education, sustainable livelihoods, needs assessment and evaluation. Dr. Tate currently works as the Educational Policy Specialist for the BEPS Activity at Creative Associates International, Inc.  He has previously served as Sectoral Training Specialist in Development Planning and Environmental Management for UNDP in Bangladesh; Senior Program Officer at the Academy for Educational Development; Management Training Specialist for the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont; Administrator of the American-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce in New York City; and as Technical Specialist in Evaluation for both World Education and the University of Massachusetts/World Bank Non-formal Education Project in Indonesia.  Dr. Tate has a Ph.D. in International and Development Education from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.A. and M.A. in Government from the University of New Hampshire.  He has lived and worked in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Ethiopia and has consulted for the Asian Development Bank, The World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, and UNICEF in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Cameroon, Botswana, Belize, and the Fiji Islands.  He is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu.