For the last few years, Oak Park’s Robert Bailey has spent three or four months out of every year on an AIDS prevention research project in Kenya. Bailey is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, as is his wife, Nadine Peacock. When the couple found themselves anticipating simultaneous sabbaticals last year, “We thought it would be a great opportunity to spend a whole year in Kenya,” Peacock said.
She also looked forward to “a whole year with my husband.”
Peacock thought it would be a great experience for her sons, Nathan and Alex, though they initially embraced the idea differently. Nathan, now a junior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, had already been on a family trip to Kenya and Tanzania in 2000. When he learned he would probably be attending a boarding school this time, Peacock remembers his reaction as, “I’m there!”
Alex, now in fourth grade at Mann Elementary School, had been too young to go on the previous trip.
“Alex took a little more wooing,” she remembered. “He was going to miss his friends. He had some reservations about it.”
AIDS and Africa
Robert Bailey’s research focuses on the effect of male circumcision on AIDS transmission. In advance of the couple’s year in Kenya, Peacock applied for and received a Fulbright research fellowship involving AIDS prevention among teenage girls and women.
Because of their parents’ jobs, the Bailey boys have been exposed to a lot of frank talk regarding AIDS. In fact, Peacock noted that one of the few issues that arose with Alex at his small international school in Kisimu, in western Kenya, was when he volunteered information in biology class that made the teacher uncomfortable.
“We had to sort of tell him that not everyone was so open,” she said.
Still, Peacock saw both Alex and Nathan adjust remarkably well to their new surroundings. Alex’s school included students from many different countries. He “got comfortable immediately” as soon as he visited.
Nathan’s school was British-run, but 85 percent of the students were black Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans. Students and teachers spoke English, though accents were quite different.
“My older son just had an unbelievable experience in boarding school,” she said. “I don’t think anything will be quite like that”just watching your kids experience this totally different world.”
Peacock proudly reports that when Nathan came home for a long spring break, he decided to do some kind of service activity and ended up working at an intake center for AIDS orphans run by the Catholic Church.
“The area we were working in has the highest AIDS infection rates”25 to 30 percent of all adults are HIV-infected,” Peacock explained, leaving many children on the street with no living parents. “[The volunteers] go out and do street outreach. They try to convince these kids to come to this intake center.”
His brother’s example inspired Alex to find a service role of his own.
“There was an orphanage near our house,” Peacock said. “They would let people come in and hold the babies. This was something that Alex could do”play with them. It was really nice for me to see him have that longing to do something like that.
“We try to raise our kids with the idea of providing service, [yet here] there is very little opportunity for direct, person-to-person contact,” she added.
During the year in Kenya, the family hosted several U.S. visitors. One brought clothes and toys for children; another brought soccer equipment; another actually taught soccer to some local girls, who weren’t being instructed because their Islamic community prohibited a male coach from teaching them.
Through her research project, Peacock found a female soccer enthusiast to continue the instruction. Peacock helped pay for medicine to cure the woman’s tuberculosis, so she could get on antiretroviral drugs for AIDS.
“Now she’s coaching the soccer team. We basically saved this woman’s life,” she said. “You can do so much with so little.”
Alex reported back to his Mann classmates in the spring via a letter in the school newsletter.
“Living by Lake Victoria is very nice. We can watch the sun set over the lake every evening from our house, and we hear hippos at night,” he wrote. “One of my favorite things to do here is to go on safari in the National Parks …. We’ve seen lots of cool animals like lions, elephants, leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles and baboons.”
The family worked closely with school administrators to make sure both sons would be on track academically when they returned home, though there were other adjustments for the family.
“It was just a fabulous, low-key year,” Peacock said. “We weren’t pulled in 10 different directions. We kind of miss that.”
The surf in Sydney
While Nathan Bailey was bonding with new friends in Africa, a buddy from home, Benjamin Landay, was experiencing the atmosphere in Australia.
His family embarked on an experience abroad the same year, from July 2004 to July 2005. The trip to Sydney was sparked by an opportunity for his father, Alan Landay, to take a sabbatical from his job as a scientist and professor at Rush Medical Center. A contact in Sydney who works in immunology, as does Landay, helped make the arrangements.
Alan and his wife, Debra, have two sons: Benjamin, now a junior in high school, and Nathan, in seventh grade.
“Our whole goal was to be able to throw off the whole American stress and just be a family,” said Debra.
Having spent a previous sabbatical elsewhere in the United States, Landay decided this time she wanted to sell the family’s Oak Park home. The Landays gave away a lot of furniture and stored the rest. The home sold after they left.
“I wanted a year of no responsibility,” she said.
Landay feels she got that and more.
“I think what all of us learned was to relax more,” she said. “I don’t think we sweat the small stuff anymore”even me, who was a super Type A personality.”
Like Peacock, Landay saw her sons adapt quickly to a new culture and environment. She also felt able to loosen the reins on both boys.
“For the first time [Nathan] walked to school by himself. He took the train to his friend’s house,” Landay remembered. “It was a much safer environment, so the boys had a lot more freedom to explore and to gain independence.”
“We met people from all over the world,” she added. “We were there during elections. We were there for the tsunami. It was a chance to see how America was perceived outside America, which was interesting. My older son, because he was in a different environment, became much more politically and economically aware.”
The Landays also found increased opportunities for family togetherness and outdoor activities.
“My oldest son learned how to surf. We spent a week at the reef, and the kids tried snorkeling and scuba diving. The outstanding adventure was a week in Tasmania, which is extremely rural. You could drive for 45 minutes and not see another car,” she said.
Beyond adventure, the experience involved more daily labor for Debra. The tiny refrigerator and washing machine in the family’s Sydney apartment meant frequent trips and loads.
“It was more what you would think of as a European lifestyle,” she said.
Understanding the local education system also took some work. Terms were different, and the boys essentially straddled a grade while there, but “the whole year was all about living in the real world”how to be successful wherever you’re put down,” she noted.
When the Landays returned home, they bought a condo on Lake Street and Lathrop Avenue in River Forest so they could sustain some of the “walk everywhere” habits they’d developed abroad.
“The hardest part has been adapting back to the American lifestyle, which is hurry-hurry-hurry, rush-rush-rush,” Landay said.
Benjamin is already hoping to return to Sydney next summer.
“I’ll stay with a bunch of mates of mine and surf every day and go to the beach every day and work”maybe,” he said.
The language of Lausanne
Peter Burgi and Mary Hutton both lived abroad as children.
“That was so much a part of who we were, [we] wanted to be able to share that with our kids,” said Hutton.
At the same time, the Oak Park couple was conscious of having felt uprooted at times. A little over four years ago, they decided on an adventure in Switzerland for their four children, ages 5 to 12.
“We were going to do this for a limited amount of time. We were going to rent out our house in Oak Park and come back to it,” she said.
Switzerland was the logical choice because Burgi has dual citizenship there, as do their four children. His Swiss father and American mother live there.
“We wanted to experience that country and learn something about the society and learn one of the languages,” Hutton said.
A series of things fell into place to make the trip happen.
“We sort of felt like a guardian angel was watching over us,” Hutton said.
Peter Burgi, who planned to leave his post as research director with a firm that helps prepare executives and their families for overseas moves, found a job in Lausanne, Switzerland after reading about the organization in The Economist. The Imagination Lab hired Burgi as a researcher into the role of imagination and techniques of play on strategy-making and teamwork in large organizations.
Hutton, who had her own family medical practice, learned that friend Julie Blankemeier wanted to start a practice. Hutton handed the care and keeping of her patients to Blankemeier. The family rented their house to a group of four Italian monks.
Hutton noted that getting ready for the experience was a lot of work”particularly storing and packing possessions. To prepare for immersion in French-speaking Lausanne, the family hired a French teacher to give lessons once a week for three to four months before the trip. Arriving in Lausanne was still a big language challenge.
“It was a handful the first couple of weeks,” Hutton said. “Within five, six weeks, the youngest, the 5-year-old, could vigorously carry on a conversation in the playground. He could just rattle things off. The 12-year-old, it probably took her the longest to catch on, but as it turns out, she’s kept it the best.”
All four children took French as a second language during their regular day in the Lausanne public schools.
“For the most part, they were the only kids in their classes that spoke English,” Hutton said.
She also found expectations for the children in school strikingly different.
“Kids don’t push the envelope as much. There are not a lot of rules and not a lot of supervision,” she said, noting that field trips don’t require permission slips.
“The kids would eat lunch on the side of the road, and the teachers would go off to a restaurant with their wine. It was pretty shocking in some ways,” she said. “I think everybody enjoyed it overall.”
By the end of the year, Hutton was feeling the call of her patients back home, though her husband’s employer wanted him to stay and the couple’s children “kind of wanted to stay, too.”
“That was an interesting thing, how well everybody adjusted,” she said.
Hutton saw her children come away with “a strength and a power: the ability to go to a different situation and adapt.”
She also felt the family grew closer, particularly her two oldest children.
“You really get to know each other,” she said.
From his experience advising families on international moves, Burgi observed that overseas living puts added stress on families.
“A move like this will strengthen what is strong in a family but will also in some cases break a weaker family,” he said. “The emotional and psychological resources that a family has in place in their home setting may be used very differently in a new setting. A move like this is not a solution for a fragile family.”
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