BLC Memorial Blog

Other Blogs and links Connected with this Memorial Project: Zoom Link save to dropbox for viewing the recording of the Memorial: Link to the Barbara L. Cochrane Memorial https://www.dropbox.com/s/huqv8inp2upsc0b/zoom_0.mp4?dl=0   Owned by the Frank Cochrane Family and Sarah too :-) Letters from Africa Cochrane https://lettersfromafricacochrane.blogspot.com/    Barbara’s Quilts https://barbarathemaker.blogspot.com/          Journal of Babu na Bibi Cochrane: https://journalofbabunabibicochrane.blogspot.com/ Barbara was Author of many of these posts BLC Memorial Blog https://blcmemorialblog.blogspot.com/   This Memorial Project has been and continues to be a Labor of Love. Frank and Family Members are working on their  blogs, and writings, as part of our family tribute to Barbara and her life. I’m kind of the "techie" on the side...  Please continue to check back with this blog and those listed below  for updates. Each of ...

  Milt and Debbie’s New house was developing nicely when Barbara was beginning to have troubles with bouts of diarrhea, nothing too serious, and it could be controlled with Metamucil. On consultations with the Doctor the Metamucil was recommended. I am sure that it was thought of as a case of a little bad food and it would soon correct itself.  The condition persisted through 2017. Some time in 2018 Barbara got a thorn in her finger and it appeared to be becoming infected. She consulted a Doc-in-the-Box Physician at an Urgent Care, who gave her an antibiotic injection that seemed to escalate the diarrhea to a point that it was a little more of a concern.  I had found a Caribbean Cruise that was featuring Featherweight Singer Sewing Machines and encouraged Vicki and Barbara to sign up as each had Featherweight Singers. They took the cruise even though Barbara was somewhat  concerned about the diarrhea but made it through without trouble. In 2019 Barbara went with our ...

After selling the Meridian property, Barbara and I had been living in a house we had bought in Nampa, Idaho.  We had spent three years there and had remodeled the house to suit us, but we found living in town had its drawbacks. The drug dealers who lived across the street were certainly part of our dissatisfaction. We started looking for a place with a little space. We looked North, South, East, and West, and finally found one South of Melba.  We looked it over carefully and did some thinking about what we could do with it.  We drove out one evening to see what night lights were like, and we discovered we could see the stars.  Magnificent dark sky and very few yard lights.   10 acres were a little more than we wanted, but the dark sky and few yard lights hooked us. Plus, Barbara fell in love with the view of the Owyhees from the patio. We have since spent many times watching the mountains and how they change with the angle of the sunlight and the time of ye...

I was injured in a car accident in 1973. The incident happened at our Lake Hazel property. I had stopped at the mailbox, which sat across the road from our driveway, and I pulled across the road without looking for traffic. I got T-Boned by a neighbor from a couple  of miles west with force enough to throw my Saab coop, with me in it, into the field next door. The pictures in the paper showed  my car which was a crumpled mess. For that matter so was I!   I had thirteen broken ribs, fortunately none pierced the lungs. Recovery was going to take some time. Barbara was my life saver.  Not only did she take up the crucible of taking care of basically an invalid, but she knew immediately that she was going to have to be the breadwinner for a considerable time. She saw an advertisement in the paper for postal carriers and with the encouragement from Grandpa Cochrane, she took the exam and got an offer of a job as a substitute rural carrier which she gladly took.  Barb...

When we arrived in Portland, Grandpa Cochrane (my father) met us at the airport. I realize now what an imposition that was.  Nehalem, Oregon, is at least a two hour drive from the Portland airport, and the terminal is on the west side of Portland. So he had to negotiate Portland traffic twice. I am sure he grumbled and I do not blame him, but it was good to see him and my Mother again. In a few days we had bought a car and headed to Idaho.  Unfortunately we found the house in Middleton had been treated badly and had a big clean up job to do. I do not remember details about the renter, but besides running a Cock Fighting Scheme,  he had knocked holes in the wall and doors in the bedrooms.  I don’t think we ever tried to  live there again.  We settled in a small house in Meridian owned by my parents until we could purchase five acres south of Meridian on Lake Hazel road from my brother Jim and began to build a new home for the family.   We had a tra...

Traditionally, teachers in the United States start looking for their year’s employment a few months in advance, and the time had for us to make some decisions. Either we were going to stay in Kenya or head back home to Idaho. Barbara and I were greatly concerned about how staying in Kenya would ultimately affect the lives of our children.  I had been offered a job at a Secondary School somewhere south of Nairobi which seemed a bit strange, as I personally had not applied or even visited the school. After mulling it over we decided to go back Home. I had left my teaching job in Boise with a Leave of Absence, so I did have a job if I wanted it. I am sure the Boise School administration never expected me to return.   We planned our return trip through Europe, wanting to visit as many countries as possible. The Airline ticket provided layovers en route, so we had the agent start out with Israel; then Beirut, Lebanon. That was before Lebanon was too unstable and Beirut was a b...

A tale that I want to tell is about a science lesson that I wanted to teach about “Heat Transfer”.  I lectured the class on this principle and demonstrated how you could actually see this happen. I took the class to our house where I had everything set up. Showing them the ice I had carefully collected and the ice cream mixture I proceeded to turn the crank. When the ice cream was frozen, Barbara and I served the product to the students. My lesson was a waste of time. The students were overwhelmed by the  feeling of something cold in their mouths. The comments were “It is Hot” the lesson in heat transfer lost to the sensation of something cold. Many tales of East Africa are left untold but there are tidbits that need to be mentioned, like the open air museum documenting Iron Smelting dating to about 1200 AD and Fort Jesus, in Old Town Mombasa, that the Portuguese started building in 1593 to drive out the Arab Traders.  One interesting tale was about our trip to Dar Es Sal...

Mount Kenya is near the Rift Valley on the Equator and is a volcano neck that towers about 17,000 feet above sea level and the last 1000 feet is hard rock climbing.  Climbing the Mountain had always been of interest to me, and when I heard that a group was organizing, I wanted to be a part of it. A priest who had climbed before was the leader and he had room for me. Winter clothes were absent in our African household, so Barbara quickly cut up a blanket and made me a sweatshirt. The group consisted of six to eight people. The climb strategy consisted of a drive up the mountain to the end of the road and hike to the Climbing Hut at 12,000 feet, where we could rest and acclimate before getting up at 2 AM to make the climb to the 16,000 foot level to catch the sunrise over the Indian ocean.  Many of the group suffered from altitude sickness at the hut and the ascent was yet to come.  At 2 AM we started out with some sick hikers, and the group began to string out.  Altit...

We were not always that fortunate however. During one of Barbara’s visits to Nairobi, our van had it’s window knocked out. A rock the size of a soccer ball laid on the passenger's seat. Barbara and the children had gone to Nairobi for a dental appointment, and riots started after she was in the Dentist office. Thousands of people were roaming the streets and the Vice President was assassinated that day. The dentist’s office was on the second floor and the children remember looking out the window at the street full of people. Dr. Beven had his askari (guards) take charge. Barbara and the children spent the night at Dr. Beven's house, and they had the windows replaced in the van.  I really never knew why Dr. Beven was in Kenya, but we had a good enough friendship that we traded vehicles with him so he had a camper van on a vacation trip with his son.  He had also been a professor at the University of Idaho at one time, so we had the U of I in common. His helping Barbara and...

Closing the story of East Africa should not be done without talking about all the great tourist sites that the family visited. National parks were high on the list. The Great Rift Valley, Ambroseli, Aberdares, Masai Mara,Tsavo, Meru, and we haven't begun to talk about WildLife. The Great Rift Valley extends north and south through Kenya, the Eastern side of the African Continent,  and is a geological wonder. Just driving down the road in the escarpment is an exciting experience in itself when you realize that you are seeing where two continental land masses have smashed together some time in the past history of the earth.   Amboseli is where Barbara traded tin can lids for a picture of her with four Masi women. That was significant because the Natives at that time believed that having their picture taken took away part of their lives, and yet tin can lids were worth the chance. The Aberdares is where the Commer, our van, could not make it up the hi...

On arriving back at the College after our wonderful Christmas, a new challenge was presented to me.  Dr. Kariro had sold the school generator to a school up north, and he asked if I could remove it from the house that had been built around it.  He offered as many workmen as I thought I needed to accomplish the task. Now it was customary in the Kenya HighLands to group as many men as possible around a heavy object and lift it with brute force.  That was not going to happen with an object which weighed 6 tons or so.  I told Dr. Kariro that I would not work on a project like that with workmen who could not understand me and might not respond to my commands quickly enough to avoid serious injury or death. I would have to analyze the situation and do some planning to see if the generator would fit through the door, and then using my 8 year old son we might get it done.   First of all the generator had to be lifted off the bolts that held it down and put on 4x6 s...

The girls got home for Christmas bringing gifts from Spain. We had planned to take a trip to the coast that Christmas, so when the girls arrived we loaded up the van and headed for Malindi Beach. Getting to Malindi was an interesting experience in itself.  The road that paralleled the coast was a single lane tarmac, meeting cars going in the opposite direction was always a challenge to see which driver would yield by getting off the tarmac to let the other car go by. Once we got near Malindi we had to cross a small river which was accomplished on a barge-like ferry barely big enough for one car and the transit was made without difficulty.  We were there a couple of days before Christmas and were there when Father Christmas arrived on Christmas eve in an outrigger canoe with a small bag of candy for the Children in camp. The next morning as local fishermen passed the camp, we placed an order for lobster. That evening we had two lobsters at the cost of a few shillings, (exchange...

New things were happening at Kigari Teacher Training School also, new to me at least.  I found that as an Education Officer I became the invigilator. I was obligated to administer the final test for Secondary School Students. There was no way out. I had to invigilate this Gad-Awful test that defied every rule I learned in Test and Measurements Class.  The test must have been written in England without one reference to what the East African Students had experienced in their lives or school.  It set a standard that no one could pass with an A grade, like it was designed as a put-down for all African Students.  I had run into this before at the Teacher College when the tutors would sit down together to evaluate Student Teachers. There seemed to be a performance level carved in stone beyond the reach of ordinary people, for that matter,beyond the reach of the teachers  themselves.  I remember berating them myself, “That Jesus Christ himself couldn’t get an “A” ...

Meanwhile our own children needed to continue their education.  We had come prepared for this with curriculum lessons from the State of Nebraska to cover subject areas in a HomeSchool setting for each child. Barbara was the HeadMaster, teacher, Disciplinarian for the three children at home old enough to be in school.   The oldest, Diane, was Highschool freshman status, so we made arrangements to send her to the Kenya Girls School in Nairobi.  The job of Homeschooling, Barbara found to be a challenge, and she was never satisfied with the job she had done. Diane found the experience at Kenya Girls School less than satisfactory.  The way in which subject matter was taught was incompatible with the American System of Education.  Where In the United States, a subject like Chemistry is taught for one year; In Kenya with the British system, the subject is taught for four years. Thus it took four years to cover the same material in the British system that was cover...

 Within the first few months I ask my brother in Idaho to send a few things by sea freight.The list included an electric clothes washing machine with an old fashioned wringer, like our families used in the1930’s; a one gallon hand-crank ice cream making machine, like the White Mountain we had at home; a three ton hydraulic jack; two camping tents; fishing gear; two bicycles for our children; a selection of books such as the Hobbit; and a selection of wrenches including a socket set.  It was very important that the shipment be contained in a sturdy plywood box, as I had plans to use the plywood to build a camper in the Commer Van we had bought. It took 4 months for the shipment to arrive. The washing machine made our House Boy (Elias) the hit of the Campus.    With the tools that had arrived I had an opportunity to investigate a small crawler tractor that had been buried in the weeds since before we arrived at Kigari.  When I expressed an interest the...

  Training sessions in New York had impressed on us that one of the problems that Kenya was having was the migration of people from rural areas to the slums in Nairobi looking for work;  in fact, more respectable work as seen in the minds of Kenyans. It is a good possibility that is why I was assigned to a college that also had a farm.  The school farm consisted of a small dairy herd of Guernsey cows. The manager, Mr. Mbogo, was a native Kiku who made it clear that he did not need any advice or interference from a foreigner. So I looked for other means to work with my hands in productive ways to show that educated people could do those kinds of jobs.  Barbara also became involved in these endeavors.  First she was asked by Dr. Kariro to be the College Nurse.  Barbara tried not to take the job, as she had no training as a nurse. Dr. Kariro insisted that she was a mother raised in a country that paid attention to health concerns; therefore, she was qualified....

Dr. Kariro, the headmaster, as well as the other tutors arrived that next week and activities began to pick up.  The Faculty had about ten tutors . At the first faculty meeting there were four tutors from England, one from Australia, four Native Kenyan (mostly KiKuyu the local tribe), and Myself from the United States.  Teaching at Kigari, as I observed, amounted to the teacher writing a lesson on the blackboard and the students copying that same lesson in their hand books, which were then turned in to the teacher who checked to see if the lesson had been copied correctly. I did not think this amounted to any kind of education that I knew of.  First of all, the education level of the students being trained as teachers were the low level passes from middle school or “standard” (or grade) 8. Most of them were in their early 20’s, and they were now being taught in English which was at least their third language; Mother Tongue representing 20 or so Tribes and Swahili the nat...

Landing in Nairobi we found ourselves halfway around the world from our home in Idaho and many time zones from New York. That left our children wide awake at midnight and asleep midday. Jet lag was a new phenomenon to the whole family. The effects of this dissipated  in a couple of days.  After arriving  at Nairobi we all were housed in an older British style hotel (The Brenner or Brennen; memory after 50 years can not come up with the name) where children's meals were served separately from the parents. As parents who practiced control at meal time this, gave us some concern and to our surprise the children conducted themselves quite well.   We were at Brenner’s for about  three days before a Land Rover showed up to transport us to the Kigari Teachers Training College near Embu on the Eastern slopes of Mount Kenya. Kigari was farther up the mountain and a little north of Embu, nearly 60 miles north of the Equator, at 5500 feet above sea level.  We arr...

Some time in the late 1960s the National Teachers Magazine had published an advertisement  for teachers to go to African countries to train Native Teachers.  A fellow teacher pointed this out to me suggesting that we both try for a position.  Here was an opportunity for Barbara and I to realize our college dream of world travel.   I discussed the program with Barbara and what it  would mean for both of us and the Family. It was potentially a career and financial disruption of a nature that might never be retrievable. The ten year pledge to make the farm work had hit some rough spots; like we were at the mercy of the meat-packer buyers. When the buyers would go out for coffee, the price would drop a few dollars, regardless of the quality of your pigs.  With that experience as part of our rationale, we decided that Columbia University Offer was worth a try.  This Program was offered by Columbia University out of New York and sponsored by the Federal...