Hans Burger (Switzerland), M. Gopakumar (India), Robert Murtland (UK, Britain) | (ELP 2001)
Three of us, from the first cohort of Beahrs’ participants in 2001 fulfilled a long-term commitment to meet up again following our friendships made whilst attending ELP at Berkeley in July 2001 (see the note below). How time “the subtle thief of youth has stolen on wing all our years” (with due respects to William Shakespeare).
Gopa and Robert shared an apartment at Berkeley and when Gopa took the shuttle to the airport after the program, he left this note for Robert:
“Dear Bob,
Just a little note to thank you for your wonderful company. I
thoroughly enjoyed our discussions and the wine! I really hope this is
the beginning of a long friendship. Lots of regards to your family.
Signed Gopa.”
So, the die was set for a reunion even though we had met up in London in 2008 when Gopa and his family were on holiday there. The Three Amigos who met up are Hans Burger (Swiss), Gopakumar (Indian) and Robert Murtland (British, UK). They had several Zoom meets to plan for the trip, with the original intention of meeting up in London Derry (N. Ireland), where Robert grew up and is now resident. As an aside, London Derry is the place where Bishop Berkeley served before going west to America as a missionary and, in due course, contributing immensely to university education there.
But this plan had to be shelved because of challenges that Gopa had getting visas. The ball, marvellously enough, bounced our way with Robert’s plan to travel to Germany for his grandson’s wedding, at a location close to the Swiss border. So, it was decided that Gopa would travel to Hans’ home in Zurich and the two of them would hop over to meet Bob at a beautiful little town – now over 1000 years old – called Malterdingen, the home of the bride about twenty kilometres from Freiburg!
It was an unforgettable meeting, with a modest lunch in a Thai restaurant and a few beers even though the area produces commendable wines. We reminisced about what we knew of our fellow scholars and were proud to note that Prof. Dan Kammen had become an advisor to the Obama Administration on Climate Change (Does he still go to work on his bike?!). Prof. Zilberman’s blogs were of course of great interest to us since we still maintained great attachments to nature’s endowments and sustainability.
Our careers proceeded after Berkeley with Hans continuing to transfer his knowledge of Swiss Alpine Agriculture to Nepal; Gopa continued with his self-funded Otter conservation project in India; whilst Robert continued his itinerant Tropical foresters role (now an ancient forester requiring conservation himself) with assignments in Sri Lanka, Montenegro and ending up part time Desert Afforestation Specialist in Rajasthan India, retiring in 2016, with some short contracts with the UN to the Seychelles, Georgia and Kenya with the EU.
Photos for the blog provided by Hans, Gopa, and Robert.