By Tim Mandell
Register News Writer
RICHMOND —
During her travels, Terry Ham has visited 58 countries.
Eight of those countries she was able to call her temporary home.
Since 1991, Ham has been teaching music and drama around the world, from Paraguay to Shanghai, to her to current job in Bangladesh.
Ham, who is visiting her parents Dick and Nancie at their Richmond home, traveled with the USO while a student at Western Kentucky University.
“The travel bug bit me,” she said. “I pretty much want to go anywhere I haven’t been.”
Ham transferred to the University of Kentucky and graduated in 1986 with a degree in education.
Five years later, she took a job teaching music and drama to students in kindergarten through 10th-grade in Paraguay.
The job was through a recruitment center that hires teachers for two-year stints.
Ham said she enjoyed the experience so much, she kept taking new assignments.
After Paraguay, she spent two years in Portugal and Tanzania, five years in China and had two-year teaching jobs in Romania, Mexico and Burma.
Friday, Ham heads back to school for her second year teaching in Bangladesh.
“The best part is getting to travel,” Ham said. “All the places are so different.”
While in Africa, Ham said she was able to go on a safari, where she saw baby animals. The visitors’ campground also was raided by a pack of baboons.
She has visited the Great Wall of China, which she called incredible.
In Burma, which she referred to as magical, Ham said she saw more than 2,000 pagodas.
Pagodas are Hindu or Buddhist temples that typically are many tiered towers.
While visiting Thailand, she said vendors were selling fried bugs, such as crickets and grasshoppers.
“People who actually try it say they’re pretty good, but I can’t get myself to do it,” Ham said.
The students at all the schools Ham has taught at speak English, she said,
Students typically are the children of diplomats, aid workers, business people and some locals, she said.
At each teaching stop, Ham has been responsible for leading the students by directing a play or musical.
In China, her students put on a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” with 42 different nationalities represented in the cast, Ham said.
She said her students were the first non-Chinese students to perform in the Shanghai International Arts Festival.
“The kids are just really special,” she said of all her students. “Education is highly valued, especially in Asia. Exams make the difference in what you can do in life. Education really is a way for them to get out of poverty.”
The experience of working and living in other countries has not been difficult, Ham said.
At each school, most of the teachers are new and in the same boat as each other, making it easy to make friends, because there are no previously established friendships, she said.
Ham, who said her non-English language vocabulary consist of speaking “restaurant and taxi,” found a companion in Portugal, by adopting a cat she named Tosca.
Tosca, 16, has been with her since, joining her on her trips around the world.
Her parents also have been able to visit on occasion.
They both visited Paraguay, while Dick spent three weeks in China and Nancie a month in Portugal.
Dick, a retired church music minister, and Nancie, who teaches piano and voice, passed their talents and love of music to their daughter.
“I wish everyone could love their job as much as she does,” Dick said. “Music has always been her first love.”
The school year in Bangladesh begins on Aug. 9.
Tim Mandell can be reached at tmandell@richmondregister.com or 623-1669 ext. 6696.
