RANCHO BERNARDO – She's 85, has five great-grandchildren, and had such a painful back some years ago that walking for more than two minutes left her gasping for breath.
Courtesy photo
Lynne Elson at the school in Uganda where she taught Hebrew to adults and volunteered helping younger students.
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And, oh yes, she recently flew more than 9,000 miles to a remote village in Uganda to single-handedly teach Hebrew to a small group of Jewish students.
Lynne Elson's life is as exciting and as worldly as it sounds.
The petite Jewish woman from Rancho Bernardo set out for about two weeks in early July to visit Nabugoye in eastern Uganda, home to about 700 Abayudaya Jews.
Toting a suitcase full of school supplies and 16 copies of “The Hebrew Primer,” the jet-setting grandma with a quick wit arrived to volunteer in the primary school and teach Hebrew to five adult male students.
“I really felt like I was one of the family and pulled in with love and warmth,” Elson said. “They called me 'Mama' because I'm old. At first it bothered me, but then I realized it was an endearing term. They don't get very many 85-year-olds.”
The Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda began in 1919 when a military leader formerly loyal to the British split from a nearby Christian group. Abayudaya means “people of Judah” in Luganda, a major language in Uganda.
Over the decades, the group developed in isolation and became strictly observant. Its isolation helped members survive the brutal regime of Idi Amin, the anti-Semitic former president of Uganda who banned Jewish rituals during the 1970s.
Elson first learned of the Abayudaya in a lecture at a local synagogue in 2004. Hearing about how their founding leader, Semei Kakungulu, performed a circumcision on himself and his sons made her want to learn more.
“The story of these people who did this to themselves . . . ” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Why anybody would want to become Jewish, I don't know.”
First trip in 2006
After the lecture, Elson traveled to Nabugoye for two weeks in January 2006 through Kulanu, a group that organizes trips to isolated Jewish communities worldwide. Its annual trip to Nabugoye attracts about a dozen Americans.
Nabugoye certainly qualifies as isolated. The town is on a hill that Elson estimates rises more than 4,000 feet from the valley town where Elson stayed in a hotel. Most of the local homes are made of brown mud and roofed with corrugated metal. Running water arrived only recently. The six-mile car ride uphill to Nabugoye every morning took up to 45 minutes and required traveling along a path Elson described as “not even a one-lane dirt road.”
The community receives about 15 volunteers a year, though some stay for several months, said Israel Siriri, the community chairman. Volunteers teach Hebrew or lend their experience with medicine, sanitation, or water supplies. The community relies on them to improve its infrastructure, Siriri said.
Elson spent mornings at Hadassa Primary School, where she unloaded a suitcase stuffed with colored pencils, crayons and paper that members of her synagogue in Poway helped contribute.
'They'll amaze you'
In the afternoons, Elson taught five adult students the Hebrew alphabet so that they one day could read the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew bible. With flash cards and the 16 lessons from the Hebrew primer, she taught them to read and write the language. The Abayudaya are audio learners, Elson said, and she constantly encouraged them to repeat each letter or word out loud several times.
“There's something in them, there's a drive, a native ability there that is just waiting to be tapped,” she said. “It doesn't show because they're so poor, but they're very intelligent, very quick, and given the opportunity, they'll amaze you.”
Elson helped fill a void for Hebrew teachers in the community, said Aaron Kintu Moses, the assistant rabbi and headmaster of the primary school. Moses described Elson's work as “very, very impressive,” and said the children miss her.
“Working with Lynne was very, very good for this community,” he said. “It was so good for them because some of them got to improve their Hebrew language. They talked good about her and they wished she comes back to continue the program.”
Walls tell a story
Her trip to Uganda is just another chapter in the life of a woman who has traveled to every continent – including Antarctica.
The walls of Elson's spacious two-bedroom house serve as an autobiographical map filled with treasures from the countries she has visited. Oh, if these walls could talk.
What would the Vietnamese mother-of-pearl artwork say of its owner, who says one of the few times she has panicked was when she got lost in the streets of a Vietnamese city?
Or, across the hall, what tales could the simple but elegant Chinese painting of an ancient synagogue tell about its owner, who first traveled to China in 1979 shortly after it opened to Westerners and who returns every few years?
Elson grew up in World War II-era Chicago, where she trained to be a theater actress. The military refused to enlist her husband, Bob, whom she met when she was 16, because of his research with a chemistry company.
After stints that took them from Ohio to Israel, the Elsons eventually settled in the Bay Area. Elson juggled raising three daughters and a son with studying for her teaching certificate, which she earned taking one class at a time. After years of teaching Hebrew and piano to her children, Elson ventured into public schools as a grade school teacher and reading specialist.
Upon their retirement in 1983, the Elsons sold their house, put their belongings in storage, and set off on every college student's dream: a yearlong road trip through Europe. Elson still drives the white Volvo she and her husband bought in Sweden, which she stubbornly refuses to sell. A six-month tour through Asia and Oceania soon followed. Bob died in 1988, shortly after the couple settled in Rancho Bernardo.
Traveling, Elson said, allows her to escape her everyday calendar obligations. It's relaxing, she said, and is never scary, even if she is flying solo.
“I've lived a long time, whatever happens happens,” she said. “I have no regrets. I can't let that hobble me. Fear? Nuh-uh.”
Yuxing Zheng is a Union-Tribune intern.
