Rhododendron Wine Factory

About the Book

The author tells stories about his international wandering. In India he writes about his childhood and growing up in boarding school. He experiences frustrations of a child living with a dorm bully. His story "The Year I Became a Thief describes his humorous rationale for his resulting strange thefts. In "Bears' Cave" he describes a terrifying cave exploration with his older brother where they almost lose their lives.

Bergsma resided twelve years in Nigeria. He made close friends with many of the traditional people resulting from both his work and his hobby, hunting. "Fat Hearts" is a story of Asema Kehe, his hunting companion for twelve years and their many unusual experiences in the bush together. After twenty five years apart, Bergsma returns to Nigeria and finds his dying friend. In "The Salt Makers" he becomes lost on a hunt and ends up in compound where six wild looking Utur tribesmen are boiling something in a huge metal pot. Bergsma's attempt to solicit assistance by using pantomime is a hilarious spoof of cross cultural mis-understanding.

While in Yemen Arab Republic, in "Sleep Deprivation" he becomes involved with Russian spies and a noisy amorous couple in a hotel room in Sana'a. In Belize he accompanies a project student home. He stays overnight with the student in a tiny stilt house above a swamp and becomes acquainted intimately with "Sleep Apnea" when his partner dies a hundred times a night.

In Egypt, with his family, they descend ancient stone steps under a pyramid. He discovers he has a serious case of 'tombaphobia' in "Pharaoh's Tomb".

His memoirs speak of the birth and rebirth of ideas and beliefs over a lifetime; 'we are born in mystery, we live in mystery and we die in mystery'.

About the Author

Harold M. Bergsma is the son of United Presbyterian medical missionaries who worked in Ethiopia and Northern India for many years. His early schooling was in India at Woodstock School in Mussoorie. He resided in various places in India where his father worked as a doctor. His earliest memories are of Taxila in the North West Frontier Province. Later he stayed in Sialkot and as a teenager in Ludhiana. When his father was not doing medical missionary work overseas, Bergsma lived in California and in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

            Bergsma returned to India with his parents at age eighteen as a senior in high school. He took part in a three month ornithological expedition led by the late Dr. Robert L. Fleming, under the auspices of the Chicago Field Museum and the National Geographic Society. He completed s high school at Woodstock School in India and then returned to the United States for college. He earned a B.A. in Dutch, Religious Studies and Elementary Education at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan; his M.A. was in Secondary Educational Administration at Michigan State University, and his Ph.D. in International and Comparative Education and African Anthropology and Linguistics at M.S.U. 

            His first overseas professional experience was in Nigeria where he worked for twelve years as the founding high school principal for both the Bristow Secondary School and the Wukari Division Combined Secondary for the Christian Reformed Church Board of Foreign Missions. In addition to speaking Urdu, he reads and speaks Tiv and some Hausa.

             He worked for eight years at Lake Superior State University in Michigan to help set up the Department of Secondary Education. Bergsma is an Emeritus Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at New Mexico State University. While at NMSU he taught in the department of Curriculum and Instruction and as part of his professorial duties he became involved in a variety of international projects including those in Yemen Arab Republic, Pakistan, Belize, Honduras, Swaziland and Namibia. He lived with his family in many of these countries while doing educational development work. He is retired and lives with his wife Lily Chu in San Diego near the bay. He is a choir member of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego.

            He has published widely in professional journals and has written extensively about the Tiv Tribe of Nigeria. [See web site: Harold M. Bergsma, for a selection of personal and professional publications.] His first fictional work, Lalla and Lavina , Stories of Indian Women, was published through Author House, Bloomington, Indiana,  October, 2005. This book, Rhododendron Wine Factory, is a memoir and was published in April, 2006.  His latest novel, a work in progress, One Way To Pakistan, is a story of intrigue and abduction.

 www.haroldbergsma.com