It was great to see Michigan Tech alums at the Uhuru summit. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1980, just two years after graduating from MTU. Frederick and Lou Anne look about as tired as I was. It is a grueling multi-day, high-altitude climb, but an amazing experience. Congratulations to them!

-Rich Lueptow ’78

I taught at Tech for four years before leaving to earn my PhD from The U of M. The story of Dr. Berry indicating that he failed one of three students brought back a memory from the first semester I taught at The U of M and I failed two students in my Dynamics class, using the same exam I used at Tech and grading it similarly. My department chairman called me in to notify me that we don’t fail students at The U of M; they must be good students to be admitted. I have often thought of all the students that professors failed at Tech who would have made it elsewhere, even at The U of M! Maybe that’s why, having been put through the wringer, Tech graduates do so well when released to the real world!

Merle Potter, M.E., 1958

-Thank you for sharing your story Merle. -SW 

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Well, if you are interested, I stayed with a former MTU MI international student (Luke) in Madagascar and it just so happens we had the same academic advisor. Here is my wife’s account (sadly she was a UC Boulder Buff alumni). It’s a little long but hopefully engaging.

-Ronald Martin ’03

From: Meredith Martin
Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Subject: Here’s the email story
To: Ron Martin

Hi!
I’m sitting here with Ron in a house in Madagascar wearing the strangest outfit and drinking clear bubble gum flavored soda called BonBon Anglais (Ron thinks it is banana flavor. Whatever it is, I can barely choke it down. It’s awful.) We just took cold bucket showers after walking almost two miles in deep sand. We are not on the beach. The roads in the neighborhood we are staying in are all made out of sand. And dirt. The kind of dirt that climbs up your legs and covers your socks. Plus it’s around 90 degrees and so humid!

Ok, now I’ll explain how we ended up here. After a 12 hour flight from Paris last week, we arrived in Antananarivo (capital of Madagascar) around 11:30 pm. The plane landed sort of far from the airport which was one small room and a baggage carousel. All 400 passengers walked to the airport and lined up to have their passports checked. After waiting 15 minutes, we handed our immigration cards over at the first desk. Then we had to line up again for a visa stamp. After 20 more minutes and $40 each we had the stamp but there was yet another line. When we finally got to the front, someone took our passports and threw them into a huge heap. They kept throwing more on top so soon ours were buried under a mountain of passports. Finally, at around 1:30 in the morning they got to our passports. They were stamped, and then thrown into yet another disorganized pile. A man picked them up, one by one, and called out the name on it. If you could hear him (and understand him – imagine a Malagasy guy saying Meredith), that is where you reunited with your passport.

The whole time the passport debacle was going on, there were only two baggage handlers unloading the whole plane, one cart at a time. You can imagine how long that took. At 2 am, when it was clear no more bags were going to be unloaded, we realized our backpacks hadn’t made it. Sigh. We filled out a lost baggage form and left the airport. Air France only flies to Madagascar three times a week so we really hoped they would be on the next flight two days later.

Antananarivo was a hot, dirty, crowded city. It’s springtime here, but even the beautiful jacaranda trees with their amazing purple flowers didn’t make us want to stay longer than we had to. We had planned to spend only one day there, but had to wait two days for our packs.

Well, our packs didn’t arrive on the next flight. After wearing the same clothes for four days, we finally went shopping for some new clothes, courtesy of Air France. Malagasy clothes are essentially the same as western clothes, especially in the city, but the store our friend took us to was kind of like a bad Walmart. This is how I ended up wearing orange and black board shorts that are ridiculously ugly, and an oversize green t-shirt. Fabulous, I’m ready for Halloween. I got some sweet orange flip flops to match, and a yellow baseball cap since the sun here seems unnaturally bright and hot.

Finally we gave up waiting for our luggage and blazed out of there without our backpacks, hoping they would be on the next flight and somehow would catch up to us. We went to a small village, stayed the night with a family, gave a presentation at an English club and then…

WE PETTED LEMURS!! Yes, you read that right. I now know exactly what it feels like when a common brown lemur sits on your head! I held hands with black and white indri lemur! I fed a shy bamboo lemur a banana! They were so soft and cute. They have opposable thumbs. We didn’t get to pet the sifaka lemurs because they were across a moat, but we got to watch up close as they jumped from tree to tree.

Okay, obviously these weren’t wild lemurs. It was a lemur park where the lemurs are free to run all around the park, no cages, but you are encouraged to feed them so they have become very tame. They run right up to you looking for bananas. They were SO CUTE, especially the little bitty bamboo lemurs. We took so many pictures. I’ve always wanted to pet a lemur. Dream completed!

Okay, I wrote all that yesterday. We had to leave the bubble gum soda people’s house. They were so kind and generous but the room we slept in last night had no windows and they bolted the door shut “for security.” I was all, “but what if we need to go to the bathroom?” because the toilet was in the courtyard. The mother pointed to a plastic pot with a lid in the corner! Yes, this happened. I unbolted the heavy metal door about an hour later (and made Ron walk to the bathroom with me) because it was so hot in there. Then mosquitos flew in all night through the tiny barred window, and then around 2 am a feral cat squeezed in through the same window and ran all around meowing. We tried to lure it out with a cookie but it wasn’t interested in leaving. Plus, all the village dogs barked until about midnight, and then at 4 am the roosters started in. I slept like four hours all night, and had hallucinogenic mefloquine dreams the whole time (Mefloquine is the malaria prophylaxis that we are taking, known for giving you insane dreams. Wow.) There was no way we could sleep there another night. So after a tour of the village (very poor, garbage everywhere), and lunch with the family, we left. Now we are at the house of a guy (and his wife) that had the same academic advisor as Ron at Michigan Tech. They happened to live nearby, how lucky.

We just heard our bags may have arrived in Madagascar and could catch us tomorrow. If not, I’m buying a new swimsuit and a towel and we are heading to Isle Saint Marie, a little (hopefully) tropical paradise off the east coast.

Happy Halloween! Please email back and let me know what I’m missing in the US.
Meredith

-Thank you for sharing your adventure travels to Madagascar with us, Meredith and Ron! Sounds like you had quite a time there. Did you find your luggage? -SW