How Does She Do It?

Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno: A Giant in the Grocery World (if not in sensible shoes)

- Janet Pelz

For Seattlites, Uwajimaya is not just the destination for home-made sushi ingredients, it is a journey to a far-away place at the end of the ride-free bus. Amid the shelves piled high with exotic food items you’ll see the regular neighborhood customers, many of whom are elderly immigrants, filling their grocery carts with reminders of home. You’ll see pre-school classes ogling the live fish and bins of strange fruits and vegetables, tourists taking photos and office workers on lunch break. It’s a place that has come to define Seattle almost as much as the Space Needle.

I enter the sprawling retail complex that is Uwajimaya looking for my interview with its CEO, Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno and notice a woman whose head barely rises above a display of rice sacks. She is engaged in what looks like any conversation between two neighbors catching up with family news, although here, one is the store owner and the other a customer.

I introduce myself as she finishes her impromptu chat and she takes up with me as if I were the next neighbor. We climb the employees-only staircase until Tomoko stops a man descending. “What’s up with that -- ‘Can I meet in an hour’?,” she asks him tauntingly. “The soy sauce rep, doesn’t he understand we’re one of their biggest customers?”

“Not one of their biggest customers,” corrects the man with a smile, “their biggest customer!”

“Well, you tell him next time that won’t work, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what he says!” She giggles with these words. “And don’t forget,” her voice shifting to business mode as she continues upward, “I need the names and addresses of the big-wigs in San Francisco to invite to our event down there.”

We’re on a hunt to find a place to talk, and though she has just arrived, she knows what’s going on in any possible space. “That one’s busy with a 401(k) training,” she nods as we approach a room filled with employees. Tomoko offers greetings and personal comment to each person she passes. Striding into an office area she raises her voice loud enough to address everyone sitting at their desks. She breaks into a friendly exchange in Japanese with one woman as we squeeze through to a small room at the back, where Tomoko pushes a stack of supplies to the edge of the small round table, and pulls up a stacking chair.

Across the table from me in this supply-closet-turned-Executive-Conference-Room sits Tomoko Moriguchi-Matsuno, Uwajimaya’s CEO, dressed in a palette of color suggesting an artist’s sensibility. She carries none of the officiousness one would expect from a corporate executive and indeed our interview is peppered more frequently with self-effacements than with boasts of business success.

In the next hour I’ll come to see that this one woman, who reaches 4’10” in a pair of sensible shoes, embodies a package of contrasts which she moves between as quickly and easily as images in an iPad commercial. She speaks fluent Japanese and in English can swear like a sailor. She is an artist surrounded by engineers and business leaders. She was born in the custody of an internment camp yet embraces her American heritage. She can barely reach a kitchen counter, but she worships the giants of the NBA, calling herself a Kobe Bryant ‘freak’.

Raised in a traditional Japanese American family where the men are in charge, she sits at the head of her family business, which last year had $95 million in sales.

From the moment we begin talking, Tomoko demurs, suggesting there is nothing so interesting about her that would fill the paragraphs of a story.

“This is really just a grocery business, it’s not rocket science. I think my family is more interesting than me -- what they are to Seattle and to the Japanese community.”

Although I’m not convinced, I agree to travel back in time to the beginnings of the business at the top of which Tomoko sits today.

          (some of the colorful shelves at Seattle’s Uwajimaya)

Uwajimaya, named for the Japanese town of Uwajima where Tomoko’s father Fujimatsu Moriguchi learned his trade (the suffix ‘ya’ means ‘store’), began in 1928, when he started making fish cakes in Tacoma to sell to the Japanese farmers and fishermen around Washington State. It was part of his plan to make $5,000 and then return to Japan. “My father was very, very poor. He had just a seventh grade education, if even that.”

But before Fujimatsu Moriguchi could realize his dream, the war came, and with it Executive Order 9066 in 1942 which forcibly relocated to internment camps 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, the Moriguchi family included.

An arranged marriage had partnered Fujimatsu to Sadako Tsutakawa, sister to George Tsutakawa who later would achieve international renown as a Seattle sculptor. Mr. and Mrs. Moriguchi had sent their oldest child, a girl, to Japan before they were interned. Tomoko, their youngest child, was born in the land of the free but not in freedom. She was the last child born in the internment camp in Tule Lake California, her sister having the distinction of being the first child born there.

Tule Lake, in northern California, was one of the most infamous of the internment camps. Prisoners there held frequent demonstrations and strikes, demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution. As a result, it was made a "segregation camp," and internees from other camps who had refused to take the loyalty oath or had caused disturbances were sent to Tule Lake. At its peak, Tule Lake held 18,789 internees. Tule Lake was also one of the last camps to be closed, staying open until March 20, 1946.  -- J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

With two other children born before and three born in camp, the Moriguchis were released in 1945 -- a family of six children with $75 in their father’s pocket, the dreams of returning to Japan having vanished like the smoke from an incense burner. “So, we came back to Seattle and moved into what I learned a little while ago was a barn -- I always thought our house was a little bit strange,” her voice floats higher as her eyes roll upward. “You know, we were very poor but we didn’t know we were poor because we had such good people in our lives.”

Her father started a store at 4th and Main in Seattle’s Nihonmachi, or Little Japan Town, an area just a shadow of what it had been before it was cleared of many of its residents. “It was a very small Uwajimaya store where he made his fishcakes again.”

The family worked hard. “Oh, we lived in the store, my mother and father worked 7 days a week; 15 - 20 hours a day.” Knowing a life of poverty, Fujimatsu was determined that his children would have greater opportunities, starting with a solid education. Undoubtedly reflective of his recent experience he would tell his children, “There are many things that can be taken away from you, but not an education.”

 Of the seven children, every one went to college with the exception of the oldest sister in Japan. Represented among them are engineering degrees, chemistry degrees, home economics, and Tomoko’s fine arts degree.

(Left: Fujimatsu outside the original Seattle Uwajimaya)

While he was still alive, her father gave the business to the four boys. “He expected the girls to get married and not do anything.” With the sad passing of the family patriarch in 1962, Tomoko’s brother Tomio Moriguchi left his job at the Boeing Company where he was working as   an engineer, and took over the family business, running it for the next 40 years.

Meanwhile, the youngest sibling Tomoko, was working as a graphic artist in San Francisco, living near her sister. Tomoko married her husband, Koji Matsuno, a San Francisco native, and they had two daughters. But when her sister announced that she was moving back to Seattle for her husband to take a job with the family business, Tomoko told her own husband that they would be leaving, too. “He was an engineer for the Navy, and I told him he would have to transfer.”

When she came back was it to be involved in the business? “No, no, no, no. Trust me, this is not what I thought I’d be doing today,” she says sotto voce.

And what did she think she would be doing? “I didn’t think anything beyond just bringing up my kids. I do everything for them, but I’m a tiger mom, too. People criticize that woman, I don’t criticize her. First of all, she’s not telling you what to do. That’s the way I brought them up, we were tough and they’re successful. I didn’t beat them, but we were tough.”

Shortly after her return to Seattle, “I was working part-time, fixing up the stores, setting up the displays. It was just a nice way for my family to give me a job. Actually,” she says conspiratorially, “I don’t know if they did give the job to me -- I think I just ended up doing it. We always kid that no one would hire us so we all had to come back to the family business.”

Over the years, her job at Uwajimaya grew to entail oversight of much of the business’s day-to-day operations. Tomoko was the one responsible for opening new stores in Beaverton, Oregon and in Bellevue and Renton, Washington. Along the way, she put her artistic flair to work in designing vivid store displays.

Then in November 2000, Uwajimaya made its second Seattle move since the 4^th and Main location, to anchor Uwajimaya Village. Along with the grocery and gift market, the 66,000 square foot retail space includes Kinokuniya Bookstore, an Asian food court, underground parking and several other retail stores and services. Above the store sits the 176-unit Uwajimaya Village Apartments. Altogether, it represents a project of incredible magnitude for a family business.

(You can read more about the business in this Seattle Times story commemorating the 80^th anniversary of Uwajimaya).

 

 (Exterior of Uwajimaya Seattle; Village apartments visible above)

“And then, the four brothers for some crazy reason all retired within years of each other and they said, oh, we’re going to have you run it.” Tomoko was 62.

Her answer? “Well, I guess there’s no one else to do it,” she says with her eyes moving from side to side, feigning a search for an alternative. “We wanted a family member. So I thought, I think I can do it for a year (I’m in my third year now). But I’m very, very bad with numbers. I’m an art major! And my brothers said, we’ll just put good people around you and that’s what I have -- I have really good people around me. So, what choice do I have?” she asks as if scheming to find another solution.

“I was already doing so much of the day to day operations for the retail -- but I didn’t have the wholesale and everything else. But I’m always good at telling people what to do,” she says mischievously, her eyes sparkling.

She jokes about what the first days were like. “I just sort of sat around and thought, hmmm,” her shoulders hunched as if her goal were to make herself even smaller than she already was. “You know, I don’t have a secretary, I don’t have an assistant. It wasn’t like I was in a whole new world where people were driving me around and bringing me lunch -- in fact, I have to go out there and beg people to get me something,” she says, faking outrage.

She acknowledges that much of what she knows about the business comes from having been in it basically all her life. “I not just grew up in it but I understood from my brothers which were the important parts.

“The store is us and we are the store.”

The store seems to function as the sun in this family’s solar system. Each of the siblings, like planets, may rotate independently but their orbits always bring them back to Uwajimaya. Over time, each of the siblings have added to the family network, like moons to the planets, but still they all feel the gravitational pull of a business in its third and fourth generations, that is open seven days a week for most every day of each year after year. And like the sun, its steady presence becomes indistinguishable from the daily pace of life. It is no wonder there are no apparent boundaries in Tomoko between the personal and the business, from a chat with a neighbor to instructions regarding a contract. In addition to her Japanese upbringing, to which she attributes her reticence to take credit, the business is such an intrinsic aspect of daily life that it often goes unnoticed for how amazing it really is.

At this point in the interview Tomoko stops to challenge me. “How interesting is this? It’s so weird to think that anyone would want to read about me. Running the grocery store -- that’s not interesting, that’s second nature.”

After she describes all that is part of this family business, including an arm that sells wholesale products to Asian restaurants, I challenge her initial premise that this isn’t much like rocket science. It sounds pretty complicated to me.

“I wish I could say it is but because we’re in it every single day and it’s human. Retail is like farming -- you have to work with what you have, you have to have good common sense, good social skills, you have to think fast, and because you’re working in a grocery store, you can’t tell everyone to go to hell.”

I ask what changes Tomoko has witnessed in the decades her family has been growing the business. “It used to be (in the original Seattle store) that people actually worked for us -- and I don’t mean this in a power play at all -- because we were a business. Now the company works for the employees to give them good jobs and good benefits.” I note the 401(k) seminar we passed and she nods her head. “Thirty-seven cents of every dollar goes to employee benefits. For a small Asian family business, we work hard to take care of our 500 employees. We want our employees to be citizens, to pay their taxes, to get the same privileges of any other person.”

She points out that if the philosophy weren’t so ingrained, the family “would have taken a lot of money out of the business to drive fancy-dancy cars, but that doesn’t suit us. Now, were not starving,” she states sincerely, to assure me that martyrdom isn’t part of the business plan, “but we are not here to live the kind of life that we wouldn’t know what to do with.”

Where their clientele was once all Japanese, they are now 50% non-Asian in all their stores, and their Asian products represent every part of the continent. “The mix makes it stronger,” she says noting that the mix comes not just from the products they sell but from the different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and 30 native languages represented in their employee base. “But our policy is that you can only speak English on the floor unless a customer asks for something in another language. Because we’re America,” she says with a mixture of national pride and retail pragmatics. “We find it insulting to customers if we’re talking away in a language they don’t understand.

Has she changed during these three years of being in charge? “Yeah, a lot, but I can’t tell you exactly how because they are subtle things. I understand numbers better but I still hate them. Numbers are good but your heart is even more important.

“At the end of the year if we didn’t make $1 million but we made $900,000 and we did it by not letting people go -- the numbers can’t always drive you. If we were a public company, the investors would come in and tar and feather me. But for all my life working in this business, there are many stupid things I have done, not once have I been reprimanded. But also, my family figures since I never listen to them, why tell her?”

Tomoko sees herself in this position for another two years, but her family insists it will take longer than that to groom other family members to take over. And when she’s done being a CEO? “I’m going to find myself in either art or food or both. I like to cook, but I also have this art in me. I do crazy things with fabric. Somewhere I’ll find a mix with my art and my food, but I don’t know what it is yet. And I would like to tell women, in Japan mostly, that they don’t have to abide by the old rules.”

Before our interview comes to a close, Tomoko pauses to check her cell phone for a message. “My lawyer’s wife fell down today and he said he would call the minute she was diagnosed.” We leave the supply closet whereupon Tomoko issues a few more jokes to the office workers and a couple instructions regarding a contract negotiation before heading downstairs to see an old friend. I leave her by the rice sacks, talking to a customer just as I had found her a couple hours earlier.

Tomoko’s Not-So Secrets for How She Does It?

• You know what I’ve gotten with age? I’ve been able to kiss off worrying about things I have no control over.
• If she had a group of Japanese women here what would she would tell them? “First of all, if you’re a mother, be a good mother, be a good wife, a good partner, whatever you are. I’ve had the opportunity to break some silly social glass ceilings both for my family and myself. I would tell them, you have to not feel inferior. There is always something you can do -- I don’t mean reinvent the light bulb, but even the littlest thing, every single day, if you have some control to make it better, you need to make it better. I think, as women, we sort of think, oh, somebody else should do that, especially in the Japanese community. You don’t have to be a leader, but you can focus everyday on what you can do. That’s the advice I would give them.”
• I’m always figuring out how to have a really good time, but the good time comes because you’ve had some crappy times.
• Being able to wake up is a good time. Everything is a good time, even when my mother died it was a good time because she suffered so much.
• I always have a really good time with my two girls when we take a good trip -- those REALLY are good times.  My other good times? Just laughing. I love laughing -- I feel that it’s really good for your heart.

What has Tomoko read recently?

• Besides every grocery article in the whole entire world now? I read the newspapers inside out. I read the NBA sports stories. I’m a Kobe Bryant freak. I was very sick one year and I had to stay in bed, and the NBA playoffs were on. What I was admiring about Kobe, not only do I think he’s cute, but he had this incredible physical talent. I fell in love with him. And of course his name is Kobe -- probably because his mother liked Kobe beef. I am just impressed with NBA physical talent -- you can see them do nine things in half a second -- if you don’t admire that there’s something wrong with you. I love basketball. I’ll lie to people, if a game is on and there’s something I have to go to, I’ll lie in order to watch it.

Whom does Tomoko want me to interview next?

• Megan Macphee -- a young woman who is an artist, going through melanoma. Her story is amazing -- the art piece she’s creating is just amazing. It is something she needs to be doing.
• Mickey Flowers -- she used to be on channel 7 news. She’s done a lot with the African American museum. She’s one of twin sisters -- it would be very interesting to interview them together.

Events to Consider

As How Does She Do It? readers you might be interested in supporting a couple events coming up in the Seattle area.

October 19: Preview the film “I Know a Woman Like That,” a documentary film that features some amazing older women, including Maxine Hong Kingston, Rita Moreno, Gloria Steinem, Lauren Hutton, Eartha Kitt, and other not-so famous women, including a 92 year-old ballroom dancer and yoga instructor and a 90 something year-old water skier.   Maxine Hong Kingston and the filmmaker will be on a panel moderated by Mayumi Tsutakawa following the film.

Broadway Performance Hall, 5:30 - 9:00. Your $50 contribution supports Kawabe House and Senior Services

For reservations, click here.

 

And another:

Water First International, the organization started by Marla Smith-Nilson (featured on this site May, 2010) is preparing for its 6th annual Give Water • Give Life Benefit, their premier fundraising event of the year. More than 700 people will gather in support of people in need of clean water in India, Bangladesh, Honduras, and Ethiopia. Last year’s event raised a record $510,000 for sustainable water supply, sanitation, and health-education projects. I went last year and was overwhelmed by the great work this organization is doing. I’ll be there again, enthusiastically supporting their efforts. Hope to see you!

DATE & TIME: Saturday, November 13, at 6:00 pm

LOCATION: Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle

Enjoy a cocktail reception, live music, and a unique silent auction, followed by a dinner and a Water 1st presentation and film featuring current and future Water 1st project beneficiaries.  There are no tickets for this event. Suggested minimum donation is $150/person.

- Janet Pelz

 

And a follow-up on the story about Meg Tremblay

I thought you might enjoy reading about her typical day living in Zambia (read her full story about her Peace Corps experience here)

5 am: Morning run

6 am: Haul water from well and take a quick cold bucket bath outside in my bathing shelter, which was just a little structure made of straw without a roof. Usually I had a big pot or plastic tub filled with water and a big cup to pour the water over myself.

Quick breakfast, usually bananas or mangoes depending on the season, maybe some buns and coffee made the night before. I usually wouldn't make a fire in the morning to try to save coal/time etc. I would try to shop about once a week when I went into the town to do work there. I'd buy onions, tomatoes, greens, beans, bananas, or oranges, sometimes sweet potatoes, eggplants, watermelon or avocados when they were in season, and when I needed it, toilet paper, soap, candles, washing powder.  Once every two months I'd get some other supplies (salt, spices, powdered milk, flour, coffee, etc.) from the actual store in the provincial capital and haul them back to Katete then bike them out to my village.

8 am: Biking the 10km into the town to work with the Network of Zambians Living Positively or the 3km to the clinic where I would meet up with clinic staff and then bike out to one of the villages to meet with the Neighborhood Health Committee members and do maternal and child health outreach.  This might including weighing babies, the nurse giving shots or tending to the sick. We'd also do health education talks while we had so much of the community there on things like condom usage, malaria prevention, what to do if one gets diarrhea, good nutrition, etc.

1pm: We'd be done with the work and I'd grab a quick bite with the clinic staff and Neighborhood Health Committee members. The community would sometimes make us the traditional Zambia dish of nshima, which is a flour ground from corn and then mixed with water until it starts to get harder, then it is used to pick up and eat other foods like cabbage or beans or rape (dark green).  Then back on the bike to another one of my villages for a meeting or training or working on one of our projects (for example the school in my village of Malata or the well we built in another one of the villages).

5-6 pm: Back to my house and greeted by the kids. Draw more water from the well and then  play with the kids, basketball, soccer, jumping rope or drawing, etc. While the kids are hanging out at the house, gather twigs and straw, put coals in my brazier and light the fire. It takes sometimes 15 minutes or longer to get the fire going. Once the coals catch I would swing the brazier to get the coals hot and to get the fire to spread. Then I'd usually put a big pot on the fire to heat bath water.

6 pm: Cut up some greens or beans or whatever else I'm having for dinner (the kids are still hanging/playing at my house during this time), take the bath water off the fire and put on the food. The adults that were in the fields all day start to arrive back to the village so sometimes they would come by to sit and chat or I'd help my friend Rhodah with her school work or she'd help me with my chichewa.

7 pm: Try to get the kids home and take a warm bucket bath outside, often after dark depending on the time of year. This was always one of my favorite moments because I was tired and the warm water felt like such a luxury.  The village settles down and I can hear families talking around fires and drumming. Often I’d be bathing under the stars. Then eat dinner.

7:30 pm: Prepare materials for whatever I'm doing the next day.

8-9 pm: Read, paint, draw, write letters etc.

8:30-9 pm: Bed time.

Meg’s village at night

Meg Tremblay: Finding a Second Home through the Peace Corps

Before we even start, Meg Tremblay and I have reason to laugh at the irony of where she is today compared to where she lived just months ago. When I set out my iPhone to record our conversation she’s as surprised to learn it has that capability as I was when a 17 year-old pointed it out to me. “I missed out on that whole smart phone explosion,” confesses Meg, the only person I know under the age of 30 who could admit to that. “I could have used it for net distribution.”

I’m thinking she’s referring to yet another aspect of online marketing until she explains that no, she’s talking about handing out real nets, like the ones used to prevent the spread of malaria. Two worlds, juxtaposing yet coinciding, in the young woman I’m about to interview….

When Meg Tremblay’s fellow graduates were tuning up their resumes for Monster.com, searching the want ads for an apartment to rent or packing their bags for law school, Meg was waiting to learn what far corner of the world would be her home for the next two years. An interest in working abroad that budded in her first year at Lewis and Clark College, a school that attracted Meg mostly for the rowing program but then captured her with its strong international relations program, had her turning to the Peace Corps for her first post-college experience.

“I took a middle east policy class from a really great professor who had worked for the Shah of Iran. He became my advisor. He encouraged us to not just make this a classroom thing but a lifetime commitment. It made me want to work abroad and learn more about the things he was talking about, and the Peace Corps was the only option that I wouldn’t have to pay for and where I would really live in local communities.”

Though Africa had been a siren call through her undergraduate years, friends had convinced her that a posting in the Middle East or Southeast Asia would be more comfortable. She was getting a lot of advice back then, most of it suggesting she forego the Peace Corps for a more lucrative and shorter job experience in the States. “My mom was the only one who encouraged me to do it,” says Meg looking back. A young woman with a sense of purpose on display throughout our conversation, Meg needed just one voice added to the one that spoke so strongly within her.

As it turned out, neither the Middle East nor Southeast Asia had opportunities for her. Instead it was the tiny country of Zambia in southern Africa that was written on the letter that finally arrived from the Peace Corps in December. Meg scurried to a map to see just where it was.

“Fate has a funny way of working out. I ended up where I was supposed to be.”

Also in the letter was a brief description of her posting. She’d be living in a mud hut. She’d have miles to walk to get from one place to another.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, but it was quite a leap when I did it.”

Soon, she was flying off to Zambia’s capital city Lusaka. “Once in country, you have three months of training -- six hours a day of instruction in the Nyanja language and three additional hours each day of technical training” learning to become a community health worker.

When the training was over, Meg set off for her new home in Katete about 400 km from Lusaka, at the meeting of the Mozambique Road and the Great East Road that leads to Malawi.

(Meg’s hut, bathing and cooking shelters)

Home for Meg was a mud hut. No electricity to read by, no running water to bathe with, no stove for cooking. She was to work with Neighborhood Health Committees (NHC) from seven different villages which she traveled to on her bicycle, training them “in health issues, like maternal and child health, malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition, HIV, and in other things, like business skills.” Each month she would meet with the Health Center Committee, which included two representatives from each village. Together they would share issues and concerns of their respective villages and talk about possible solutions.

(inside seating area of Meg’s hut)

“By the time I finished my training I could communicate in Nyanja, although the local Chichewe dialect was a little difficult.” It was important to Meg that she learn the local language, and knowing it became a badge of honor. “I wanted to spend my time with Zambians – that’s why I was there. All the health presentations I did in local language. Some volunteers get a translator, but you never know exactly how you’re being translated.”

The Peace Corps places three ‘generations’ of volunteers, each serving a two year-term and building on the efforts of his or her predecessors. “One of the things I absolutely love about the Peace Corps is that they really promote incremental and sustainable change. My NHC had already been trained -- I feel really lucky because it allowed me to work with them on bigger issues.”

For Meg, one of those “bigger issues” became her signature accomplishment. In their NHC meetings, the villagers complained of the lack of schools for local children. “In Zambia, kids don’t start going to school until age 8 or 9 and by the time they reach that age, often the schools are full and kids postpone for another year or more until they can finally get in. There is nothing like Kindergarten that can prepare the younger children.” The NHC wanted to build a pre-school, but the cost was overwhelming.

Meg helped the villagers write a proposal to build a community school and a chicken house that could generate income necessary to pay a teacher’s salary. Taking advantage of the Peace Corps Partnership program, she posted a proposal online to solicit donations for the money required -- $2,000 – to build the new school.

“While we were waiting for the money we started making the bricks. It was very physical labor, going down to the river to gather sand to mix with the cement. Working alongside people, they learn that you care about them. This was one of the most important lessons I learned. You can make things happen if you put in the work.”

Meg’s friends and family here in the States sent in contributions, and before long, the NHC had the funds to see their idea take shape.

(right: mixing sand to make bricks for school; below: building the school)

 

Eight months later, the school was finished. “It’s a one room building made of brick; windows made of glass; a chalkboard and a tin roof. The books and bookshelves were donated. We started out without desks – we just had mats for the kid to sit on. The first teacher taught before the chicken house was built, working for free as an investment in the community.”

 

 

(Kids learning in the new school)

Meg barely had time to celebrate the opening of the school when the accident happened.

“I was riding my bike back from work when I got t-boned by a drunk motorcyclist. I was thrown in the air and landed on the cement road on my back.”

Her medical training tuned to the danger of moving someone with a possible back injury had her objecting, unsuccessfully, when some villagers picked her up and threw her in the back of a truck insisting she go to the hospital. The fact she could have become a paraplegic doesn’t seem to phase her now.

“They took me to the local hospital that didn’t have x-rays at the time. Then the Peace Corps brought me to the capital city to do another x-ray, but I had to wait until they found someone who could read it.” Finally, someone told Meg he didn’t see anything specific but acknowledged the technology there was antiquated.

“So they sent me to the big hospital in South Africa and they told me, ‘you’ve broken your back in two different places. We’re going to be sending you home’. Being stubborn I said there’s no way I’m going home. I don’t do well with people telling me I can’t do things – it just makes me want to do it more.”

The way Meg saw it, it wasn’t time for her to go. The school had just opened and they still had the chicken house to build. “It was my home. I wanted to figure out what we could do to allow me to stay.”

Fortunately for Meg, her South African doctor was willing to help her recover without surgery. “He fit me with a back brace and told me I needed to stay there for two weeks to regain my strength. He said if it’s still this bad after two weeks, there’s no way I’m allowing the Peace Corps to let you stay.” She was given exercises to strengthen her back and to cope with the pain. After the two weeks, her doctor gave her clearance to return. But the physical therapist in South Africa told Meg she would never be able to run again.

“When I got back to Katete I was in a lot of pain. I realized how much of my work depended on being physically able. I was the volunteer who did everything, hauled water, made bricks, rode my bike. And running everyday was my time. I’d go to bed at about 8:30. Every morning I would get up at 5:00 when the day started and go for a long run.”

(below: Meg in her back brace with kids outside her hut)

Fortunately, Meg’s mother Bev was planning a visit just at the time Meg returned to her village. “She spent 12 days in the village, and she was a real trooper. I had planned things to do for her, but the accident meant I couldn’t and there were things she couldn’t do it either, liking making the fire. But it was really great having her there.”

On her road to recovery, Meg had to learn how to put running back in her life. “I started going for long walks in the bush after doing my morning physical therapy. I had to figure out how to have new expectations while still pushing myself. I had to start all over again, jogging just a half mile and building back up.”

And though the school building was complete, there was still lot of work to do. “I was still working three days a week with this HIV organization in town, made up entirely of volunteers who are HIV positive. We would go out to different communities to do training, education, and bring meds. Area 1 where I was working had one of the highest rates of HIV. Being at the intersection of two major roads, we got a lot of truckers and a lot of prostitution.”

After her official two-year Peace Corps term came to a close, Meg chose to extend her stay another year, working for a non-governmental organization in Lusaka. “Zambia has the highest retention of volunteers of any Peace Corps country and the highest extension rate. I think it’s because of the people of Zambia -- people are just -- they make you their family. They are so friendly it’s easy to feel like you’re at home.

“I wasn’t ready to go, I still loved Zambia. I wanted to learn a different side of things, from a national level. I worked for an organization called Reaching HIV AIDS Affected People with Integrated Development and Support (RAPIDS). They had an integrated approach, which included income generating activities.” She helped the group provide training in gender based violence, nutrition and malaria. “People who are HIV positive have a much higher susceptibility to malaria because their immune systems are already lowered. It’s a lot harder for them to fight it.”

In this new position she suddenly had weekends, which she spent going back to her village. In her third year, she got more funding for the school, allowing them to build desks. The chicken house was finished, and they were now able to pay the teacher. She was thrilled to see the impact the school had on the children. “All the kids from the village school that went to basic school passed grade one.”

(kids testing out their new desks at school)

And two years after her accident, Meg ran the Victoria Falls half marathon in Zimbabwe.

Now that Meg is back in the States, talking to me in a coffee shop at the intersection of several busy arterials, she seems oblivious to the incongruity of the two places she considers home – Seattle and Katete.

She has plans to return someday to her village to build a new block to her school to teach another grade. “I would like to be able to start an organization eventually in Zambia. I understand now how interconnected everything is. I’d like to train recent high school graduates to teach, to give them something more to do with their education. Another thing I’d be interested in -- creating more places for people to sell their amazing crafts. The income really does make a big difference.”

To fill the piece that potential employers find missing in her impressive young resume, Meg is busy submitting applications to schools to earn a Master’s in Public Health. She’s also applying, unsuccessfully so far, for work, preferably in her field so she can learn more skills to carry back with her to Africa. “It’s really difficult -- everybody’s having a tough time now. I did something that I was passionate about for the last three years and it’s hard to come back to see a lot of people competing for jobs.

(right: Meg on left with friends after completing half-marathon)

“I couldn’t foresee not going back -- that’s harder to grasp than how I’m going to put all the pieces together to get there. I really do feel as if it is home.”

And when she is living that life, what does she miss about this one? Not the lattes, like the one she just finished. “I really wish I had been here when Obama got elected. When my brother got engaged I wished I was here. It was really hard when my grandma was sick, and not being here to help.

“That’s what you realize when you live abroad. You have a life in two places and there are big life things you’re not there for -- sickness and happiness. I feel the same thing with Zambia --- when I get updates on how things are changing, how the kids are doing or that a shop has changed. I miss it.”

Her advice for someone considering the Peace Corps? “I 110% recommend doing it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s an adventure – go into with an open heart and open mind and it’ll be great. Trust yourself. You’ll learn so much more than you’ll ever be able to give -- it’s a really big gift.”

- Janet Pelz

Meg’s not-so Secrets for How She Does It:

• I think my stubbornness gives me the ability to not give up. When the going gets tough I tend to just put my head down to power through it.
• There's not a lot that can't be solved by hard work and a dedication to what you're doing.
• Play with kids, they keep everything in perspective.
• Listen to other people and pay attention. Sometimes I feel there are very few people these days that truly listen to what other people are saying. You can learn a lot just by listening.
• Learn to laugh at yourself and don't take yourself too seriously. I'm a big dork at heart and I embrace that.
• Surround yourself with people that make you happy and challenge you, life is too short to deal with drama or bad friends. I am very blessed to have a family and some close friends that encourage me and believe in me.
• Take care of yourself and try not to feel guilty for doing so. I'm still working on this, but when I make time for myself whether it's working out or for art I am better able to serve others.
• Music gives me such a release, as does dancing.

What books has Meg read recently?

• Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder
• An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century by James Orbinski;
• What is the What by Dave Eggers

Whom does Meg want me to interview next?

• Sara Young: amazing artist and entrepreneur that uses her art to conduct social experiments that make us question ourselves and the world around us. Recently she has created her own business using art to try to provide chiropractors with realistic examples to better serve patients.

• Jennifer Dyson: She served with me in Peace Corps Zambia but was medically separated when she learned she had cancer. She is not only a survivor of lymphoma but is now an activist and devotes herself to raising money for others with the disease

(Look for a description of Meg’s typical day in Zambia as the next post)

Taking up the Journey Again as it Passes Through Generations

Readers:

Thanks for hanging in there with me over the summer while my postings were, well, non-existent. I used those hours instead for a contract that helped pay some bills, and swimming – sometimes literally but more often, swimming to keep one step ahead of a busy schedule of children’s activities.

But now that the contract is done, the pool is closed, school is in session and the rains have driven me indoors, I’m ready to take up the adventure of this web site once again.

I left off last spring with an update about Esther Instebo, the 99 year-old crusader for social justice. Before she died, Esther gave me the book Half the Sky; Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide which, through the stories of amazing women, makes the case that the most pressing foreign policy issue is not nuclear nonproliferation or terrorism, but the oppression of women.

“The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the 20^th century.

 

“In the 19^th century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the 20^th century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”

Nicholas Kristof and wife Sheryl WuDunn travel to the poorest places on the globe to tell the stories of courageous women who are transforming their villages and sometimes their governments by standing up for others. They encourage us in comfortable western countries to do what we can to support these international efforts. And they find reason for optimism in this upcoming American generation who have a greater world view and who are committing themselves to working for social justice abroad.

So, the thread Esther started by giving me this book (click the ad on this site to order it from Amazon and support this web site in the process) made me seek out a young woman doing some of this work. Meg Tremblay, niece of my good friend Shelly Yapp, just returned from three years in Zambia – working first in a small village (below with her Health Center Committee) and then in the capital city Lusaka. She kindly agreed to meet me and share her story, which I hope to post soon.

In the meantime, keep in mind that I deliberately chose an interactive format to share these stories. I appreciate reading your reactions, getting your suggestions for whom to interview, and seeing how you do it. That’s what the red ‘comments’ link is for at the end of this and all stories. When you add your words there, you help broaden the conversation and even more importantly, you lend your support directly to the women about whom I write. The personal emails to me are always nice, but I’ll be the only one who reads them.

So, thanks for staying on this journey with me. Thanks for your support and thanks for spreading the word.

- Janet Pelz