I'm a white kid from a small
town in Ohio. Nothing interesting or exciting happened in
my life until March 26, 1976. On that day, early in the
morning, after a night of interrupted sleep, the island
that was to be my home for the next year appeared on the
horizon from the deck of the copra boat that I was sharing
with pigs and weary travelers. The island was Niuatoputapu
or in English, the Sacred Land abounding in Sacred Coconut
Trees. I was in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga, I spoke
Tongan, and was about to become the only non-Tongan resident
of one of the most remote islands in the world. You could
walk around it in a day, there was no airport, and at best,
the cargo boat stopped by once a month. I was an American
Peace Corps Volunteer.
Is that interesting? If you
think so, have a look at
The book is in many university
libraries. In it are some of my pictures and interviews
with residents of Niuatoputapu's sister island, Niua Fo'ou.
Six years later something else
interesting happened. It was April 1, 1981. Early that morning
I took a bus from Manila to the Philippines Refugee Processing
Center on the Bataan Peninsula, just around the corner from
Subic Bay. I didn't know it then, but I would spend most
of the next six years working in or around refugee camps
in Southeast Asia. I met all kinds of interesting people,
including my good friend and five-years-later Hawaiian neighbor,
Hongly Khuy, who posed with me in the
above picture in 1982. These days Hongly is a fellow computer-nut
with lots of links to Cambodia from his home page.
In the refugee camps, Hongly
and other refugees helped me write a book:
In 1985, it was published
by the Experiment in International Living and World Education,
with the US Department of State keeping the copyright,
thank you very much. It is a book of the annotated letters
that refugees living in the USA wrote to their friends
and relatives in the refugee camps. It describes life
in the USA from the refugee point of view.
Six years later another interesting
thing happened. On March 22, 1992, I flew into Pochentong
Airport outside of Phnom Penh to begin working as a Computer
Specialist with the United Nations Transitional Authority
in Cambodia, UNTAC. I stayed 16 months or until two months
after the May '93 UN-run election. I was on the first UN
helicopter flight to one of the most remote provinces in
Cambodia, worked on the voter registration, made the ballot
for the election, ran a polling station, and fell in love.
Along the way I became a Major. Honest.
Naturally, I wrote a book about
it:
Cambodia Interlude, Inside
the United Nations' 1993 Election.
Then, if you
want to read the sample chapters,
help yourself. If it looks interesting, consider ordering
yourself a copy through
Amazon-dot-com.
When I left Cambodia, I went
back to Thailand and wrote the Cambodia book. A friend of
mine knew Thailand's leading female writer, Sujinda Kanyatalongot.
She translated one chapter of my book into Thai and published
it in a Bangkok magazine.
Eventually, I got tired of renewing
my visa every three months in Thailand. So I decided to
study desktop publishing in Eugene, Oregon. There I studied
some of the finer points of graphics and design. One of
my projects was to create a business card
using a 3D graphics program.
From Oregon I moved to Hawaii,
where I had gone to graduate school. There I taught computer
applications at local universities from 1996 through the
spring of 1999. I liked Hawaii, but when the Asian economic
crisis hit Hawaii and my beloved university, Hawaii Pacific
University, could no longer give me enough classes to allow
me to eke out a living, it was time to leave.
In the summer of 1999 I went
back to Laos and helped the people who blow up bombs left
over from the Vietnam war for a living. I've written a
story with pictures about it.
As the new millenium began in
2000, I started yet another career, this time as a digital
film maker in Southeast Asia. You can read about it in the
FAQ section of my other home page, thomasriddle.net
Before I became a computer applications
teacher, a consultant, and movie maker, I had all kinds
of jobs: English and science teacher, curriculum developer,
teacher supervisor, teacher trainer, database designer,
data entry supervisor, WordPerfect teacher, graphics designer,
writer, and in-house computer consultant. If you like resumes,
check out mine. Deadlines and living
in remote places have never fazed me much. If anyone asks,
I'm a certified desktop publisher, I've studied digital
film making in San Francisco, have a Master's Degree in
Anthropology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and
I was once a certified High School English teacher. I've
written a thing or two as well.
Okay, that's it. For a white
kid from Ohio, life's been okay so far. After I get a
high-paying job, if I can find someone who can stand to
hear my stories ten million times, I'll get married and
make another home page. Until then, don't worry, be happy.
Life is short.
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