The flight was direct, with no intermediate stops, “So it was a quite a jolt to get on in Baltimore and get off in a new and strange land,” she says.

Christen had one friend there, a classmate from the University of Baltimore, who was an American/Ghanaian.

“So there was someone to show me around,” she says now, at least part of the time. “Traveling alone in a foreign place overwhelms you,’ she recalls. “Every moment, all of your five senses are bombarded with the new, the completely unfamiliar. You’re absorbing and learning every moment.”

Occasionally, she recalls, she simply had to hide.“ To bury myself in trashy American novels just to calm down.”

Watching Christen, it’s difficult to imagine her needing to calm down. The demeanor of this petite, self-contained, woman is cool and reserved; always in control. Reserved, but not shy or shrinking.

She loved the country and its people. “We talk about the poverty there, about the people who have nothing,” she says. “But they are happy and live full lives. Their problem is not lack of material things. Their only real problem is lack of sanitation, of water to drink or even to wash with. Lack of the most basic kinds of health care. Water is key to many health problems.

“Everything is different. When you go to a food market, the smells are amazing. You realize that in American supermarkets, there are no scents. No smells at all.” In Africa, she says, everything has its own aroma; the powerful aromas waft and mingle together through the market, nearly overpowering your senses.

Christen was familiar with Ghana’s Kente cloth, the famed woven material with amazing colors and symbolism. Her favorite color is hainte blue (she even uses the term in her email address) and when, a year later, in May of 2001, she headed to Savannah; she decided that the master’s degree she aimed for would be in Fiber Art.

The excitement that Christen found in Savannah careens far away from that of Africa. Nevertheless, Savannah brought new directions, new goals, and a new kind of life, carefully woven together from her many experiences.

Once here, as she readied herself to start graduate school, she called an old friend who she had visited on a trip to Savannah just a month before the African sojourn. She was going to the flea market and wanted some company. The friend’s roommate, Gerome, who she had met on the earlier visit, was there and he wanted to go.

“So we headed to Keller’s for a day of rummaging.” The two of them turned out to both be inveterate flea hunters, so the flea market visits continued every weekend. In the meantime, Christen got settled into her new apt. in an old historic Savannah building and plunged into her studies at Scad.

The next three years were busy. Graduate studies, of course, and a job for the City. Then a job at Scad while continuing her studies. In the midst of all of this, she says “I began to feel that something was missing.” A deep need to be of service to her community began to nag. She pondered where it had come from. It didn’t take long to figure out.

Prior to her college years, growing up in Durham, N.C., she had attended Quaker Schools. Although raised as a Catholic (both sides of her family are Irish Catholic), her mother taught at a Quaker school. One of the important doctrines of Quakerism is service to the community. That desire had become internalized. And she believed strongly in the four core principles of the Quakers: Peace, Simplicity, Integrity and Equality.

“It took three years to complete my Master’s Degree. By year two of my studies, I was accepted in the PhD program in Quaker Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK for my PhD in Quaker Studies.”

Christen wove together her passions. “My thesis for the Masters in Fibers was on Quaker’s view of simplicity.”

She sought simplicity at the flea market, too. Simple things. Useful things. Objects worn with the simplicity of age.

She found something else, too. After two months of prowling the aisles of Kellers with Gerome, there was that “First Kiss.” That was on July 29, 2001, one year to the day after the day they met.

Subtle changes occurred after that. The flea market visits continued, but they went other places together as well. Today, Christen sometimes refers to that day as their “First Date.” Nearly three yeas later, in June of 2004, in the midst of a lightening storm, Jerome proposed.

A week later, at the flea market, Christen proposed to him. “I spelled out, ‘Will you grow to be an antique with me? Your flea market find’ in letterpress letters. The letters were placed in a letterpress drawer."

“We both said Yes! Right away. Actually, we both already knew we wanted to be married but we both enjoyed the experience of asking.”

Six weeks later, on July 29, 2004, four years to the day after they met, Christen Higgins Cloughtery and W. Gerome Temple were married by the fountain in Forsyth Park. “We were off to England four weeks after that.”

In England, Christen began her PhD program in Quaker Studies and Gerome, an artist, painted and had several showings of his work. And they traveled, visiting Ireland, Christen’s ancestral home. “It was a year long honeymoon,” she says with a smile.

They returned to Savannah and moved into an apartment at the Lafeyette Suites, which they manage. Jerome continues his art, and Christen continues work on her PhD program.

“I am creating,“ she says, “and testing a curriculum that teaches international understanding, at the high school level. The pilot study’s focus was on “Global Health and the Role of Water,” Christen says, harkening back to what she learned in Africa. Today, with the look of a woman who has found her place in the world, Christen says that she and Jerome intend to remain in Savannah.

“This is our home, and it’s the home we want to be in for the rest of our lives.” They are looking, slowly and cautiously, for a place to buy, which will provide income from one unit while they live in another. "One day we’ll convert the whole place into a single family home.“

She expects to earn her PhD in July,2008, and then, weaving together the fabric of her life, plans to start a Quaker School in Savannah.