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  • EricEric
    Keymaster

      Some background for the storyline of Franiel

      For safekeeping and future explorations…

      Franiel a talented young monk from Mount Elok’ram is going on a journey of a lifetime after the death of the old abbot Hrih Chokyam Lin’potshee despite being his chosen successor unknown to everybody. He is sent by the usurper Elder Aum Geog to a journey down to the Village of Chard Dam Jarfon to engrave a precious chalice with sacred words on a sealed scroll.

      He encounters Léonard a zany alchemist with his dog Moufle who takes his precious cargo.

      Franiel finds shelter with Phoebe Chesterhope, a master thief who trains him until she disappears after taking her motorbike on a dangerous interdimensional mission on the day of Marduë. Franiel is then put back in the path of Léonard, who had stolen the chalice for safekeeping. Léonard teaches Franiel about the powers of the chalice (the famed Cup of Margilonia), on the day of Seldië, and activates its self-protective cloaking power to temporarily relieve Franiel of his burden.

      Under Léonard’s tutelage, the true destiny of Franiel is revealed, and he can claim his rightful place as the chosen successor of the old abbot, on the day of Marduë. With the help of Leonard and the power of the chalice, Franiel embarks on a new journey, equipped with the knowledge and skills he needs to fulfill his destiny. However, with someone else following him and the possibility of danger lurking around every hexade, Franiel must stay vigilant and continue to rely on his newfound allies to help him succeed. Only time will tell if Franiel is truly ready for the challenges that lie ahead on his path to becoming a great leader and guardian of the sacred chalice.

      #6553
      EricEric
      Keymaster

        Luckily for them, the sand structure with the nearby nests of snapping sand turtles was also a graveyard for the military drones that weren’t apparently programmed to register natural elements as threats.

        They quickly found four of them who weren’t completely damaged, and with some technical assist from Jorid, Georges was able to repair the propulsion and deactivate the military programs and tracking beacons.

        Klatu had some ropes in his speedster that they tied to their rudimentary drive and the drones, so they could carry Léonard’s body while he was still in stasis.

        His vitals were generally positive, and Salomé kept checking on him, while Georges and Klatu managed attaching the odd assemblage of drones to their craft.

        The ride back wasn’t as bad as the first time, maybe due to the extra cargo that made maneuvres more complex for their green driver.

        “This is worth the detour. Seems like Klatu really wanted to save time and avoided to show us the scenic route the first time,” said Georges trying to break the tense worried silence.

        Salomé smiled weakly “Léonard’s consciousness is embroiled into complex thoughts; they have to deal about some threat, the nature of which eludes me for now. It looks as though he’s absorbed some sort of forbidden knowledge, something potentially dangerous,” Salomé said to Georges. “I’m no longer as sure he was imprisoned for his punishment, but rather for protection…” she sighed. “for everyone else’s protection… I will feel better when we’re all back to the Jorid and we can run a full diagnosis.”

        Georges looked at his friend apparently sleeping, and wrapped a loving arm around Salomé’s shoulder “It’s not going to be long now. He’s going to be fine.”

        ***

        “Horrible doing business with you.” Klatu said as they parted, rubbing his hands together in gleeful satisfaction. Whatever the Jorid had organised as a deal for his payment, it seemed the added drones weren’t part of it and came as an extra bonus.

        :fleuron:

        Inside the Jorid, while Salomé was setting up space for Léonard and making the preparation for the diagnosis, Georges looked at the tiles board, readying the craft for imminent departure.

        A new tile had appeared, with a distinct pattern form, almost like an ogee.

        “Jorid, is this new?”

        “Indeed Georges, our adventure has inspired me to create new avenues of exploration.”

        “Oh, that’s fresh.” Georges looked into the shifting symbol at its surface. After it stabilised, he could see there was a sort of spiral shell with forms reminiscent of the mocking turtles peeking out from the centre, surrounded by sand dunes.

        “Jorid, tell me more please.”

        “Sure, I’d call it ‘Sandshell‘. Do you want the full curriculum?”

        “Absolutely, colour me intrigued!”

        The Sandshell:
        Function: A reminder of the fragility of our perceived reality and the importance of questioning our assumptions
        Families: Vold, Zuli, Ilda
        Significance: The Sandshell represents the shifting and unstable nature of our beliefs, assumptions, and understandings. Like the sand that slips through our fingers, so too can our perception of the world around us be ephemeral and illusory. The image of the mock turtle serves as a reminder that we often live under assumed identities and in a world built on questionable foundations.
        As advice: The Sandshell encourages one to question their beliefs and assumptions, to examine the foundations upon which they have built their reality, and to search for a deeper understanding of truth.
        Depiction: The Sandshell can be depicted as a spiral shell with a mocking turtle peeking out from the center, surrounded by sand dunes. The sand symbolizes the instability of our perceptions and the turtle represents the assumed identities and neurotic fairy tales that make up our reality. The spiral form of the shell represents the journey of discovery and self-reflection.”

        “I love it,” said Georges enthusiastically “can we use it to plot our next course?”

        “As a matter of fact we can Georges. Let me realign the grid and propose some suggestions. Do you have a seed thought to offer for this journey?”

        Georges pondered for a while, when the image of the fishboard sprung forth in his mind. “Our little adventure is reminding me of our origins, Jorid —Léonard, working on the fishboard, your ancestor in a way… Us, finding Léonard… It feels like an adventure back to our origins. Can you project a destination on this vector…” then thinking at Salomé’s worried face “… that would be safe for our next stop, and allow us to find help for Léonard.”

        “Verily.” Jorid answered back. “Course plotted. Please get comfortable until we arrive at our destination.”

        #6540

        In reply to: Prompts of Madjourneys

        EricEric
        Keymaster

          Update & clarifications on the characters:

          Looking at the avatars that Zara, Youssef, Xavier and Yasmin are using in VR.

          Full name or real name in RL :: name in VR (@nickhandle) description of avatar.

          • Zara Patara-Smythe :: Zara (@zaraloon) is a 25-year-old woman of mixed heritage, her mother is Indian and her father is British. She has long, dark hair that she keeps in a sleek ponytail, dark brown eyes and a sharp jawline. She stands at 5’6″ and has a toned and athletic build. She usually wears practical clothing that allows her to move around easily, such as cargo pants and a tank top.
          • Xavier Olafsson :: Xavier (@xavimunk) is a 27-year-old man of Norwegian and Danish descent. He has blonde hair that he keeps in a messy style, blue eyes, and a charming smile. He stands at 6’1″ and has a lean build. He is always seen wearing a colorful and bold clothing, such as a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.
          • Yasmin Ahmed :: Yasmin (@yasminowl) is a 23-year-old woman of Egyptian descent. She has long, black hair that she keeps in a tight braid, dark brown eyes and a round face. She stands at 5’4″ and has a petite build. She usually wears conservative clothing, such as long skirts and blouses.
          • Youssef Ali :: Youssef (@youssefbear) is a 26-year-old man of half Yemeni, half Norwegian descent. He has short, curly black hair, dark brown eyes and a square jawline. He stands at 6’2″ and has a muscular build. He usually wears comfortable clothing such as a t-shirt and jeans, and always has a backpack on his shoulder.

          Full descriptions for real-life Zara, Yasmin, Youssef, Xavier:

          Real Life Zara Patara-Smythe :: Zara is a 57-year-old woman who is an adventurous traveler and a passionate hobbyist. She has a full mane of gorgeous auburn hair that she keeps in a sleek ponytail, sparkling green eyes, and a warm smile that puts others at ease. She is of mixed heritage, her mother was Indian and her father was British. She is well-educated and well-off, either through an inheritance or a supportive and understanding husband. Zara is a lover of art, music, and history, and spends much of her time indulging in her passions. She is always eager to explore new places and meet new people, and her adventurous spirit often leads her to travel off the beaten path.

          Real Life Yasmin Ahmed :: Yasmin is a 32-year-old woman who is kind, nurturing, and always puts others first. She has long, black hair that she keeps in a tight braid, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a warm smile that lights up a room. Born in Egypt, she grew up in a close-knit family and values the importance of community. She is a talented actress, who has kept her career a secret from those closest to her, in order to pursue a more fulfilling life working with children. Yasmin currently volunteers at an orphanage in Fiji, where she devotes herself to helping children in need.

          Real Life Youssef Ali :: Youssef is a 34-year-old man who is driven, confident, and always up for a challenge. He has short, curly black hair, dark brown eyes, and a square jawline that gives him a strong and determined look. Born to a Yemeni father and a Norwegian mother, he has a unique blend of cultures that has shaped his world view. Youssef is a talented blogger, who has traveled the world in search of new and interesting stories to share with his audience. He is always on the go, with a backpack on his shoulder, ready for his next adventure.

          Real Life Xavier Olafsson :: Xavier is a 36-year-old man who is bright, cheerful, and always looking for the positive in every situation. He has blonde hair that he keeps in a messy style, blue eyes, and a charming smile that never fails to win people over. Born to Norwegian and Danish parents, he has a love for the sea and an appreciation for the finer things in life. Xavier is an AI developer, who is working on a project he calls AL. He is always eager to share his ideas with others and is constantly seeking new and exciting opportunities.

          #6455

          In reply to: Orbs of Madjourneys

          Zara decided she may as well spend the hour wandering around the game before going back to the church to see the ghost of Isaac when she was sure her host Bertie was asleep.  It was a warm night but a gentle breeze wafted through the open window and Zara was comfortable and content. Not just one but three new adventures had her tingling with delicious anticipation, even if she was a little anxious about not getting confused with the game.  Talking to ghosts in old churches wasn’t unfamiliar, nor was a holiday in a strange hotel off the beaten track, but the game was still a bit of a mystery to her.  Yeah, I know it’s just a game, she whispered to the parrot who made a soft clicking noise by way of response.

          Zara found her game character, also (somewhat confusingly) named Zara, standing in the woods.  Not entirely sure how it had happened, she was rather pleased to see that the cargo pants and tank top in red had changed to a more pleasing hippyish red skirt ensemble.   A bit less Tomb Looter, and a bit more fairy tale looking which was more to her taste.

          The woods were strangely silent and still.  Zara made a 360 degree turn on the spot to see in all directions. The scene looked the same whichever way she turned, and Zara didn’t know which way to go. Then a faint path appeared to the left, and she set off in that direction.  Before long she came to a round green pool.

          Zara Game 1

          She stopped to look but carried on walking past it, not sure what it signified.  She came upon another glowing green pool before long, which looked like an entrance to a tunnel.

           

          Zara game 2

          I bet those are portals or something, Zara realized. I wonder if I’m supposed to step into it?

          “Go for it”, said Pretty Girl, “It’s only a game.”

          “Ok, well here goes!” replied Zara, mentally bracing herself for a plunge into the unknown.

          Zara stepped into the circle of glowing green.

          “Like when Alice went down the rabbit hole!” Zara whispered to the parrot.  “I’m falling, falling…oh!”

          Zara emerged from the green pool onto a wide walled path.  She was now in some kind of inhabited area, or at least not in the deep woods with no sign of human occupation. 

          Zara Game 3

          “I guess that green pool is the portal back to the woods.”

          “By George, she’s getting it,” replied Pretty Girl.

           

          Zara walked along the path which led to an old deserted ancient looking village with alleyways and steps.

          “This is heaps more interesting than those woods, look how pretty it all is! I love this place.”

          “Weren’t you supposed to be looking for a hermit in the woods though,” said Pretty Girl.

          “Or a lost traveler, and the lost traveler may be here, after falling in one of those green pools in the woods,”  replied Zara tartly, not wanting to leave the enchanting scene she found her avatar in.

          Zara Game 4

          #6423

          In reply to: Prompts of Madjourneys

          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Zara’s first quest:

            entry level quirk: wandering off the track

            The initial setting for this quest is a dense forest, where the paths are overgrown and rarely traveled. You find yourself alone and disoriented, with only a rough map and a compass to guide you.

            Possible directions to investigate include:

            Following a faint trail of footprints that lead deeper into the forest

            Climbing a tall tree to get a better view of the surrounding area

            Searching for a stream or river to use as a guide to find your way out of the forest

            Possible characters to engage include:

            A mysterious hermit who lives deep in the forest and is rumored to know the secrets of the land

            A lost traveler who is also trying to find their way out of the forest

            A group of bandits who have taken refuge in the forest and may try to steal from you or cause harm

            Your objective is to find the Wanderlust tile, a small, intricately carved wooden tile depicting a person walking off the beaten path. This tile holds the key to unlocking your inner quirk of wandering off the track.

            As proof of your progress in the game, you must find a way to incorporate this quirk into your real-life actions by taking a spontaneous detour on your next journey, whether it be physical or mental.

            For Zara’s quest:

            As you wander off the track, you come across a strange-looking building in the distance. Upon closer inspection, you realize it is the Flying Fish Inn. As you enter, you are greeted by the friendly owner, Idle. She tells you that she has heard of strange occurrences happening in the surrounding area and offers to help you in your quest

            Emoji clue:  🐈🌳 :cat_confused:

             

            Zara (the character in the game)

            characteristics from previous prompts:

            Zara is the leader of the group  :yahoo_thinking:  she is confident, and always ready for an adventure. She is a natural leader and has a strong sense of justice. She is also a tech-savvy person, always carrying a variety of gadgets with her, and is always the first to try out new technology.

            Zara is the leader of the group, her color is red, her animal is a lion, and her secret name in a funny language is “Zaraloon”

             

            Zara (the real life story character)

            characteristics from previous prompts:

            Zara Patara-Smythe is a 57-year-old woman of mixed heritage, her mother is Indian and her father is British. She has long, dark hair that she keeps in an untidy ponytail, dark brown eyes and a sharp jawline. She stands at 5’6″ and has a toned and athletic build. She usually wears practical clothing that allows her to move around easily, such as cargo pants and a tank top.

            prompt quest:

            Continue to investigate the mysterious cat she saw, possibly seeking out help from local animal experts or veterinarians.
            Join Xavier and Yasmin in investigating the Flying Fish Inn, looking for clues and exploring the area for any potential leads on the game’s quest.

            #6379

            In reply to: Prompts of Madjourneys

            EricEric
            Keymaster

              Asking to give each of the 4 characters some particular traits that makes them uniquely distinctive and recognizable

              The four friends, Zara, Xavier, Yasmin, and Youssef, each have their own unique traits that make them stand out and recognizable.

              Zara is the leader of the group, she is confident, and always ready for an adventure. She is a natural leader and has a strong sense of justice. She is also a tech-savvy person, always carrying a variety of gadgets with her, and is always the first to try out new technology.

              Xavier is the joker of the group, always cracking jokes and making puns. He is a free-spirited person who is always up for an adventure, he has a great sense of humor and is not afraid to be himself. He is also an artist and often carries a sketchbook and pencils with him, he likes to draw whatever he sees in his journeys.

              Yasmin is the brains of the group, she is intelligent and logical. She is always able to think on her feet and come up with a plan when things get tough. She is also a bit of a perfectionist and likes to have everything organized. She is a history buff and always carries a notebook with her to document her findings.

              Youssef is the muscle of the group, He is physically strong, and always ready to help out in a fight. He is also a bit of a foodie and loves trying new dishes. He is always the first one to volunteer to carry the heavy bags and equipment. He is also a bit of a daredevil and loves trying out new sports and activities.

              Give each of them a color, and an animal, and a secret name in a funny language

              The four friends, Zara, Xavier, Yasmin, and Youssef, each have their own unique traits that make them stand out and recognizable.

              Zara is the leader of the group, her color is red, her animal is a lion, and her secret name in a funny language is “Zaraloon”

              Xavier is the joker of the group, his color is orange, his animal is a monkey, and his secret name in a funny language is “Xavimunk”

              Yasmin is the brains of the group, her color is blue, her animal is an owl, and her secret name in a funny language is “Yasminowl”

              Youssef is the muscle of the group, his color is green, his animal is a bear, and his secret name in a funny language is “Youssefbear”

              Now, we need physical descriptions for each of them. Also, their ages, height, clothes, facial features, ethnicity (for instance Youssef may be half Yemeni and half Norwegian), etc. with a good mix of generic and eccentric. We also need surnames congruent with their described ethnicity, not too bland, but not too daft either. For instance Youssef Olafsson, Zara Patara-Smythe, etc. Also explain how they become friends.

              Zara Patara-Smythe is a 25-year-old woman of mixed heritage, her mother is Indian and her father is British. She has long, dark hair that she keeps in a sleek ponytail, dark brown eyes and a sharp jawline. She stands at 5’6″ and has a toned and athletic build. She usually wears practical clothing that allows her to move around easily, such as cargo pants and a tank top.

              Xavier Olafsson is a 27-year-old man of Norwegian and Danish descent. He has blonde hair that he keeps in a messy style, blue eyes, and a charming smile. He stands at 6’1″ and has a lean build. He is always seen wearing a colorful and bold clothing, such as a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

              Yasmin Ahmed is a 23-year-old woman of Egyptian descent. She has long, black hair that she keeps in a tight braid, dark brown eyes and a round face. She stands at 5’4″ and has a petite build. She usually wears conservative clothing, such as long skirts and blouses.

              Youssef Ali is a 26-year-old man of half Yemeni, half Norwegian descent. He has short, curly black hair, dark brown eyes and a square jawline. He stands at 6’2″ and has a muscular build. He usually wears comfortable clothing such as a t-shirt and jeans, and always has a backpack on his shoulder.

              The four of them became friends in college, they were all studying different majors, but they all shared a love for adventure and exploration. They found themselves in the same class project, and from there they formed a strong bond. After college, they decided to keep exploring the world together, and went on many trips and adventures, always seeking for something new and exciting.

              1/ Change the ages of Zara, Xavier, Yasmin and Youssef to more random patterns – rewrite if needed how they met each other to reflect eventual age gaps. Give them some flaws, mental or physical challenges.
              2/ increase again the age gaps while keeping the youngest one a young adult, and remove “minor” from the flaws descriptions

              Zara is a 22-year-old woman who is the youngest of the group. She is a free-spirited, adventurous person, but also a bit reckless and impulsive. She has a scar on her cheek that she got from a Skateboarding accident when she was a teenager.

              Xavier is a 45-year-old man who is the oldest of the group. He is a responsible and level-headed person, but also a bit of a perfectionist and can be hard on himself and others. He has dyslexia which he has been able to work around and it doesn’t impede his daily life.

              Yasmin is a 38-year-old woman who is the second oldest of the group. She is a kind and compassionate person, but also a bit of a pushover and can have trouble standing up for herself. She has social anxiety that affect her in certain situations and she have been working on coping mechanisms.

              Youssef is a 33-year-old man who is the second youngest of the group. He is a charismatic and outgoing person, but also a bit of a flirt and can be a bit insensitive to others feelings. He has ADHD which he has been able to manage with medication, but it still affects him from time to time.

              The group met each other through different means, Xavier and Yasmin met at work, Zara and Youssef met at a college class, and eventually, they all became friends through common interests and activities. They decided to go on this adventure together because they were all looking for a change in their lives and wanted to explore the unknown.

              #6348
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Wong Sang

                 

                Wong Sang was born in China in 1884. In October 1916 he married Alice Stokes in Oxford.

                Alice was the granddaughter of William Stokes of Churchill, Oxfordshire and William was the brother of Thomas Stokes the wheelwright (who was my 3X great grandfather). In other words Alice was my second cousin, three times removed, on my fathers paternal side.

                Wong Sang was an interpreter, according to the baptism registers of his children and the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital admission registers in 1930.  The hospital register also notes that he was employed by the Blue Funnel Line, and that his address was 11, Limehouse Causeway, E 14. (London)

                “The Blue Funnel Line offered regular First-Class Passenger and Cargo Services From the UK to South Africa, Malaya, China, Japan, Australia, Java, and America.  Blue Funnel Line was Owned and Operated by Alfred Holt & Co., Liverpool.
                The Blue Funnel Line, so-called because its ships have a blue funnel with a black top, is more appropriately known as the Ocean Steamship Company.”

                 

                Wong Sang and Alice’s daughter, Frances Eileen Sang, was born on the 14th July, 1916 and baptised in 1920 at St Stephen in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, London.  The birth date is noted in the 1920 baptism register and would predate their marriage by a few months, although on the death register in 1921 her age at death is four years old and her year of birth is recorded as 1917.

                Charles Ronald Sang was baptised on the same day in May 1920, but his birth is recorded as April of that year.  The family were living on Morant Street, Poplar.

                James William Sang’s birth is recorded on the 1939 census and on the death register in 2000 as being the 8th March 1913.  This definitely would predate the 1916 marriage in Oxford.

                William Norman Sang was born on the 17th October 1922 in Poplar.

                Alice and the three sons were living at 11, Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census, the same address that Wong Sang was living at when he was admitted to Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital on the 15th January 1930. Wong Sang died in the hospital on the 8th March of that year at the age of 46.

                Alice married John Patterson in 1933 in Stepney. John was living with Alice and her three sons on Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census and his occupation was chef.

                Via Old London Photographs:

                “Limehouse Causeway is a street in east London that was the home to the original Chinatown of London. A combination of bomb damage during the Second World War and later redevelopment means that almost nothing is left of the original buildings of the street.”

                Limehouse Causeway in 1925:

                Limehouse Causeway

                 

                From The Story of Limehouse’s Lost Chinatown, poplarlondon website:

                “Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown, home to a tightly-knit community who were demonised in popular culture and eventually erased from the cityscape.

                As recounted in the BBC’s ‘Our Greatest Generation’ series, Connie was born to a Chinese father and an English mother in early 1920s Limehouse, where she used to play in the street with other British and British-Chinese children before running inside for teatime at one of their houses. 

                Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown between the 1880s and the 1960s, before the current Chinatown off Shaftesbury Avenue was established in the 1970s by an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong. 

                Connie’s memories of London’s first Chinatown as an “urban village” paint a very different picture to the seedy area portrayed in early twentieth century novels. 

                The pyramid in St Anne’s church marked the entrance to the opium den of Dr Fu Manchu, a criminal mastermind who threatened Western society by plotting world domination in a series of novels by Sax Rohmer. 

                Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights cemented stereotypes about prostitution, gambling and violence within the Chinese community, and whipped up anxiety about sexual relationships between Chinese men and white women. 

                Though neither novelist was familiar with the Chinese community, their depictions made Limehouse one of the most notorious areas of London. 

                Travel agent Thomas Cook even organised tours of the area for daring visitors, despite the rector of Limehouse warning that “those who look for the Limehouse of Mr Thomas Burke simply will not find it.”

                All that remains is a handful of Chinese street names, such as Ming Street, Pekin Street, and Canton Street — but what was Limehouse’s chinatown really like, and why did it get swept away?

                Chinese migration to Limehouse 

                Chinese sailors discharged from East India Company ships settled in the docklands from as early as the 1780s.

                By the late nineteenth century, men from Shanghai had settled around Pennyfields Lane, while a Cantonese community lived on Limehouse Causeway. 

                Chinese sailors were often paid less and discriminated against by dock hirers, and so began to diversify their incomes by setting up hand laundry services and restaurants. 

                Old photographs show shopfronts emblazoned with Chinese characters with horse-drawn carts idling outside or Chinese men in suits and hats standing proudly in the doorways. 

                In oral histories collected by Yat Ming Loo, Connie’s husband Leslie doesn’t recall seeing any Chinese women as a child, since male Chinese sailors settled in London alone and married working-class English women. 

                In the 1920s, newspapers fear-mongered about interracial marriages, crime and gambling, and described chinatown as an East End “colony.” 

                Ironically, Chinese opium-smoking was also demonised in the press, despite Britain waging war against China in the mid-nineteenth century for suppressing the opium trade to alleviate addiction amongst its people. 

                The number of Chinese people who settled in Limehouse was also greatly exaggerated, and in reality only totalled around 300. 

                The real Chinatown 

                Although the press sought to characterise Limehouse as a monolithic Chinese community in the East End, Connie remembers seeing people of all nationalities in the shops and community spaces in Limehouse.

                She doesn’t remember feeling discriminated against by other locals, though Connie does recall having her face measured and IQ tested by a member of the British Eugenics Society who was conducting research in the area. 

                Some of Connie’s happiest childhood memories were from her time at Chung-Hua Club, where she learned about Chinese culture and language.

                Why did Chinatown disappear? 

                The caricature of Limehouse’s Chinatown as a den of vice hastened its erasure. 

                Police raids and deportations fuelled by the alarmist media coverage threatened the Chinese population of Limehouse, and slum clearance schemes to redevelop low-income areas dispersed Chinese residents in the 1930s. 

                The Defence of the Realm Act imposed at the beginning of the First World War criminalised opium use, gave the authorities increased powers to deport Chinese people and restricted their ability to work on British ships.

                Dwindling maritime trade during World War II further stripped Chinese sailors of opportunities for employment, and any remnants of Chinatown were destroyed during the Blitz or erased by postwar development schemes.”

                 

                Wong Sang 1884-1930

                The year 1918 was a troublesome one for Wong Sang, an interpreter and shipping agent for Blue Funnel Line.  The Sang family were living at 156, Chrisp Street.

                Chrisp Street, Poplar, in 1913 via Old London Photographs:

                Chrisp Street

                 

                In February Wong Sang was discharged from a false accusation after defending his home from potential robbers.

                East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 15 February 1918:

                1918 Wong Sang

                 

                In August of that year he was involved in an incident that left him unconscious.

                Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette – Saturday 31 August 1918:

                1918 Wong Sang 2

                 

                Wong Sang is mentioned in an 1922 article about “Oriental London”.

                London and China Express – Thursday 09 February 1922:

                1922 Wong Sang

                A photograph of the Chee Kong Tong Chinese Freemason Society mentioned in the above article, via Old London Photographs:

                Chee Kong Tong

                 

                Wong Sang was recommended by the London Metropolitan Police in 1928 to assist in a case in Wellingborough, Northampton.

                Difficulty of Getting an Interpreter: Northampton Mercury – Friday 16 March 1928:

                1928 Wong Sang

                1928 Wong Sang 2

                The difficulty was that “this man speaks the Cantonese language only…the Northeners and the Southerners in China have differing languages and the interpreter seemed to speak one that was in between these two.”

                 

                In 1917, Alice Wong Sang was a witness at her sister Harriet Stokes marriage to James William Watts in Southwark, London.  Their father James Stokes occupation on the marriage register is foreman surveyor, but on the census he was a council roadman or labourer. (I initially rejected this as the correct marriage for Harriet because of the discrepancy with the occupations. Alice Wong Sang as a witness confirmed that it was indeed the correct one.)

                1917 Alice Wong Sang

                 

                 

                James William Sang 1913-2000 was a clock fitter and watch assembler (on the 1939 census). He married Ivy Laura Fenton in 1963 in Sidcup, Kent. James died in Southwark in 2000.

                Charles Ronald Sang 1920-1974  was a draughtsman (1939 census). He married Eileen Burgess in 1947 in Marylebone.  Charles and Eileen had two sons:  Keith born in 1951 and Roger born in 1952.  He died in 1974 in Hertfordshire.

                William Norman Sang 1922-2000 was a clerk and telephone operator (1939 census).  William enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1942. He married Lily Mullins in 1949 in Bethnal Green, and they had three daughters: Marion born in 1950, Christine in 1953, and Frances in 1959.  He died in Redbridge in 2000.

                 

                I then found another two births registered in Poplar by Alice Sang, both daughters.  Doris Winifred Sang was born in 1925, and Patricia Margaret Sang was born in 1933 ~ three years after Wong Sang’s death.  Neither of the these daughters were on the 1939 census with Alice, John Patterson and the three sons.  Margaret had presumably been evacuated because of the war to a family in Taunton, Somerset. Doris would have been fourteen and I have been unable to find her in 1939 (possibly because she died in 2017 and has not had the redaction removed  yet on the 1939 census as only deceased people are viewable).

                Doris Winifred Sang 1925-2017 was a nursing sister. She didn’t marry, and spent a year in USA between 1954 and 1955. She stayed in London, and died at the age of ninety two in 2017.

                Patricia Margaret Sang 1933-1998 was also a nurse. She married Patrick L Nicely in Stepney in 1957.  Patricia and Patrick had five children in London: Sharon born 1959, Donald in 1960, Malcolm was born and died in 1966, Alison was born in 1969 and David in 1971.

                 

                I was unable to find a birth registered for Alice’s first son, James William Sang (as he appeared on the 1939 census).  I found Alice Stokes on the 1911 census as a 17 year old live in servant at a tobacconist on Pekin Street, Limehouse, living with Mr Sui Fong from Hong Kong and his wife Sarah Sui Fong from Berlin.  I looked for a birth registered for James William Fong instead of Sang, and found it ~ mothers maiden name Stokes, and his date of birth matched the 1939 census: 8th March, 1913.

                On the 1921 census, Wong Sang is not listed as living with them but it is mentioned that Mr Wong Sang was the person returning the census.  Also living with Alice and her sons James and Charles in 1921 are two visitors:  (Florence) May Stokes, 17 years old, born in Woodstock, and Charles Stokes, aged 14, also born in Woodstock. May and Charles were Alice’s sister and brother.

                 

                I found Sharon Nicely on social media and she kindly shared photos of Wong Sang and Alice Stokes:

                Wong Sang

                 

                Alice Stokes

                #6268
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  From Tanganyika with Love

                  continued part 9

                  With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                  Lyamungu 3rd January 1945

                  Dearest Family.

                  We had a novel Christmas this year. We decided to avoid the expense of
                  entertaining and being entertained at Lyamungu, and went off to spend Christmas
                  camping in a forest on the Western slopes of Kilimanjaro. George decided to combine
                  business with pleasure and in this way we were able to use Government transport.
                  We set out the day before Christmas day and drove along the road which skirts
                  the slopes of Kilimanjaro and first visited a beautiful farm where Philip Teare, the ex
                  Game Warden, and his wife Mary are staying. We had afternoon tea with them and then
                  drove on in to the natural forest above the estate and pitched our tent beside a small
                  clear mountain stream. We decorated the tent with paper streamers and a few small
                  balloons and John found a small tree of the traditional shape which we decorated where
                  it stood with tinsel and small ornaments.

                  We put our beer, cool drinks for the children and bottles of fresh milk from Simba
                  Estate, in the stream and on Christmas morning they were as cold as if they had been in
                  the refrigerator all night. There were not many presents for the children, there never are,
                  but they do not seem to mind and are well satisfied with a couple of balloons apiece,
                  sweets, tin whistles and a book each.

                  George entertain the children before breakfast. He can make a magical thing out
                  of the most ordinary balloon. The children watched entranced as he drew on his pipe
                  and then blew the smoke into the balloon. He then pinched the neck of the balloon
                  between thumb and forefinger and released the smoke in little puffs. Occasionally the
                  balloon ejected a perfect smoke ring and the forest rang with shouts of “Do it again
                  Daddy.” Another trick was to blow up the balloon to maximum size and then twist the
                  neck tightly before releasing. Before subsiding the balloon darted about in a crazy
                  fashion causing great hilarity. Such fun, at the cost of a few pence.

                  After breakfast George went off to fish for trout. John and Jim decided that they
                  also wished to fish so we made rods out of sticks and string and bent pins and they
                  fished happily, but of course quite unsuccessfully, for hours. Both of course fell into the
                  stream and got soaked, but I was prepared for this, and the little stream was so shallow
                  that they could not come to any harm. Henry played happily in the sand and I had a
                  most peaceful morning.

                  Hamisi roasted a chicken in a pot over the camp fire and the jelly set beautifully in the
                  stream. So we had grilled trout and chicken for our Christmas dinner. I had of course
                  taken an iced cake for the occasion and, all in all, it was a very successful Christmas day.
                  On Boxing day we drove down to the plains where George was to investigate a
                  report of game poaching near the Ngassari Furrow. This is a very long ditch which has
                  been dug by the Government for watering the Masai stock in the area. It is also used by
                  game and we saw herds of zebra and wildebeest, and some Grant’s Gazelle and
                  giraffe, all comparatively tame. At one point a small herd of zebra raced beside the lorry
                  apparently enjoying the fun of a gallop. They were all sleek and fat and looked wild and
                  beautiful in action.

                  We camped a considerable distance from the water but this precaution did not
                  save us from the mosquitoes which launched a vicious attack on us after sunset, so that
                  we took to our beds unusually early. They were on the job again when we got up at
                  sunrise so I was very glad when we were once more on our way home.

                  “I like Christmas safari. Much nicer that silly old party,” said John. I agree but I think
                  it is time that our children learned to play happily with others. There are no other young
                  children at Lyamungu though there are two older boys and a girl who go to boarding
                  school in Nairobi.

                  On New Years Day two Army Officers from the military camp at Moshi, came for
                  tea and to talk game hunting with George. I think they rather enjoy visiting a home and
                  seeing children and pets around.

                  Eleanor.

                  Lyamungu 14 May 1945

                  Dearest Family.

                  So the war in Europe is over at last. It is such marvellous news that I can hardly
                  believe it. To think that as soon as George can get leave we will go to England and
                  bring Ann and George home with us to Tanganyika. When we know when this leave can
                  be arranged we will want Kate to join us here as of course she must go with us to
                  England to meet George’s family. She has become so much a part of your lives that I
                  know it will be a wrench for you to give her up but I know that you will all be happy to
                  think that soon our family will be reunited.

                  The V.E. celebrations passed off quietly here. We all went to Moshi to see the
                  Victory Parade of the King’s African Rifles and in the evening we went to a celebration
                  dinner at the Game Warden’s house. Besides ourselves the Moores had invited the
                  Commanding Officer from Moshi and a junior officer. We had a very good dinner and
                  many toasts including one to Mrs Moore’s brother, Oliver Milton who is fighting in Burma
                  and has recently been awarded the Military Cross.

                  There was also a celebration party for the children in the grounds of the Moshi
                  Club. Such a spread! I think John and Jim sampled everything. We mothers were
                  having our tea separately and a friend laughingly told me to turn around and have a look.
                  I did, and saw the long tea tables now deserted by all the children but my two sons who
                  were still eating steadily, and finding the party more exciting than the game of Musical
                  Bumps into which all the other children had entered with enthusiasm.

                  There was also an extremely good puppet show put on by the Italian prisoners
                  of war from the camp at Moshi. They had made all the puppets which included well
                  loved characters like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the Babes in the Wood as
                  well as more sophisticated ones like an irritable pianist and a would be prima donna. The
                  most popular puppets with the children were a native askari and his family – a very
                  happy little scene. I have never before seen a puppet show and was as entranced as
                  the children. It is amazing what clever manipulation and lighting can do. I believe that the
                  Italians mean to take their puppets to Nairobi and am glad to think that there, they will
                  have larger audiences to appreciate their art.

                  George has just come in, and I paused in my writing to ask him for the hundredth
                  time when he thinks we will get leave. He says I must be patient because it may be a
                  year before our turn comes. Shipping will be disorganised for months to come and we
                  cannot expect priority simply because we have been separated so long from our
                  children. The same situation applies to scores of other Government Officials.
                  I have decided to write the story of my childhood in South Africa and about our
                  life together in Tanganyika up to the time Ann and George left the country. I know you
                  will have told Kate these stories, but Ann and George were so very little when they left
                  home that I fear that they cannot remember much.

                  My Mother-in-law will have told them about their father but she can tell them little
                  about me. I shall send them one chapter of my story each month in the hope that they
                  may be interested and not feel that I am a stranger when at last we meet again.

                  Eleanor.

                  Lyamungu 19th September 1945

                  Dearest Family.

                  In a months time we will be saying good-bye to Lyamungu. George is to be
                  transferred to Mbeya and I am delighted, not only as I look upon Mbeya as home, but
                  because there is now a primary school there which John can attend. I feel he will make
                  much better progress in his lessons when he realises that all children of his age attend
                  school. At present he is putting up a strong resistance to learning to read and spell, but
                  he writes very neatly, does his sums accurately and shows a real talent for drawing. If
                  only he had the will to learn I feel he would do very well.

                  Jim now just four, is too young for lessons but too intelligent to be interested in
                  the ayah’s attempts at entertainment. Yes I’ve had to engage a native girl to look after
                  Henry from 9 am to 12.30 when I supervise John’s Correspondence Course. She is
                  clean and amiable, but like most African women she has no initiative at all when it comes
                  to entertaining children. Most African men and youths are good at this.

                  I don’t regret our stay at Lyamungu. It is a beautiful spot and the change to the
                  cooler climate after the heat of Morogoro has been good for all the children. John is still
                  tall for his age but not so thin as he was and much less pale. He is a handsome little lad
                  with his large brown eyes in striking contrast to his fair hair. He is wary of strangers but
                  very observant and quite uncanny in the way he sums up people. He seldom gets up
                  to mischief but I have a feeling he eggs Jim on. Not that Jim needs egging.

                  Jim has an absolute flair for mischief but it is all done in such an artless manner that
                  it is not easy to punish him. He is a very sturdy child with a cap of almost black silky hair,
                  eyes brown, like mine, and a large mouth which is quick to smile and show most beautiful
                  white and even teeth. He is most popular with all the native servants and the Game
                  Scouts. The servants call Jim, ‘Bwana Tembo’ (Mr Elephant) because of his sturdy
                  build.

                  Henry, now nearly two years old, is quite different from the other two in
                  appearance. He is fair complexioned and fair haired like Ann and Kate, with large, black
                  lashed, light grey eyes. He is a good child, not so merry as Jim was at his age, nor as
                  shy as John was. He seldom cries, does not care to be cuddled and is independent and
                  strong willed. The servants call Henry, ‘Bwana Ndizi’ (Mr Banana) because he has an
                  inexhaustible appetite for this fruit. Fortunately they are very inexpensive here. We buy
                  an entire bunch which hangs from a beam on the back verandah, and pluck off the
                  bananas as they ripen. This way there is no waste and the fruit never gets bruised as it
                  does in greengrocers shops in South Africa. Our three boys make a delightful and
                  interesting trio and I do wish you could see them for yourselves.

                  We are delighted with the really beautiful photograph of Kate. She is an
                  extraordinarily pretty child and looks so happy and healthy and a great credit to you.
                  Now that we will be living in Mbeya with a school on the doorstep I hope that we will
                  soon be able to arrange for her return home.

                  Eleanor.

                  c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 30th October 1945

                  Dearest Family.

                  How nice to be able to write c/o Game Dept. Mbeya at the head of my letters.
                  We arrived here safely after a rather tiresome journey and are installed in a tiny house on
                  the edge of the township.

                  We left Lyamungu early on the morning of the 22nd. Most of our goods had
                  been packed on the big Ford lorry the previous evening, but there were the usual
                  delays and farewells. Of our servants, only the cook, Hamisi, accompanied us to
                  Mbeya. Japhet, Tovelo and the ayah had to be paid off and largesse handed out.
                  Tovelo’s granny had come, bringing a gift of bananas, and she also brought her little
                  granddaughter to present a bunch of flowers. The child’s little scolded behind is now
                  completely healed. Gifts had to be found for them too.

                  At last we were all aboard and what a squash it was! Our few pieces of furniture
                  and packing cases and trunks, the cook, his wife, the driver and the turney boy, who
                  were to take the truck back to Lyamungu, and all their bits and pieces, bunches of
                  bananas and Fanny the dog were all crammed into the body of the lorry. George, the
                  children and I were jammed together in the cab. Before we left George looked
                  dubiously at the tyres which were very worn and said gloomily that he thought it most
                  unlikely that we would make our destination, Dodoma.

                  Too true! Shortly after midday, near Kwakachinja, we blew a back tyre and there
                  was a tedious delay in the heat whilst the wheel was changed. We were now without a
                  spare tyre and George said that he would not risk taking the Ford further than Babati,
                  which is less than half way to Dodoma. He drove very slowly and cautiously to Babati
                  where he arranged with Sher Mohammed, an Indian trader, for a lorry to take us to
                  Dodoma the next morning.

                  It had been our intention to spend the night at the furnished Government
                  Resthouse at Babati but when we got there we found that it was already occupied by
                  several District Officers who had assembled for a conference. So, feeling rather
                  disgruntled, we all piled back into the lorry and drove on to a place called Bereku where
                  we spent an uncomfortable night in a tumbledown hut.

                  Before dawn next morning Sher Mohammed’s lorry drove up, and there was a
                  scramble to dress by the light of a storm lamp. The lorry was a very dilapidated one and
                  there was already a native woman passenger in the cab. I felt so tired after an almost
                  sleepless night that I decided to sit between the driver and this woman with the sleeping
                  Henry on my knee. It was as well I did, because I soon found myself dosing off and
                  drooping over towards the woman. Had she not been there I might easily have fallen
                  out as the battered cab had no door. However I was alert enough when daylight came
                  and changed places with the woman to our mutual relief. She was now able to converse
                  with the African driver and I was able to enjoy the scenery and the fresh air!
                  George, John and Jim were less comfortable. They sat in the lorry behind the
                  cab hemmed in by packing cases. As the lorry was an open one the sun beat down
                  unmercifully upon them until George, ever resourceful, moved a table to the front of the
                  truck. The two boys crouched under this and so got shelter from the sun but they still had
                  to endure the dust. Fanny complicated things by getting car sick and with one thing and
                  another we were all jolly glad to get to Dodoma.

                  We spent the night at the Dodoma Hotel and after hot baths, a good meal and a
                  good nights rest we cheerfully boarded a bus of the Tanganyika Bus Service next
                  morning to continue our journey to Mbeya. The rest of the journey was uneventful. We slept two nights on the road, the first at Iringa Hotel and the second at Chimala. We
                  reached Mbeya on the 27th.

                  I was rather taken aback when I first saw the little house which has been allocated
                  to us. I had become accustomed to the spacious houses we had in Morogoro and
                  Lyamungu. However though the house is tiny it is secluded and has a long garden
                  sloping down to the road in front and another long strip sloping up behind. The front
                  garden is shaded by several large cypress and eucalyptus trees but the garden behind
                  the house has no shade and consists mainly of humpy beds planted with hundreds of
                  carnations sadly in need of debudding. I believe that the previous Game Ranger’s wife
                  cultivated the carnations and, by selling them, raised money for War Funds.
                  Like our own first home, this little house is built of sun dried brick. Its original
                  owners were Germans. It is now rented to the Government by the Custodian of Enemy
                  Property, and George has his office in another ex German house.

                  This afternoon we drove to the school to arrange about enrolling John there. The
                  school is about four miles out of town. It was built by the German settlers in the late
                  1930’s and they were justifiably proud of it. It consists of a great assembly hall and
                  classrooms in one block and there are several attractive single storied dormitories. This
                  school was taken over by the Government when the Germans were interned on the
                  outbreak of war and many improvements have been made to the original buildings. The
                  school certainly looks very attractive now with its grassed playing fields and its lawns and
                  bright flower beds.

                  The Union Jack flies from a tall flagpole in front of the Hall and all traces of the
                  schools German origin have been firmly erased. We met the Headmaster, Mr
                  Wallington, and his wife and some members of the staff. The school is co-educational
                  and caters for children from the age of seven to standard six. The leaving age is elastic
                  owing to the fact that many Tanganyika children started school very late because of lack
                  of educational facilities in this country.

                  The married members of the staff have their own cottages in the grounds. The
                  Matrons have quarters attached to the dormitories for which they are responsible. I felt
                  most enthusiastic about the school until I discovered that the Headmaster is adamant
                  upon one subject. He utterly refuses to take any day pupils at the school. So now our
                  poor reserved Johnny will have to adjust himself to boarding school life.
                  We have arranged that he will start school on November 5th and I shall be very
                  busy trying to assemble his school uniform at short notice. The clothing list is sensible.
                  Boys wear khaki shirts and shorts on weekdays with knitted scarlet jerseys when the
                  weather is cold. On Sundays they wear grey flannel shorts and blazers with the silver
                  and scarlet school tie.

                  Mbeya looks dusty, brown and dry after the lush evergreen vegetation of
                  Lyamungu, but I prefer this drier climate and there are still mountains to please the eye.
                  In fact the lower slopes of Lolesa Mountain rise at the upper end of our garden.

                  Eleanor.

                  c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 21st November 1945

                  Dearest Family.

                  We’re quite settled in now and I have got the little house fixed up to my
                  satisfaction. I have engaged a rather uncouth looking houseboy but he is strong and
                  capable and now that I am not tied down in the mornings by John’s lessons I am able to
                  go out occasionally in the mornings and take Jim and Henry to play with other children.
                  They do not show any great enthusiasm but are not shy by nature as John is.
                  I have had a good deal of heartache over putting John to boarding school. It
                  would have been different had he been used to the company of children outside his
                  own family, or if he had even known one child there. However he seems to be adjusting
                  himself to the life, though slowly. At least he looks well and tidy and I am quite sure that
                  he is well looked after.

                  I must confess that when the time came for John to go to school I simply did not
                  have the courage to take him and he went alone with George, looking so smart in his
                  new uniform – but his little face so bleak. The next day, Sunday, was visiting day but the
                  Headmaster suggested that we should give John time to settle down and not visit him
                  until Wednesday.

                  When we drove up to the school I spied John on the far side of the field walking
                  all alone. Instead of running up with glad greetings, as I had expected, he came almost
                  reluctently and had little to say. I asked him to show me his dormitory and classroom and
                  he did so politely as though I were a stranger. At last he volunteered some information.
                  “Mummy,” he said in an awed voice, Do you know on the night I came here they burnt a
                  man! They had a big fire and they burnt him.” After a blank moment the penny dropped.
                  Of course John had started school and November the fifth but it had never entered my
                  head to tell him about that infamous character, Guy Fawkes!

                  I asked John’s Matron how he had settled down. “Well”, she said thoughtfully,
                  John is very good and has not cried as many of the juniors do when they first come
                  here, but he seems to keep to himself all the time.” I went home very discouraged but
                  on the Sunday John came running up with another lad of about his own age.” This is my
                  friend Marks,” he announced proudly. I could have hugged Marks.

                  Mbeya is very different from the small settlement we knew in the early 1930’s.
                  Gone are all the colourful characters from the Lupa diggings for the alluvial claims are all
                  worked out now, gone also are our old friends the Menzies from the Pub and also most
                  of the Government Officials we used to know. Mbeya has lost its character of a frontier
                  township and has become almost suburban.

                  The social life revolves around two places, the Club and the school. The Club
                  which started out as a little two roomed building, has been expanded and the golf
                  course improved. There are also tennis courts and a good library considering the size of
                  the community. There are frequent parties and dances, though most of the club revenue
                  comes from Bar profits. The parties are relatively sober affairs compared with the parties
                  of the 1930’s.

                  The school provides entertainment of another kind. Both Mr and Mrs Wallington
                  are good amateur actors and I am told that they run an Amateur Dramatic Society. Every
                  Wednesday afternoon there is a hockey match at the school. Mbeya town versus a
                  mixed team of staff and scholars. The match attracts almost the whole European
                  population of Mbeya. Some go to play hockey, others to watch, and others to snatch
                  the opportunity to visit their children. I shall have to try to arrange a lift to school when
                  George is away on safari.

                  I have now met most of the local women and gladly renewed an old friendship
                  with Sheilagh Waring whom I knew two years ago at Morogoro. Sheilagh and I have
                  much in common, the same disregard for the trappings of civilisation, the same sense of
                  the ludicrous, and children. She has eight to our six and she has also been cut off by the
                  war from two of her children. Sheilagh looks too young and pretty to be the mother of so
                  large a family and is, in fact, several years younger than I am. her husband, Donald, is a
                  large quiet man who, as far as I can judge takes life seriously.

                  Our next door neighbours are the Bank Manager and his wife, a very pleasant
                  couple though we seldom meet. I have however had correspondence with the Bank
                  Manager. Early on Saturday afternoon their houseboy brought a note. It informed me
                  that my son was disturbing his rest by precipitating a heart attack. Was I aware that my
                  son was about 30 feet up in a tree and balanced on a twig? I ran out and,sure enough,
                  there was Jim, right at the top of the tallest eucalyptus tree. It would be the one with the
                  mound of stones at the bottom! You should have heard me fluting in my most
                  wheedling voice. “Sweets, Jimmy, come down slowly dear, I’ve some nice sweets for
                  you.”

                  I’ll bet that little story makes you smile. I remember how often you have told me
                  how, as a child, I used to make your hearts turn over because I had no fear of heights
                  and how I used to say, “But that is silly, I won’t fall.” I know now only too well, how you
                  must have felt.

                  Eleanor.

                  c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 14th January 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  I hope that by now you have my telegram to say that Kate got home safely
                  yesterday. It was wonderful to have her back and what a beautiful child she is! Kate
                  seems to have enjoyed the train journey with Miss Craig, in spite of the tears she tells
                  me she shed when she said good-bye to you. She also seems to have felt quite at
                  home with the Hopleys at Salisbury. She flew from Salisbury in a small Dove aircraft
                  and they had a smooth passage though Kate was a little airsick.

                  I was so excited about her home coming! This house is so tiny that I had to turn
                  out the little store room to make a bedroom for her. With a fresh coat of whitewash and
                  pretty sprigged curtains and matching bedspread, borrowed from Sheilagh Waring, the
                  tiny room looks most attractive. I had also iced a cake, made ice-cream and jelly and
                  bought crackers for the table so that Kate’s home coming tea could be a proper little
                  celebration.

                  I was pleased with my preparations and then, a few hours before the plane was
                  due, my crowned front tooth dropped out, peg and all! When my houseboy wants to
                  describe something very tatty, he calls it “Second-hand Kabisa.” Kabisa meaning
                  absolutely. That is an apt description of how I looked and felt. I decided to try some
                  emergency dentistry. I think you know our nearest dentist is at Dar es Salaam five
                  hundred miles away.

                  First I carefully dried the tooth and with a match stick covered the peg and base
                  with Durofix. I then took the infants rubber bulb enema, sucked up some heat from a
                  candle flame and pumped it into the cavity before filling that with Durofix. Then hopefully
                  I stuck the tooth in its former position and held it in place for several minutes. No good. I
                  sent the houseboy to a shop for Scotine and tried the whole process again. No good
                  either.

                  When George came home for lunch I appealed to him for advice. He jokingly
                  suggested that a maize seed jammed into the space would probably work, but when
                  he saw that I really was upset he produced some chewing gum and suggested that I
                  should try that . I did and that worked long enough for my first smile anyway.
                  George and the three boys went to meet Kate but I remained at home to
                  welcome her there. I was afraid that after all this time away Kate might be reluctant to
                  rejoin the family but she threw her arms around me and said “Oh Mummy,” We both
                  shed a few tears and then we both felt fine.

                  How gay Kate is, and what an infectious laugh she has! The boys follow her
                  around in admiration. John in fact asked me, “Is Kate a Princess?” When I said
                  “Goodness no, Johnny, she’s your sister,” he explained himself by saying, “Well, she
                  has such golden hair.” Kate was less complementary. When I tucked her in bed last night
                  she said, “Mummy, I didn’t expect my little brothers to be so yellow!” All three boys
                  have been taking a course of Atebrin, an anti-malarial drug which tinges skin and eyeballs
                  yellow.

                  So now our tiny house is bursting at its seams and how good it feels to have one
                  more child under our roof. We are booked to sail for England in May and when we return
                  we will have Ann and George home too. Then I shall feel really content.

                  Eleanor.

                  c/o Game Dept. Mbeya. 2nd March 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  My life just now is uneventful but very busy. I am sewing hard and knitting fast to
                  try to get together some warm clothes for our leave in England. This is not a simple
                  matter because woollen materials are in short supply and very expensive, and now that
                  we have boarding school fees to pay for both Kate and John we have to budget very
                  carefully indeed.

                  Kate seems happy at school. She makes friends easily and seems to enjoy
                  communal life. John also seems reconciled to school now that Kate is there. He no
                  longer feels that he is the only exile in the family. He seems to rub along with the other
                  boys of his age and has a couple of close friends. Although Mbeya School is coeducational
                  the smaller boys and girls keep strictly apart. It is considered extremely
                  cissy to play with girls.

                  The local children are allowed to go home on Sundays after church and may bring
                  friends home with them for the day. Both John and Kate do this and Sunday is a very
                  busy day for me. The children come home in their Sunday best but bring play clothes to
                  change into. There is always a scramble to get them to bath and change again in time to
                  deliver them to the school by 6 o’clock.

                  When George is home we go out to the school for the morning service. This is
                  taken by the Headmaster Mr Wallington, and is very enjoyable. There is an excellent
                  school choir to lead the singing. The service is the Church of England one, but is
                  attended by children of all denominations, except the Roman Catholics. I don’t think that
                  more than half the children are British. A large proportion are Greeks, some as old as
                  sixteen, and about the same number are Afrikaners. There are Poles and non-Nazi
                  Germans, Swiss and a few American children.

                  All instruction is through the medium of English and it is amazing how soon all the
                  foreign children learn to chatter in English. George has been told that we will return to
                  Mbeya after our leave and for that I am very thankful as it means that we will still be living
                  near at hand when Jim and Henry start school. Because many of these children have to
                  travel many hundreds of miles to come to school, – Mbeya is a two day journey from the
                  railhead, – the school year is divided into two instead of the usual three terms. This
                  means that many of these children do not see their parents for months at a time. I think
                  this is a very sad state of affairs especially for the seven and eight year olds but the
                  Matrons assure me , that many children who live on isolated farms and stations are quite
                  reluctant to go home because they miss the companionship and the games and
                  entertainment that the school offers.

                  My only complaint about the life here is that I see far too little of George. He is
                  kept extremely busy on this range and is hardly at home except for a few days at the
                  months end when he has to be at his office to check up on the pay vouchers and the
                  issue of ammunition to the Scouts. George’s Range takes in the whole of the Southern
                  Province and the Southern half of the Western Province and extends to the border with
                  Northern Rhodesia and right across to Lake Tanganyika. This vast area is patrolled by
                  only 40 Game Scouts because the Department is at present badly under staffed, due
                  partly to the still acute shortage of rifles, but even more so to the extraordinary reluctance
                  which the Government shows to allocate adequate funds for the efficient running of the
                  Department.

                  The Game Scouts must see that the Game Laws are enforced, protect native
                  crops from raiding elephant, hippo and other game animals. Report disease amongst game and deal with stock raiding lions. By constantly going on safari and checking on
                  their work, George makes sure the range is run to his satisfaction. Most of the Game
                  Scouts are fine fellows but, considering they receive only meagre pay for dangerous
                  and exacting work, it is not surprising that occasionally a Scout is tempted into accepting
                  a bribe not to report a serious infringement of the Game Laws and there is, of course,
                  always the temptation to sell ivory illicitly to unscrupulous Indian and Arab traders.
                  Apart from supervising the running of the Range, George has two major jobs.
                  One is to supervise the running of the Game Free Area along the Rhodesia –
                  Tanganyika border, and the other to hunt down the man-eating lions which for years have
                  terrorised the Njombe District killing hundreds of Africans. Yes I know ‘hundreds’ sounds
                  fantastic, but this is perfectly true and one day, when the job is done and the official
                  report published I shall send it to you to prove it!

                  I hate to think of the Game Free Area and so does George. All the game from
                  buffalo to tiny duiker has been shot out in a wide belt extending nearly two hundred
                  miles along the Northern Rhodesia -Tanganyika border. There are three Europeans in
                  widely spaced camps who supervise this slaughter by African Game Guards. This
                  horrible measure is considered necessary by the Veterinary Departments of
                  Tanganyika, Rhodesia and South Africa, to prevent the cattle disease of Rinderpest
                  from spreading South.

                  When George is home however, we do relax and have fun. On the Saturday
                  before the school term started we took Kate and the boys up to the top fishing camp in
                  the Mporoto Mountains for her first attempt at trout fishing. There are three of these
                  camps built by the Mbeya Trout Association on the rivers which were first stocked with
                  the trout hatched on our farm at Mchewe. Of the three, the top camp is our favourite. The
                  scenery there is most glorious and reminds me strongly of the rivers of the Western
                  Cape which I so loved in my childhood.

                  The river, the Kawira, flows from the Rungwe Mountain through a narrow valley
                  with hills rising steeply on either side. The water runs swiftly over smooth stones and
                  sometimes only a foot or two below the level of the banks. It is sparkling and shallow,
                  but in places the water is deep and dark and the banks high. I had a busy day keeping
                  an eye on the boys, especially Jim, who twice climbed out on branches which overhung
                  deep water. “Mummy, I was only looking for trout!”

                  How those kids enjoyed the freedom of the camp after the comparative
                  restrictions of town. So did Fanny, she raced about on the hills like a mad dog chasing
                  imaginary rabbits and having the time of her life. To escape the noise and commotion
                  George had gone far upstream to fish and returned in the late afternoon with three good
                  sized trout and four smaller ones. Kate proudly showed George the two she had caught
                  with the assistance or our cook Hamisi. I fear they were caught in a rather unorthodox
                  manner but this I kept a secret from George who is a stickler for the orthodox in trout
                  fishing.

                  Eleanor.

                  Jacksdale England 24th June 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  Here we are all together at last in England. You cannot imagine how wonderful it
                  feels to have the whole Rushby family reunited. I find myself counting heads. Ann,
                  George, Kate, John, Jim, and Henry. All present and well. We had a very pleasant trip
                  on the old British India Ship Mantola. She was crowded with East Africans going home
                  for the first time since the war, many like us, eagerly looking forward to a reunion with their
                  children whom they had not seen for years. There was a great air of anticipation and
                  good humour but a little anxiety too.

                  “I do hope our children will be glad to see us,” said one, and went on to tell me
                  about a Doctor from Dar es Salaam who, after years of separation from his son had
                  recently gone to visit him at his school. The Doctor had alighted at the railway station
                  where he had arranged to meet his son. A tall youth approached him and said, very
                  politely, “Excuse me sir. Are you my Father?” Others told me of children who had
                  become so attached to their relatives in England that they gave their parents a very cool
                  reception. I began to feel apprehensive about Ann and George but fortunately had no
                  time to mope.

                  Oh, that washing and ironing for six! I shall remember for ever that steamy little
                  laundry in the heat of the Red Sea and queuing up for the ironing and the feeling of guilt
                  at the size of my bundle. We met many old friends amongst the passengers, and made
                  some new ones, so the voyage was a pleasant one, We did however have our
                  anxious moments.

                  John was the first to disappear and we had an anxious search for him. He was
                  quite surprised that we had been concerned. “I was just talking to my friend Chinky
                  Chinaman in his workshop.” Could John have called him that? Then, when I returned to
                  the cabin from dinner one night I found Henry swigging Owbridge’s Lung Tonic. He had
                  drunk half the bottle neat and the label said ‘five drops in water’. Luckily it did not harm
                  him.

                  Jim of course was forever risking his neck. George had forbidden him to climb on
                  the railings but he was forever doing things which no one had thought of forbidding him
                  to do, like hanging from the overhead pipes on the deck or standing on the sill of a
                  window and looking down at the well deck far below. An Officer found him doing this and
                  gave me the scolding.

                  Another day he climbed up on a derrick used for hoisting cargo. George,
                  oblivious to this was sitting on the hatch cover with other passengers reading a book. I
                  was in the wash house aft on the same deck when Kate rushed in and said, “Mummy
                  come and see Jim.” Before I had time to more than gape, the butcher noticed Jim and
                  rushed out knife in hand. “Get down from there”, he bellowed. Jim got, and with such
                  speed that he caught the leg or his shorts on a projecting piece of metal. The cotton
                  ripped across the seam from leg to leg and Jim stood there for a humiliating moment in a
                  sort of revealing little kilt enduring the smiles of the passengers who had looked up from
                  their books at the butcher’s shout.

                  That incident cured Jim of his urge to climb on the ship but he managed to give
                  us one more fright. He was lost off Dover. People from whom we enquired said, “Yes
                  we saw your little boy. He was by the railings watching that big aircraft carrier.” Now Jim,
                  though mischievous , is very obedient. It was not until George and I had conducted an
                  exhaustive search above and below decks that I really became anxious. Could he have
                  fallen overboard? Jim was returned to us by an unamused Officer. He had been found
                  in one of the lifeboats on the deck forbidden to children.

                  Our ship passed Dover after dark and it was an unforgettable sight. Dover Castle
                  and the cliffs were floodlit for the Victory Celebrations. One of the men passengers sat
                  down at the piano and played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, and people sang and a few
                  wept. The Mantola docked at Tilbury early next morning in a steady drizzle.
                  There was a dockers strike on and it took literally hours for all the luggage to be
                  put ashore. The ships stewards simply locked the public rooms and went off leaving the
                  passengers shivering on the docks. Eventually damp and bedraggled, we arrived at St
                  Pancras Station and were given a warm welcome by George’s sister Cath and her
                  husband Reg Pears, who had come all the way from Nottingham to meet us.
                  As we had to spend an hour in London before our train left for Nottingham,
                  George suggested that Cath and I should take the children somewhere for a meal. So
                  off we set in the cold drizzle, the boys and I without coats and laden with sundry
                  packages, including a hand woven native basket full of shoes. We must have looked like
                  a bunch of refugees as we stood in the hall of The Kings Cross Station Hotel because a
                  supercilious waiter in tails looked us up and down and said, “I’m afraid not Madam”, in
                  answer to my enquiry whether the hotel could provide lunch for six.
                  Anyway who cares! We had lunch instead at an ABC tea room — horrible
                  sausage and a mound or rather sloppy mashed potatoes, but very good ice-cream.
                  After the train journey in a very grimy third class coach, through an incredibly green and
                  beautiful countryside, we eventually reached Nottingham and took a bus to Jacksdale,
                  where George’s mother and sisters live in large detached houses side by side.
                  Ann and George were at the bus stop waiting for us, and thank God, submitted
                  to my kiss as though we had been parted for weeks instead of eight years. Even now
                  that we are together again my heart aches to think of all those missed years. They have
                  not changed much and I would have picked them out of a crowd, but Ann, once thin and
                  pale, is now very rosy and blooming. She still has her pretty soft plaits and her eyes are
                  still a clear calm blue. Young George is very striking looking with sparkling brown eyes, a
                  ready, slightly lopsided smile, and charming manners.

                  Mother, and George’s elder sister, Lottie Giles, welcomed us at the door with the
                  cheering news that our tea was ready. Ann showed us the way to mother’s lovely lilac
                  tiled bathroom for a wash before tea. Before I had even turned the tap, Jim had hung
                  form the glass towel rail and it lay in three pieces on the floor. There have since been
                  similar tragedies. I can see that life in civilisation is not without snags.

                  I am most grateful that Ann and George have accepted us so naturally and
                  affectionately. Ann said candidly, “Mummy, it’s a good thing that you had Aunt Cath with
                  you when you arrived because, honestly, I wouldn’t have known you.”

                  Eleanor.

                  Jacksdale England 28th August 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  I am sorry that I have not written for some time but honestly, I don’t know whether
                  I’m coming or going. Mother handed the top floor of her house to us and the
                  arrangement was that I should tidy our rooms and do our laundry and Mother would
                  prepare the meals except for breakfast. It looked easy at first. All the rooms have wall to
                  wall carpeting and there was a large vacuum cleaner in the box room. I was told a
                  window cleaner would do the windows.

                  Well the first time I used the Hoover I nearly died of fright. I pressed the switch
                  and immediately there was a roar and the bag filled with air to bursting point, or so I
                  thought. I screamed for Ann and she came at the run. I pointed to the bag and shouted
                  above the din, “What must I do? It’s going to burst!” Ann looked at me in astonishment
                  and said, “But Mummy that’s the way it works.” I couldn’t have her thinking me a
                  complete fool so I switched the current off and explained to Ann how it was that I had
                  never seen this type of equipment in action. How, in Tanganyika , I had never had a
                  house with electricity and that, anyway, electric equipment would be superfluous
                  because floors are of cement which the houseboy polishes by hand, one only has a
                  few rugs or grass mats on the floor. “But what about Granny’s house in South Africa?’”
                  she asked, so I explained about your Josephine who threatened to leave if you
                  bought a Hoover because that would mean that you did not think she kept the house
                  clean. The sad fact remains that, at fourteen, Ann knows far more about housework than I
                  do, or rather did! I’m learning fast.

                  The older children all go to school at different times in the morning. Ann leaves first
                  by bus to go to her Grammar School at Sutton-in-Ashfield. Shortly afterwards George
                  catches a bus for Nottingham where he attends the High School. So they have
                  breakfast in relays, usually scrambled egg made from a revolting dried egg mixture.
                  Then there are beds to make and washing and ironing to do, so I have little time for
                  sightseeing, though on a few afternoons George has looked after the younger children
                  and I have gone on bus tours in Derbyshire. Life is difficult here with all the restrictions on
                  foodstuffs. We all have ration books so get our fair share but meat, fats and eggs are
                  scarce and expensive. The weather is very wet. At first I used to hang out the washing
                  and then rush to bring it in when a shower came. Now I just let it hang.

                  We have left our imprint upon my Mother-in-law’s house for ever. Henry upset a
                  bottle of Milk of Magnesia in the middle of the pale fawn bedroom carpet. John, trying to
                  be helpful and doing some dusting, broke one of the delicate Dresden china candlesticks
                  which adorn our bedroom mantelpiece.Jim and Henry have wrecked the once
                  professionally landscaped garden and all the boys together bored a large hole through
                  Mother’s prized cherry tree. So now Mother has given up and gone off to Bournemouth
                  for a much needed holiday. Once a week I have the capable help of a cleaning woman,
                  called for some reason, ‘Mrs Two’, but I have now got all the cooking to do for eight. Mrs
                  Two is a godsend. She wears, of all things, a print mob cap with a hole in it. Says it
                  belonged to her Grandmother. Her price is far beyond Rubies to me, not so much
                  because she does, in a couple of hours, what it takes me all day to do, but because she
                  sells me boxes of fifty cigarettes. Some non-smoking relative, who works in Players
                  tobacco factory, passes on his ration to her. Until Mrs Two came to my rescue I had
                  been starved of cigarettes. Each time I asked for them at the shop the grocer would say,
                  “Are you registered with us?” Only very rarely would some kindly soul sell me a little
                  packet of five Woodbines.

                  England is very beautiful but the sooner we go home to Tanganyika, the better.
                  On this, George and I and the children agree.

                  Eleanor.

                  Jacksdale England 20th September 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  Our return passages have now been booked on the Winchester Castle and we
                  sail from Southampton on October the sixth. I look forward to returning to Tanganyika but
                  hope to visit England again in a few years time when our children are older and when
                  rationing is a thing of the past.

                  I have grown fond of my Sisters-in-law and admire my Mother-in-law very much.
                  She has a great sense of humour and has entertained me with stories of her very
                  eventful life, and told me lots of little stories of the children which did not figure in her
                  letters. One which amused me was about young George. During one of the air raids
                  early in the war when the sirens were screaming and bombers roaring overhead Mother
                  made the two children get into the cloak cupboard under the stairs. Young George
                  seemed quite unconcerned about the planes and the bombs but soon an anxious voice
                  asked in the dark, “Gran, what will I do if a spider falls on me?” I am afraid that Mother is
                  going to miss Ann and George very much.

                  I had a holiday last weekend when Lottie and I went up to London on a spree. It
                  was a most enjoyable weekend, though very rushed. We placed ourselves in the
                  hands of Thos. Cook and Sons and saw most of the sights of London and were run off
                  our feet in the process. As you all know London I shall not describe what I saw but just
                  to say that, best of all, I enjoyed walking along the Thames embankment in the evening
                  and the changing of the Guard at Whitehall. On Sunday morning Lottie and I went to
                  Kew Gardens and in the afternoon walked in Kensington Gardens.

                  We went to only one show, ‘The Skin of our Teeth’ starring Vivienne Leigh.
                  Neither of us enjoyed the performance at all and regretted having spent so much on
                  circle seats. The show was far too highbrow for my taste, a sort of satire on the survival
                  of the human race. Miss Leigh was unrecognisable in a blond wig and her voice strident.
                  However the night was not a dead loss as far as entertainment was concerned as we
                  were later caught up in a tragicomedy at our hotel.

                  We had booked communicating rooms at the enormous Imperial Hotel in Russell
                  Square. These rooms were comfortably furnished but very high up, and we had a rather
                  terrifying and dreary view from the windows of the enclosed courtyard far below. We
                  had some snacks and a chat in Lottie’s room and then I moved to mine and went to bed.
                  I had noted earlier that there was a special lock on the outer door of my room so that
                  when the door was closed from the inside it automatically locked itself.
                  I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard a hammering which seemed to
                  come from my wardrobe. I got up, rather fearfully, and opened the wardrobe door and
                  noted for the first time that the wardrobe was set in an opening in the wall and that the
                  back of the wardrobe also served as the back of the wardrobe in the room next door. I
                  quickly shut it again and went to confer with Lottie.

                  Suddenly a male voice was raised next door in supplication, “Mary Mother of
                  God, Help me! They’ve locked me in!” and the hammering resumed again, sometimes
                  on the door, and then again on the back of the wardrobe of the room next door. Lottie
                  had by this time joined me and together we listened to the prayers and to the
                  hammering. Then the voice began to threaten, “If you don’t let me out I’ll jump out of the
                  window.” Great consternation on our side of the wall. I went out into the passage and
                  called through the door, “You’re not locked in. Come to your door and I’ll tell you how to
                  open it.” Silence for a moment and then again the prayers followed by a threat. All the
                  other doors in the corridor remained shut.

                  Luckily just then a young man and a woman came walking down the corridor and I
                  explained the situation. The young man hurried off for the night porter who went into the
                  next door room. In a matter of minutes there was peace next door. When the night
                  porter came out into the corridor again I asked for an explanation. He said quite casually,
                  “It’s all right Madam. He’s an Irish Gentleman in Show Business. He gets like this on a
                  Saturday night when he has had a drop too much. He won’t give any more trouble
                  now.” And he didn’t. Next morning at breakfast Lottie and I tried to spot the gentleman in
                  the Show Business, but saw no one who looked like the owner of that charming Irish
                  voice.

                  George had to go to London on business last Monday and took the older
                  children with him for a few hours of sight seeing. They returned quite unimpressed.
                  Everything was too old and dirty and there were far too many people about, but they
                  had enjoyed riding on the escalators at the tube stations, and all agreed that the highlight
                  of the trip was, “Dad took us to lunch at the Chicken Inn.”

                  Now that it is almost time to leave England I am finding the housework less of a
                  drudgery, Also, as it is school holiday time, Jim and Henry are able to go on walks with
                  the older children and so use up some of their surplus energy. Cath and I took the
                  children (except young George who went rabbit shooting with his uncle Reg, and
                  Henry, who stayed at home with his dad) to the Wakes at Selston, the neighbouring
                  village. There were the roundabouts and similar contraptions but the side shows had
                  more appeal for the children. Ann and Kate found a stall where assorted prizes were
                  spread out on a sloping table. Anyone who could land a penny squarely on one of
                  these objects was given a similar one as a prize.

                  I was touched to see that both girls ignored all the targets except a box of fifty
                  cigarettes which they were determined to win for me. After numerous attempts, Kate
                  landed her penny successfully and you would have loved to have seen her radiant little
                  face.

                  Eleanor.

                  Dar es Salaam 22nd October 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  Back in Tanganyika at last, but not together. We have to stay in Dar es Salaam
                  until tomorrow when the train leaves for Dodoma. We arrived yesterday morning to find
                  all the hotels filled with people waiting to board ships for England. Fortunately some
                  friends came to the rescue and Ann, Kate and John have gone to stay with them. Jim,
                  Henry and I are sleeping in a screened corner of the lounge of the New Africa Hotel, and
                  George and young George have beds in the Palm Court of the same hotel.

                  We travelled out from England in the Winchester Castle under troopship
                  conditions. We joined her at Southampton after a rather slow train journey from
                  Nottingham. We arrived after dark and from the station we could see a large ship in the
                  docks with a floodlit red funnel. “Our ship,” yelled the children in delight, but it was not the
                  Winchester Castle but the Queen Elizabeth, newly reconditioned.

                  We had hoped to board our ship that evening but George made enquiries and
                  found that we would not be allowed on board until noon next day. Without much hope,
                  we went off to try to get accommodation for eight at a small hotel recommended by the
                  taxi driver. Luckily for us there was a very motherly woman at the reception desk. She
                  looked in amusement at the six children and said to me, “Goodness are all these yours,
                  ducks? Then she called over her shoulder, “Wilf, come and see this lady with lots of
                  children. We must try to help.” They settled the problem most satisfactorily by turning
                  two rooms into a dormitory.

                  In the morning we had time to inspect bomb damage in the dock area of
                  Southampton. Most of the rubble had been cleared away but there are still numbers of
                  damaged buildings awaiting demolition. A depressing sight. We saw the Queen Mary
                  at anchor, still in her drab war time paint, but magnificent nevertheless.
                  The Winchester Castle was crammed with passengers and many travelled in
                  acute discomfort. We were luckier than most because the two girls, the three small boys
                  and I had a stateroom to ourselves and though it was stripped of peacetime comforts,
                  we had a private bathroom and toilet. The two Georges had bunks in a huge men-only
                  dormitory somewhere in the bowls of the ship where they had to share communal troop
                  ship facilities. The food was plentiful but unexciting and one had to queue for afternoon
                  tea. During the day the decks were crowded and there was squatting room only. The
                  many children on board got bored.

                  Port Said provided a break and we were all entertained by the ‘Gully Gully’ man
                  and his conjuring tricks, and though we had no money to spend at Simon Artz, we did at
                  least have a chance to stretch our legs. Next day scores of passengers took ill with
                  sever stomach upsets, whether from food poisoning, or as was rumoured, from bad
                  water taken on at the Egyptian port, I don’t know. Only the two Georges in our family
                  were affected and their attacks were comparatively mild.

                  As we neared the Kenya port of Mombassa, the passengers for Dar es Salaam
                  were told that they would have to disembark at Mombassa and continue their journey in
                  a small coaster, the Al Said. The Winchester Castle is too big for the narrow channel
                  which leads to Dar es Salaam harbour.

                  From the wharf the Al Said looked beautiful. She was once the private yacht of
                  the Sultan of Zanzibar and has lovely lines. Our admiration lasted only until we were
                  shown our cabins. With one voice our children exclaimed, “Gosh they stink!” They did, of
                  a mixture of rancid oil and sweat and stale urine. The beds were not yet made and the
                  thin mattresses had ominous stains on them. John, ever fastidious, lifted his mattress and two enormous cockroaches scuttled for cover.

                  We had a good homely lunch served by two smiling African stewards and
                  afterwards we sat on deck and that was fine too, though behind ones enjoyment there
                  was the thought of those stuffy and dirty cabins. That first night nearly everyone,
                  including George and our older children, slept on deck. Women occupied deck chairs
                  and men and children slept on the bare decks. Horrifying though the idea was, I decided
                  that, as Jim had a bad cough, he, Henry and I would sleep in our cabin.

                  When I announced my intention of sleeping in the cabin one of the passengers
                  gave me some insecticide spray which I used lavishly, but without avail. The children
                  slept but I sat up all night with the light on, determined to keep at least their pillows clear
                  of the cockroaches which scurried about boldly regardless of the light. All the next day
                  and night we avoided the cabins. The Al Said stopped for some hours at Zanzibar to
                  offload her deck cargo of live cattle and packing cases from the hold. George and the
                  elder children went ashore for a walk but I felt too lazy and there was plenty to watch
                  from deck.

                  That night I too occupied a deck chair and slept quite comfortably, and next
                  morning we entered the palm fringed harbour of Dar es Salaam and were home.

                  Eleanor.

                  Mbeya 1st November 1946

                  Dearest Family.

                  Home at last! We are all most happily installed in a real family house about three
                  miles out of Mbeya and near the school. This house belongs to an elderly German and
                  has been taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property and leased to the
                  Government.

                  The owner, whose name is Shenkel, was not interned but is allowed to occupy a
                  smaller house on the Estate. I found him in the garden this morning lecturing the children
                  on what they may do and may not do. I tried to make it quite clear to him that he was not
                  our landlord, though he clearly thinks otherwise. After he had gone I had to take two
                  aspirin and lie down to recover my composure! I had been warned that he has this effect
                  on people.

                  Mr Shenkel is a short and ugly man, his clothes are stained with food and he
                  wears steel rimmed glasses tied round his head with a piece of dirty elastic because
                  one earpiece is missing. He speaks with a thick German accent but his English is fluent
                  and I believe he is a cultured and clever man. But he is maddening. The children were
                  more amused than impressed by his exhortations and have happily Christened our
                  home, ‘Old Shenks’.

                  The house has very large grounds as the place is really a derelict farm. It suits us
                  down to the ground. We had no sooner unpacked than George went off on safari after
                  those maneating lions in the Njombe District. he accounted for one, and a further two
                  jointly with a Game Scout, before we left for England. But none was shot during the five
                  months we were away as George’s relief is quite inexperienced in such work. George
                  thinks that there are still about a dozen maneaters at large. His theory is that a female
                  maneater moved into the area in 1938 when maneating first started, and brought up her
                  cubs to be maneaters, and those cubs in turn did the same. The three maneating lions
                  that have been shot were all in very good condition and not old and maimed as
                  maneaters usually are.

                  George anticipates that it will be months before all these lions are accounted for
                  because they are constantly on the move and cover a very large area. The lions have to
                  be hunted on foot because they range over broken country covered by bush and fairly
                  dense thicket.

                  I did a bit of shooting myself yesterday and impressed our African servants and
                  the children and myself. What a fluke! Our houseboy came to say that there was a snake
                  in the garden, the biggest he had ever seen. He said it was too big to kill with a stick and
                  would I shoot it. I had no gun but a heavy .450 Webley revolver and I took this and
                  hurried out with the children at my heels.

                  The snake turned out to be an unusually large puff adder which had just shed its
                  skin. It looked beautiful in a repulsive way. So flanked by servants and children I took
                  aim and shot, not hitting the head as I had planned, but breaking the snake’s back with
                  the heavy bullet. The two native boys then rushed up with sticks and flattened the head.
                  “Ma you’re a crack shot,” cried the kids in delighted surprise. I hope to rest on my laurels
                  for a long, long while.

                  Although there are only a few weeks of school term left the four older children will
                  start school on Monday. Not only am I pleased with our new home here but also with
                  the staff I have engaged. Our new houseboy, Reuben, (but renamed Robin by our
                  children) is not only cheerful and willing but intelligent too, and Jumbe, the wood and
                  garden boy, is a born clown and a source of great entertainment to the children.

                  I feel sure that we are all going to be very happy here at ‘Old Shenks!.

                  Eleanor.

                  #6260
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    From Tanganyika with Love

                    With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                    • “The letters of Eleanor Dunbar Leslie to her parents and her sister in South Africa
                      concerning her life with George Gilman Rushby of Tanganyika, and the trials and
                      joys of bringing up a family in pioneering conditions.

                    These letters were transcribed from copies of letters typed by Eleanor Rushby from
                    the originals which were in the estate of Marjorie Leslie, Eleanor’s sister. Eleanor
                    kept no diary of her life in Tanganyika, so these letters were the living record of an
                    important part of her life.

                    Prelude
                    Having walked across Africa from the East coast to Ubangi Shauri Chad
                    in French Equatorial Africa, hunting elephant all the way, George Rushby
                    made his way down the Congo to Leopoldville. He then caught a ship to
                    Europe and had a holiday in Brussels and Paris before visiting his family
                    in England. He developed blackwater fever and was extremely ill for a
                    while. When he recovered he went to London to arrange his return to
                    Africa.

                    Whilst staying at the Overseas Club he met Eileen Graham who had come
                    to England from Cape Town to study music. On hearing that George was
                    sailing for Cape Town she arranged to introduce him to her friend
                    Eleanor Dunbar Leslie. “You’ll need someone lively to show you around,”
                    she said. “She’s as smart as paint, a keen mountaineer, a very good school
                    teacher, and she’s attractive. You can’t miss her, because her father is a
                    well known Cape Town Magistrate. And,” she added “I’ve already written
                    and told her what ship you are arriving on.”

                    Eleanor duly met the ship. She and George immediately fell in love.
                    Within thirty six hours he had proposed marriage and was accepted
                    despite the misgivings of her parents. As she was under contract to her
                    High School, she remained in South Africa for several months whilst
                    George headed for Tanganyika looking for a farm where he could build
                    their home.

                    These details are a summary of chapter thirteen of the Biography of
                    George Gilman Rushby ‘The Hunter is Death “ by T.V.Bulpin.

                     

                    Dearest Marj,
                    Terrifically exciting news! I’ve just become engaged to an Englishman whom I
                    met last Monday. The result is a family upheaval which you will have no difficulty in
                    imagining!!

                    The Aunts think it all highly romantic and cry in delight “Now isn’t that just like our
                    El!” Mummy says she doesn’t know what to think, that anyway I was always a harum
                    scarum and she rather expected something like this to happen. However I know that
                    she thinks George highly attractive. “Such a nice smile and gentle manner, and such
                    good hands“ she murmurs appreciatively. “But WHY AN ELEPHANT HUNTER?” she
                    ends in a wail, as though elephant hunting was an unmentionable profession.
                    Anyway I don’t think so. Anyone can marry a bank clerk or a lawyer or even a
                    millionaire – but whoever heard of anyone marrying anyone as exciting as an elephant
                    hunter? I’m thrilled to bits.

                    Daddy also takes a dim view of George’s profession, and of George himself as
                    a husband for me. He says that I am so impulsive and have such wild enthusiasms that I
                    need someone conservative and steady to give me some serenity and some ballast.
                    Dad says George is a handsome fellow and a good enough chap he is sure, but
                    he is obviously a man of the world and hints darkly at a possible PAST. George says
                    he has nothing of the kind and anyway I’m the first girl he has asked to marry him. I don’t
                    care anyway, I’d gladly marry him tomorrow, but Dad has other ideas.

                    He sat in his armchair to deliver his verdict, wearing the same look he must wear
                    on the bench. If we marry, and he doesn’t think it would be a good thing, George must
                    buy a comfortable house for me in Central Africa where I can stay safely when he goes
                    hunting. I interrupted to say “But I’m going too”, but dad snubbed me saying that in no
                    time at all I’ll have a family and one can’t go dragging babies around in the African Bush.”
                    George takes his lectures with surprising calm. He says he can see Dad’s point of
                    view much better than I can. He told the parents today that he plans to buy a small
                    coffee farm in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika and will build a cosy cottage which
                    will be a proper home for both of us, and that he will only hunt occasionally to keep the
                    pot boiling.

                    Mummy, of course, just had to spill the beans. She said to George, “I suppose
                    you know that Eleanor knows very little about house keeping and can’t cook at all.” a fact
                    that I was keeping a dark secret. But George just said, “Oh she won’t have to work. The
                    boys do all that sort of thing. She can lie on a couch all day and read if she likes.” Well
                    you always did say that I was a “Lily of the field,” and what a good thing! If I were one of
                    those terribly capable women I’d probably die of frustration because it seems that
                    African house boys feel that they have lost face if their Memsahibs do anything but the
                    most gracious chores.

                    George is absolutely marvellous. He is strong and gentle and awfully good
                    looking too. He is about 5 ft 10 ins tall and very broad. He wears his curly brown hair cut
                    very short and has a close clipped moustache. He has strongly marked eyebrows and
                    very striking blue eyes which sometimes turn grey or green. His teeth are strong and
                    even and he has a quiet voice.

                    I expect all this sounds too good to be true, but come home quickly and see for
                    yourself. George is off to East Africa in three weeks time to buy our farm. I shall follow as
                    soon as he has bought it and we will be married in Dar es Salaam.

                    Dad has taken George for a walk “to get to know him” and that’s why I have time
                    to write such a long screed. They should be back any minute now and I must fly and
                    apply a bit of glamour.

                    Much love my dear,
                    your jubilant
                    Eleanor

                    S.S.Timavo. Durban. 28th.October. 1930.

                    Dearest Family,
                    Thank you for the lovely send off. I do wish you were all on board with me and
                    could come and dance with me at my wedding. We are having a very comfortable
                    voyage. There were only four of the passengers as far as Durban, all of them women,
                    but I believe we are taking on more here. I have a most comfortable deck cabin to
                    myself and the use of a sumptuous bathroom. No one is interested in deck games and I
                    am having a lazy time, just sunbathing and reading.

                    I sit at the Captain’s table and the meals are delicious – beautifully served. The
                    butter for instance, is moulded into sprays of roses, most exquisitely done, and as for
                    the ice-cream, I’ve never tasted anything like them.

                    The meals are continental type and we have hors d’oeuvre in a great variety
                    served on large round trays. The Italians souse theirs with oil, Ugh! We also of course
                    get lots of spaghetti which I have some difficulty in eating. However this presents no
                    problem to the Chief Engineer who sits opposite to me. He simply rolls it around his
                    fork and somehow the spaghetti flows effortlessly from fork to mouth exactly like an
                    ascending escalator. Wine is served at lunch and dinner – very mild and pleasant stuff.
                    Of the women passengers the one i liked best was a young German widow
                    from South west Africa who left the ship at East London to marry a man she had never
                    met. She told me he owned a drapers shop and she was very happy at the prospect
                    of starting a new life, as her previous marriage had ended tragically with the death of her
                    husband and only child in an accident.

                    I was most interested to see the bridegroom and stood at the rail beside the gay
                    young widow when we docked at East London. I picked him out, without any difficulty,
                    from the small group on the quay. He was a tall thin man in a smart grey suit and with a
                    grey hat perched primly on his head. You can always tell from hats can’t you? I wasn’t
                    surprised to see, when this German raised his head, that he looked just like the Kaiser’s
                    “Little Willie”. Long thin nose and cold grey eyes and no smile of welcome on his tight
                    mouth for the cheery little body beside me. I quite expected him to jerk his thumb and
                    stalk off, expecting her to trot at his heel.

                    However she went off blithely enough. Next day before the ship sailed, she
                    was back and I saw her talking to the Captain. She began to cry and soon after the
                    Captain patted her on the shoulder and escorted her to the gangway. Later the Captain
                    told me that the girl had come to ask him to allow her to work her passage back to
                    Germany where she had some relations. She had married the man the day before but
                    she disliked him because he had deceived her by pretending that he owned a shop
                    whereas he was only a window dresser. Bad show for both.

                    The Captain and the Chief Engineer are the only officers who mix socially with
                    the passengers. The captain seems rather a melancholy type with, I should say, no
                    sense of humour. He speaks fair English with an American accent. He tells me that he
                    was on the San Francisco run during Prohibition years in America and saw many Film
                    Stars chiefly “under the influence” as they used to flock on board to drink. The Chief
                    Engineer is big and fat and cheerful. His English is anything but fluent but he makes up
                    for it in mime.

                    I visited the relations and friends at Port Elizabeth and East London, and here at
                    Durban. I stayed with the Trotters and Swans and enjoyed myself very much at both
                    places. I have collected numerous wedding presents, china and cutlery, coffee
                    percolator and ornaments, and where I shall pack all these things I don’t know. Everyone has been terribly kind and I feel extremely well and happy.

                    At the start of the voyage I had a bit of bad luck. You will remember that a
                    perfectly foul South Easter was blowing. Some men were busy working on a deck
                    engine and I stopped to watch and a tiny fragment of steel blew into my eye. There is
                    no doctor on board so the stewardess put some oil into the eye and bandaged it up.
                    The eye grew more and more painful and inflamed and when when we reached Port
                    Elizabeth the Captain asked the Port Doctor to look at it. The Doctor said it was a job for
                    an eye specialist and telephoned from the ship to make an appointment. Luckily for me,
                    Vincent Tofts turned up at the ship just then and took me off to the specialist and waited
                    whilst he extracted the fragment with a giant magnet. The specialist said that I was very
                    lucky as the thing just missed the pupil of my eye so my sight will not be affected. I was
                    temporarily blinded by the Belladona the eye-man put in my eye so he fitted me with a
                    pair of black goggles and Vincent escorted me back to the ship. Don’t worry the eye is
                    now as good as ever and George will not have to take a one-eyed bride for better or
                    worse.

                    I have one worry and that is that the ship is going to be very much overdue by
                    the time we reach Dar es Salaam. She is taking on a big wool cargo and we were held
                    up for three days in East london and have been here in Durban for five days.
                    Today is the ninth Anniversary of the Fascist Movement and the ship was
                    dressed with bunting and flags. I must now go and dress for the gala dinner.

                    Bless you all,
                    Eleanor.

                    S.S.Timavo. 6th. November 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    Nearly there now. We called in at Lourenco Marques, Beira, Mozambique and
                    Port Amelia. I was the only one of the original passengers left after Durban but there we
                    took on a Mrs Croxford and her mother and two men passengers. Mrs C must have
                    something, certainly not looks. She has a flat figure, heavily mascared eyes and crooked
                    mouth thickly coated with lipstick. But her rather sweet old mother-black-pearls-type tells
                    me they are worn out travelling around the world trying to shake off an admirer who
                    pursues Mrs C everywhere.

                    The one male passenger is very quiet and pleasant. The old lady tells me that he
                    has recently lost his wife. The other passenger is a horribly bumptious type.
                    I had my hair beautifully shingled at Lourenco Marques, but what an experience it
                    was. Before we docked I asked the Captain whether he knew of a hairdresser, but he
                    said he did not and would have to ask the agent when he came aboard. The agent was
                    a very suave Asian. He said “Sure he did” and offered to take me in his car. I rather
                    doubtfully agreed — such a swarthy gentleman — and was driven, not to a hairdressing
                    establishment, but to his office. Then he spoke to someone on the telephone and in no
                    time at all a most dago-y type arrived carrying a little black bag. He was all patent
                    leather, hair, and flashing smile, and greeted me like an old and valued friend.
                    Before I had collected my scattered wits tthe Agent had flung open a door and
                    ushered me through, and I found myself seated before an ornate mirror in what was only
                    too obviously a bedroom. It was a bedroom with a difference though. The unmade bed
                    had no legs but hung from the ceiling on brass chains.

                    The agent beamingly shut the door behind him and I was left with my imagination
                    and the afore mentioned oily hairdresser. He however was very business like. Before I
                    could say knife he had shingled my hair with a cut throat razor and then, before I could
                    protest, had smothered my neck in stinking pink powder applied with an enormous and
                    filthy swansdown powder puff. He held up a mirror for me to admire his handiwork but I
                    was aware only of the enormous bed reflected in it, and hurriedly murmuring “very nice,
                    very nice” I made my escape to the outer office where, to my relief, I found the Chief
                    Engineer who escorted me back to the ship.

                    In the afternoon Mrs Coxford and the old lady and I hired a taxi and went to the
                    Polana Hotel for tea. Very swish but I like our Cape Peninsula beaches better.
                    At Lorenco Marques we took on more passengers. The Governor of
                    Portuguese Nyasaland and his wife and baby son. He was a large middle aged man,
                    very friendly and unassuming and spoke perfect English. His wife was German and
                    exquisite, as fragile looking and with the delicate colouring of a Dresden figurine. She
                    looked about 18 but she told me she was 28 and showed me photographs of two
                    other sons – hefty youngsters, whom she had left behind in Portugal and was missing
                    very much.

                    It was frightfully hot at Beira and as I had no money left I did not go up to the
                    town, but Mrs Croxford and I spent a pleasant hour on the beach under the Casurina
                    trees.

                    The Governor and his wife left the ship at Mozambique. He looked very
                    imposing in his starched uniform and she more Dresden Sheperdish than ever in a
                    flowered frock. There was a guard of honour and all the trimmings. They bade me a warm farewell and invited George and me to stay at any time.

                    The German ship “Watussi” was anchored in the Bay and I decided to visit her
                    and try and have my hair washed and set. I had no sooner stepped on board when a
                    lady came up to me and said “Surely you are Beeba Leslie.” It was Mrs Egan and she
                    had Molly with her. Considering Mrs Egan had not seen me since I was five I think it was
                    jolly clever of her to recognise me. Molly is charming and was most friendly. She fixed
                    things with the hairdresser and sat with me until the job was done. Afterwards I had tea
                    with them.

                    Port Amelia was our last stop. In fact the only person to go ashore was Mr
                    Taylor, the unpleasant man, and he returned at sunset very drunk indeed.
                    We reached Port Amelia on the 3rd – my birthday. The boat had anchored by
                    the time I was dressed and when I went on deck I saw several row boats cluttered
                    around the gangway and in them were natives with cages of wild birds for sale. Such tiny
                    crowded cages. I was furious, you know me. I bought three cages, carried them out on
                    to the open deck and released the birds. I expected them to fly to the land but they flew
                    straight up into the rigging.

                    The quiet male passenger wandered up and asked me what I was doing. I said
                    “I’m giving myself a birthday treat, I hate to see caged birds.” So next thing there he
                    was buying birds which he presented to me with “Happy Birthday.” I gladly set those
                    birds free too and they joined the others in the rigging.

                    Then a grinning steward came up with three more cages. “For the lady with
                    compliments of the Captain.” They lost no time in joining their friends.
                    It had given me so much pleasure to free the birds that I was only a little
                    discouraged when the quiet man said thoughtfully “This should encourage those bird
                    catchers you know, they are sold out. When evening came and we were due to sail I
                    was sure those birds would fly home, but no, they are still there and they will probably
                    remain until we dock at Dar es Salaam.

                    During the morning the Captain came up and asked me what my Christian name
                    is. He looked as grave as ever and I couldn’t think why it should interest him but said “the
                    name is Eleanor.” That night at dinner there was a large iced cake in the centre of the
                    table with “HELENA” in a delicate wreath of pink icing roses on the top. We had
                    champagne and everyone congratulated me and wished me good luck in my marriage.
                    A very nice gesture don’t you think. The unpleasant character had not put in an
                    appearance at dinner which made the party all the nicer

                    I sat up rather late in the lounge reading a book and by the time I went to bed
                    there was not a soul around. I bathed and changed into my nighty,walked into my cabin,
                    shed my dressing gown, and pottered around. When I was ready for bed I put out my
                    hand to draw the curtains back and a hand grasped my wrist. It was that wretched
                    creature outside my window on the deck, still very drunk. Luckily I was wearing that
                    heavy lilac silk nighty. I was livid. “Let go at once”, I said, but he only grinned stupidly.
                    “I’m not hurting you” he said, “only looking”. “I’ll ring for the steward” said I, and by
                    stretching I managed to press the bell with my free hand. I rang and rang but no one
                    came and he just giggled. Then I said furiously, “Remember this name, George
                    Rushby, he is a fine boxer and he hates specimens like you. When he meets me at Dar
                    es Salaam I shall tell him about this and I bet you will be sorry.” However he still held on
                    so I turned and knocked hard on the adjoining wall which divided my cabin from Mrs
                    Croxfords. Soon Mrs Croxford and the old lady appeared in dressing gowns . This
                    seemed to amuse the drunk even more though he let go my wrist. So whilst the old
                    lady stayed with me, Mrs C fetched the quiet passenger who soon hustled him off. He has kept out of my way ever since. However I still mean to tell George because I feel
                    the fellow got off far too lightly. I reported the matter to the Captain but he just remarked
                    that he always knew the man was low class because he never wears a jacket to meals.
                    This is my last night on board and we again had free champagne and I was given
                    some tooled leather work by the Captain and a pair of good paste earrings by the old
                    lady. I have invited them and Mrs Croxford, the Chief Engineer, and the quiet
                    passenger to the wedding.

                    This may be my last night as Eleanor Leslie and I have spent this long while
                    writing to you just as a little token of my affection and gratitude for all the years of your
                    love and care. I shall post this letter on the ship and must turn now and get some beauty
                    sleep. We have been told that we shall be in Dar es Salaam by 9 am. I am so excited
                    that I shall not sleep.

                    Very much love, and just for fun I’ll sign my full name for the last time.
                    with my “bes respeks”,

                    Eleanor Leslie.

                    Eleanor and George Rushby:

                    Eleanor and George Rushby

                    Splendid Hotel, Dar es Salaam 11th November 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    I’m writing this in the bedroom whilst George is out buying a tin trunk in which to
                    pack all our wedding presents. I expect he will be gone a long time because he has
                    gone out with Hicky Wood and, though our wedding was four days ago, it’s still an
                    excuse for a party. People are all very cheery and friendly here.
                    I am wearing only pants and slip but am still hot. One swelters here in the
                    mornings, but a fresh sea breeze blows in the late afternoons and then Dar es Salaam is
                    heavenly.

                    We arrived in Dar es Salaam harbour very early on Friday morning (7 th Nov).
                    The previous night the Captain had said we might not reach Dar. until 9 am, and certainly
                    no one would be allowed on board before 8 am. So I dawdled on the deck in my
                    dressing gown and watched the green coastline and the islands slipping by. I stood on
                    the deck outside my cabin and was not aware that I was looking out at the wrong side of
                    the landlocked harbour. Quite unknown to me George and some friends, the Hickson
                    Woods, were standing on the Gymkhana Beach on the opposite side of the channel
                    anxiously scanning the ship for a sign of me. George says he had a horrible idea I had
                    missed the ship. Blissfully unconscious of his anxiety I wandered into the bathroom
                    prepared for a good soak. The anchor went down when I was in the bath and suddenly
                    there was a sharp wrap on the door and I heard Mrs Croxford say “There’s a man in a
                    boat outside. He is looking out for someone and I’m sure it’s your George. I flung on
                    some clothes and rushed on deck with tousled hair and bare feet and it was George.
                    We had a marvellous reunion. George was wearing shorts and bush shirt and
                    looked just like the strong silent types one reads about in novels. I finished dressing then
                    George helped me bundle all the wedding presents I had collected en route into my
                    travelling rug and we went into the bar lounge to join the Hickson Woods. They are the
                    couple from whom George bought the land which is to be our coffee farm Hicky-Wood
                    was laughing when we joined them. he said he had called a chap to bring a couple of
                    beers thinking he was the steward but it turned out to be the Captain. He does wear
                    such a very plain uniform that I suppose it was easy to make the mistake, but Hicky
                    says he was not amused.

                    Anyway as the H-W’s are to be our neighbours I’d better describe them. Kath
                    Wood is very attractive, dark Irish, with curly black hair and big brown eyes. She was
                    married before to Viv Lumb a great friend of George’s who died some years ago of
                    blackwater fever. They had one little girl, Maureen, and Kath and Hicky have a small son
                    of three called Michael. Hicky is slightly below average height and very neat and dapper
                    though well built. He is a great one for a party and good fun but George says he can be
                    bad tempered.

                    Anyway we all filed off the ship and Hicky and Cath went on to the hotel whilst
                    George and I went through customs. Passing the customs was easy. Everyone
                    seemed to know George and that it was his wedding day and I just sailed through,
                    except for the little matter of the rug coming undone when George and I had to scramble
                    on the floor for candlesticks and fruit knives and a wooden nut bowl.
                    Outside the customs shed we were mobbed by a crowd of jabbering Africans
                    offering their services as porters, and soon my luggage was piled in one rickshaw whilst
                    George and I climbed into another and we were born smoothly away on rubber shod
                    wheels to the Splendid Hotel. The motion was pleasing enough but it seemed weird to
                    be pulled along by one human being whilst another pushed behind.  We turned up a street called Acacia Avenue which, as its name implies, is lined
                    with flamboyant acacia trees now in the full glory of scarlet and gold. The rickshaw
                    stopped before the Splendid Hotel and I was taken upstairs into a pleasant room which
                    had its own private balcony overlooking the busy street.

                    Here George broke the news that we were to be married in less than an hours
                    time. He would have to dash off and change and then go straight to the church. I would
                    be quite all right, Kath would be looking in and friends would fetch me.
                    I started to dress and soon there was a tap at the door and Mrs Hickson-Wood
                    came in with my bouquet. It was a lovely bunch of carnations and frangipani with lots of
                    asparagus fern and it went well with my primrose yellow frock. She admired my frock
                    and Leghorn hat and told me that her little girl Maureen was to be my flower girl. Then
                    she too left for the church.

                    I was fully dressed when there was another knock on the door and I opened it to
                    be confronted by a Police Officer in a starched white uniform. I’m McCallum”, he said,
                    “I’ve come to drive you to the church.” Downstairs he introduced me to a big man in a
                    tussore silk suit. “This is Dr Shicore”, said McCallum, “He is going to give you away.”
                    Honestly, I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland. Wouldn’t have been at all surprised if
                    the White Rabbit had popped up and said he was going to be my page.

                    I walked out of the hotel and across the pavement in a dream and there, by the
                    curb, was a big dark blue police car decorated with white ribbons and with a tall African
                    Police Ascari holding the door open for me. I had hardly time to wonder what next when
                    the car drew up before a tall German looking church. It was in fact the Lutheran Church in
                    the days when Tanganyika was German East Africa.

                    Mrs Hickson-Wood, very smart in mushroom coloured georgette and lace, and
                    her small daughter were waiting in the porch, so in we went. I was glad to notice my
                    friends from the boat sitting behind George’s friends who were all complete strangers to
                    me. The aisle seemed very long but at last I reached George waiting in the chancel with
                    Hicky-Wood, looking unfamiliar in a smart tussore suit. However this feeling of unreality
                    passed when he turned his head and smiled at me.

                    In the vestry after the ceremony I was kissed affectionately by several complete
                    strangers and I felt happy and accepted by George’s friends. Outside the church,
                    standing apart from the rest of the guests, the Italian Captain and Chief Engineer were
                    waiting. They came up and kissed my hand, and murmured felicitations, but regretted
                    they could not spare the time to come to the reception. Really it was just as well
                    because they would not have fitted in at all well.

                    Dr Shircore is the Director of Medical Services and he had very kindly lent his
                    large house for the reception. It was quite a party. The guests were mainly men with a
                    small sprinkling of wives. Champagne corks popped and there was an enormous cake
                    and soon voices were raised in song. The chief one was ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’
                    and I shall remember it for ever.

                    The party was still in full swing when George and I left. The old lady from the ship
                    enjoyed it hugely. She came in an all black outfit with a corsage of artificial Lily-of-the-
                    Valley. Later I saw one of the men wearing the corsage in his buttonhole and the old
                    lady was wearing a carnation.

                    When George and I got back to the hotel,I found that my luggage had been
                    moved to George’s room by his cook Lamek, who was squatting on his haunches and
                    clapped his hands in greeting. My dears, you should see Lamek – exactly like a
                    chimpanzee – receding forehead, wide flat nose, and long lip, and such splayed feet. It was quite a strain not to laugh, especially when he produced a gift for me. I have not yet
                    discovered where he acquired it. It was a faded mauve straw toque of the kind worn by
                    Queen Mary. I asked George to tell Lamek that I was touched by his generosity but felt
                    that I could not accept his gift. He did not mind at all especially as George gave him a
                    generous tip there and then.

                    I changed into a cotton frock and shady straw hat and George changed into shorts
                    and bush shirt once more. We then sneaked into the dining room for lunch avoiding our
                    wedding guests who were carrying on the party in the lounge.

                    After lunch we rejoined them and they all came down to the jetty to wave goodbye
                    as we set out by motor launch for Honeymoon Island. I enjoyed the launch trip very
                    much. The sea was calm and very blue and the palm fringed beaches of Dar es Salaam
                    are as romantic as any bride could wish. There are small coral islands dotted around the
                    Bay of which Honeymoon Island is the loveliest. I believe at one time it bore the less
                    romantic name of Quarantine Island. Near the Island, in the shallows, the sea is brilliant
                    green and I saw two pink jellyfish drifting by.

                    There is no jetty on the island so the boat was stopped in shallow water and
                    George carried me ashore. I was enchanted with the Island and in no hurry to go to the
                    bungalow, so George and I took our bathing costumes from our suitcases and sent the
                    luggage up to the house together with a box of provisions.

                    We bathed and lazed on the beach and suddenly it was sunset and it began to
                    get dark. We walked up the beach to the bungalow and began to unpack the stores,
                    tea, sugar, condensed milk, bread and butter, sardines and a large tin of ham. There
                    were also cups and saucers and plates and cutlery.

                    We decided to have an early meal and George called out to the caretaker, “Boy
                    letta chai”. Thereupon the ‘boy’ materialised and jabbered to George in Ki-Swaheli. It
                    appeared he had no utensil in which to boil water. George, ever resourceful, removed
                    the ham from the tin and gave him that. We had our tea all right but next day the ham
                    was bad.

                    Then came bed time. I took a hurricane lamp in one hand and my suitcase in the
                    other and wandered into the bedroom whilst George vanished into the bathroom. To
                    my astonishment I saw two perfectly bare iron bedsteads – no mattress or pillows. We
                    had brought sheets and mosquito nets but, believe me, they are a poor substitute for a
                    mattress.

                    Anyway I arrayed myself in my pale yellow satin nightie and sat gingerly down
                    on the iron edge of the bed to await my groom who eventually appeared in a
                    handsome suit of silk pyjamas. His expression, as he took in the situation, was too much
                    for me and I burst out laughing and so did he.

                    Somewhere in the small hours I woke up. The breeze had dropped and the
                    room was unbearably stuffy. I felt as dry as a bone. The lamp had been turned very
                    low and had gone out, but I remembered seeing a water tank in the yard and I decided
                    to go out in the dark and drink from the tap. In the dark I could not find my slippers so I
                    slipped my feet into George’s shoes, picked up his matches and groped my way out
                    of the room. I found the tank all right and with one hand on the tap and one cupped for
                    water I stooped to drink. Just then I heard a scratchy noise and sensed movements
                    around my feet. I struck a match and oh horrors! found that the damp spot on which I was
                    standing was alive with white crabs. In my hurry to escape I took a clumsy step, put
                    George’s big toe on the hem of my nightie and down I went on top of the crabs. I need
                    hardly say that George was awakened by an appalling shriek and came rushing to my
                    aid like a knight of old.  Anyway, alarms and excursions not withstanding, we had a wonderful weekend on the island and I was sorry to return to the heat of Dar es Salaam, though the evenings
                    here are lovely and it is heavenly driving along the coast road by car or in a rickshaw.
                    I was surprised to find so many Indians here. Most of the shops, large and small,
                    seem to be owned by Indians and the place teems with them. The women wear
                    colourful saris and their hair in long black plaits reaching to their waists. Many wear baggy
                    trousers of silk or satin. They give a carnival air to the sea front towards sunset.
                    This long letter has been written in instalments throughout the day. My first break
                    was when I heard the sound of a band and rushed to the balcony in time to see The
                    Kings African Rifles band and Askaris march down the Avenue on their way to an
                    Armistice Memorial Service. They looked magnificent.

                    I must end on a note of most primitive pride. George returned from his shopping
                    expedition and beamingly informed me that he had thrashed the man who annoyed me
                    on the ship. I felt extremely delighted and pressed for details. George told me that
                    when he went out shopping he noticed to his surprise that the ‘Timavo” was still in the
                    harbour. He went across to the Agents office and there saw a man who answered to the
                    description I had given. George said to him “Is your name Taylor?”, and when he said
                    “yes”, George said “Well my name is George Rushby”, whereupon he hit Taylor on the
                    jaw so that he sailed over the counter and down the other side. Very satisfactory, I feel.
                    With much love to all.

                    Your cave woman
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 22 November 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    Well here we are at our Country Seat, Mchewe Estate. (pronounced
                    Mn,-che’-we) but I will start at the beginning of our journey and describe the farm later.
                    We left the hotel at Dar es Salaam for the station in a taxi crowded with baggage
                    and at the last moment Keith Wood ran out with the unwrapped bottom layer of our
                    wedding cake. It remained in its naked state from there to here travelling for two days in
                    the train on the luggage rack, four days in the car on my knee, reposing at night on the
                    roof of the car exposed to the winds of Heaven, and now rests beside me in the tent
                    looking like an old old tombstone. We have no tin large enough to hold it and one
                    simply can’t throw away ones wedding cake so, as George does not eat cake, I can see
                    myself eating wedding cake for tea for months to come, ants permitting.

                    We travelled up by train from Dar to Dodoma, first through the lush vegetation of
                    the coastal belt to Morogoro, then through sisal plantations now very overgrown with
                    weeds owing to the slump in prices, and then on to the arid area around Dodoma. This
                    part of the country is very dry at this time of the year and not unlike parts of our Karoo.
                    The train journey was comfortable enough but slow as the engines here are fed with
                    wood and not coal as in South Africa.

                    Dodoma is the nearest point on the railway to Mbeya so we left the train there to
                    continue our journey by road. We arrived at the one and only hotel in the early hours and
                    whilst someone went to rout out the night watchman the rest of us sat on the dismal
                    verandah amongst a litter of broken glass. Some bright spark remarked on the obvious –
                    that there had been a party the night before.

                    When we were shown to a room I thought I rather preferred the verandah,
                    because the beds had not yet been made up and there was a bucket of vomit beside
                    the old fashioned washstand. However George soon got the boys to clean up the
                    room and I fell asleep to be awakened by George with an invitation to come and see
                    our car before breakfast.

                    Yes, we have our own car. It is a Chev, with what is called a box body. That
                    means that sides, roof and doors are made by a local Indian carpenter. There is just the
                    one front seat with a kapok mattress on it. The tools are kept in a sort of cupboard fixed
                    to the side so there is a big space for carrying “safari kit” behind the cab seat.
                    Lamek, who had travelled up on the same train, appeared after breakfast, and
                    helped George to pack all our luggage into the back of the car. Besides our suitcases
                    there was a huge bedroll, kitchen utensils and a box of provisions, tins of petrol and
                    water and all Lamek’s bits and pieces which included three chickens in a wicker cage and
                    an enormous bunch of bananas about 3 ft long.

                    When all theses things were packed there remained only a small space between
                    goods and ceiling and into this Lamek squeezed. He lay on his back with his horny feet a
                    mere inch or so from the back of my head. In this way we travelled 400 miles over
                    bumpy earth roads and crude pole bridges, but whenever we stopped for a meal
                    Lamek wriggled out and, like Aladdin’s genie, produced good meals in no time at all.
                    In the afternoon we reached a large river called the Ruaha. Workmen were busy
                    building a large bridge across it but it is not yet ready so we crossed by a ford below
                    the bridge. George told me that the river was full of crocodiles but though I looked hard, I
                    did not see any. This is also elephant country but I did not see any of those either, only
                    piles of droppings on the road. I must tell you that the natives around these parts are called Wahehe and the river is Ruaha – enough to make a cat laugh. We saw some Wahehe out hunting with spears
                    and bows and arrows. They live in long low houses with the tiniest shuttered windows
                    and rounded roofs covered with earth.

                    Near the river we also saw a few Masai herding cattle. They are rather terrifying to
                    look at – tall, angular, and very aloof. They wear nothing but a blanket knotted on one
                    shoulder, concealing nothing, and all carried one or two spears.
                    The road climbs steeply on the far side of the Ruaha and one has the most
                    tremendous views over the plains. We spent our first night up there in the high country.
                    Everything was taken out of the car, the bed roll opened up and George and I slept
                    comfortably in the back of the car whilst Lamek, rolled in a blanket, slept soundly by a
                    small fire nearby. Next morning we reached our first township, Iringa, and put up at the
                    Colonist Hotel. We had a comfortable room in the annex overlooking the golf course.
                    our room had its own little dressing room which was also the bathroom because, when
                    ordered to do so, the room boy carried in an oval galvanised bath and filled it with hot
                    water which he carried in a four gallon petrol tin.

                    When we crossed to the main building for lunch, George was immediately hailed
                    by several men who wanted to meet the bride. I was paid some handsome
                    compliments but was not sure whether they were sincere or the result of a nice alcoholic
                    glow. Anyhow every one was very friendly.

                    After lunch I went back to the bedroom leaving George chatting away. I waited and
                    waited – no George. I got awfully tired of waiting and thought I’d give him a fright so I
                    walked out onto the deserted golf course and hid behind some large boulders. Soon I
                    saw George returning to the room and the boy followed with a tea tray. Ah, now the hue
                    and cry will start, thought I, but no, no George appeared nor could I hear any despairing
                    cry. When sunset came I trailed crossly back to our hotel room where George lay
                    innocently asleep on his bed, hands folded on his chest like a crusader on his tomb. In a
                    moment he opened his eyes, smiled sleepily and said kindly, “Did you have a nice walk
                    my love?” So of course I couldn’t play the neglected wife as he obviously didn’t think
                    me one and we had a very pleasant dinner and party in the hotel that evening.
                    Next day we continued our journey but turned aside to visit the farm of a sprightly
                    old man named St.Leger Seaton whom George had known for many years, so it was
                    after dark before George decided that we had covered our quota of miles for the day.
                    Whilst he and Lamek unpacked I wandered off to a stream to cool my hot feet which had
                    baked all day on the floor boards of the car. In the rather dim moonlight I sat down on the
                    grassy bank and gratefully dabbled my feet in the cold water. A few minutes later I
                    started up with a shriek – I had the sensation of red hot pins being dug into all my most
                    sensitive parts. I started clawing my clothes off and, by the time George came to the
                    rescue with the lamp, I was practically in the nude. “Only Siafu ants,” said George calmly.
                    Take off all your clothes and get right in the water.” So I had a bathe whilst George
                    picked the ants off my clothes by the light of the lamp turned very low for modesty’s
                    sake. Siafu ants are beastly things. They are black ants with outsized heads and
                    pinchers. I shall be very, very careful where I sit in future.

                    The next day was even hotter. There was no great variety in the scenery. Most
                    of the country was covered by a tree called Miombo, which is very ordinary when the
                    foliage is a mature deep green, but when in new leaf the trees look absolutely beautiful
                    as the leaves,surprisingly, are soft pastel shades of red and yellow.

                    Once again we turned aside from the main road to visit one of George’s friends.
                    This man Major Hugh Jones MC, has a farm only a few miles from ours but just now he is supervising the making of an airstrip. Major Jones is quite a character. He is below
                    average height and skinny with an almost bald head and one nearly blind eye into which
                    he screws a monocle. He is a cultured person and will, I am sure, make an interesting
                    neighbour. George and Major Jones’ friends call him ‘Joni’ but he is generally known in
                    this country as ‘Ropesoles’ – as he is partial to that type of footwear.
                    We passed through Mbeya township after dark so I have no idea what the place
                    is like. The last 100 miles of our journey was very dusty and the last 15 miles extremely
                    bumpy. The road is used so little that in some places we had to plow our way through
                    long grass and I was delighted when at last George turned into a side road and said
                    “This is our place.” We drove along the bank of the Mchewe River, then up a hill and
                    stopped at a tent which was pitched beside the half built walls of our new home. We
                    were expected so there was hot water for baths and after a supper of tinned food and
                    good hot tea, I climbed thankfully into bed.

                    Next morning I was awakened by the chattering of the African workmen and was
                    soon out to inspect the new surroundings. Our farm was once part of Hickson Wood’s
                    land and is separated from theirs by a river. Our houses cannot be more than a few
                    hundred yards apart as the crow flies but as both are built on the slopes of a long range
                    of high hills, and one can only cross the river at the foot of the slopes, it will be quite a
                    safari to go visiting on foot . Most of our land is covered with shoulder high grass but it
                    has been partly cleared of trees and scrub. Down by the river George has made a long
                    coffee nursery and a large vegetable garden but both coffee and vegetable seedlings
                    are too small to be of use.

                    George has spared all the trees that will make good shade for the coffee later on.
                    There are several huge wild fig trees as big as oaks but with smooth silvery-green trunks
                    and branches and there are lots of acacia thorn trees with flat tops like Japanese sun
                    shades. I’ve seen lovely birds in the fig trees, Louries with bright plumage and crested
                    heads, and Blue Rollers, and in the grasslands there are widow birds with incredibly long
                    black tail feathers.

                    There are monkeys too and horrible but fascinating tree lizards with blue bodies
                    and orange heads. There are so many, many things to tell you but they must wait for
                    another time as James, the house boy, has been to say “Bafu tiari” and if I don’t go at
                    once, the bath will be cold.

                    I am very very happy and terribly interested in this new life so please don’t
                    worry about me.

                    Much love to you all,
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate 29th. November 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    I’ve lots of time to write letters just now because George is busy supervising the
                    building of the house from early morning to late afternoon – with a break for lunch of
                    course.

                    On our second day here our tent was moved from the house site to a small
                    clearing further down the slope of our hill. Next to it the labourers built a ‘banda’ , which is
                    a three sided grass hut with thatched roof – much cooler than the tent in this weather.
                    There is also a little grass lav. so you see we have every convenience. I spend most of
                    my day in the banda reading or writing letters. Occasionally I wander up to the house site
                    and watch the building, but mostly I just sit.

                    I did try exploring once. I wandered down a narrow path towards the river. I
                    thought I might paddle and explore the river a little but I came round a bend and there,
                    facing me, was a crocodile. At least for a moment I thought it was and my adrenaline
                    glands got very busy indeed. But it was only an enormous monitor lizard, four or five
                    feet long. It must have been as scared as I was because it turned and rushed off through
                    the grass. I turned and walked hastily back to the camp and as I passed the house site I
                    saw some boys killing a large puff adder. Now I do my walking in the evenings with
                    George. Nothing alarming ever seems to happen when he is around.

                    It is interesting to watch the boys making bricks for the house. They make a pile
                    of mud which they trample with their feet until it is the right consistency. Then they fill
                    wooden moulds with the clayey mud, and press it down well and turn out beautiful shiny,
                    dark brown bricks which are laid out in rows and covered with grass to bake slowly in the
                    sun.

                    Most of the materials for the building are right here at hand. The walls will be sun
                    dried bricks and there is a white clay which will make a good whitewash for the inside
                    walls. The chimney and walls will be of burnt brick and tiles and George is now busy
                    building a kiln for this purpose. Poles for the roof are being cut in the hills behind the
                    house and every day women come along with large bundles of thatching grass on their
                    heads. Our windows are modern steel casement ones and the doors have been made
                    at a mission in the district. George does some of the bricklaying himself. The other
                    bricklayer is an African from Northern Rhodesia called Pedro. It makes me perspire just
                    to look at Pedro who wears an overcoat all day in the very hot sun.
                    Lamek continues to please. He turns out excellent meals, chicken soup followed
                    by roast chicken, vegetables from the Hickson-Woods garden and a steamed pudding
                    or fruit to wind up the meal. I enjoy the chicken but George is fed up with it and longs for
                    good red meat. The chickens are only about as large as a partridge but then they cost
                    only sixpence each.

                    I had my first visit to Mbeya two days ago. I put on my very best trousseau frock
                    for the occasion- that yellow striped silk one – and wore my wedding hat. George didn’t
                    comment, but I saw later that I was dreadfully overdressed.
                    Mbeya at the moment is a very small settlement consisting of a bundle of small
                    Indian shops – Dukas they call them, which stock European tinned foods and native soft
                    goods which seem to be mainly of Japanese origin. There is a one storied Government
                    office called the Boma and two attractive gabled houses of burnt brick which house the
                    District Officer and his Assistant. Both these houses have lovely gardens but i saw them
                    only from the outside as we did not call. After buying our stores George said “Lets go to the pub, I want you to meet Mrs Menzies.” Well the pub turned out to be just three or four grass rondavels on a bare
                    plot. The proprietor, Ken Menzies, came out to welcome us. I took to him at once
                    because he has the same bush sandy eyebrows as you have Dad. He told me that
                    unfortunately his wife is away at the coast, and then he ushered me through the door
                    saying “Here’s George with his bride.” then followed the Iringa welcome all over again,
                    only more so, because the room was full of diggers from the Lupa Goldfields about fifty
                    miles away.

                    Champagne corks popped as I shook hands all around and George was
                    clapped on the back. I could see he was a favourite with everyone and I tried not to be
                    gauche and let him down. These men were all most kind and most appeared to be men
                    of more than average education. However several were unshaven and looked as
                    though they had slept in their clothes as I suppose they had. When they have a little luck
                    on the diggings they come in here to Menzies pub and spend the lot. George says
                    they bring their gold dust and small nuggets in tobacco tins or Kruschen salts jars and
                    hand them over to Ken Menzies saying “Tell me when I’ve spent the lot.” Ken then
                    weighs the gold and estimates its value and does exactly what the digger wants.
                    However the Diggers get good value for their money because besides the drink
                    they get companionship and good food and nursing if they need it. Mrs Menzies is a
                    trained nurse and most kind and capable from what I was told. There is no doctor or
                    hospital here so her experience as a nursing sister is invaluable.
                    We had lunch at the Hotel and afterwards I poured tea as I was the only female
                    present. Once the shyness had worn off I rather enjoyed myself.

                    Now to end off I must tell you a funny story of how I found out that George likes
                    his women to be feminine. You will remember those dashing black silk pyjamas Aunt
                    Mary gave me, with flowered “happy coat” to match. Well last night I thought I’d give
                    George a treat and when the boy called me for my bath I left George in the ‘banda’
                    reading the London Times. After my bath I put on my Japanese pyjamas and coat,
                    peered into the shaving mirror which hangs from the tent pole and brushed my hair until it
                    shone. I must confess that with my fringe and shingled hair I thought I made quite a
                    glamourous Japanese girl. I walked coyly across to the ‘banda’. Alas no compliment.
                    George just glanced up from the Times and went on reading.
                    He was away rather a long time when it came to his turn to bath. I glanced up
                    when he came back and had a slight concussion. George, if you please, was arrayed in
                    my very best pale yellow satin nightie. The one with the lace and ribbon sash and little
                    bows on the shoulder. I knew exactly what he meant to convey. I was not to wear the
                    trousers in the family. I seethed inwardly, but pretending not to notice, I said calmly “shall
                    I call for food?” In this garb George sat down to dinner and it says a great deal for African
                    phlegm that the boy did not drop the dishes.

                    We conversed politely about this and that, and then, as usual, George went off
                    to bed. I appeared to be engrossed in my book and did not stir. When I went to the
                    tent some time later George lay fast asleep still in my nightie, though all I could see of it
                    was the little ribbon bows looking farcically out of place on his broad shoulders.
                    This morning neither of us mentioned the incident, George was up and dressed
                    by the time I woke up but I have been smiling all day to think what a ridiculous picture
                    we made at dinner. So farewell to pyjamas and hey for ribbons and bows.

                    Your loving
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate. Mbeya. 8th December 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    A mere shadow of her former buxom self lifts a languid pen to write to you. I’m
                    convalescing after my first and I hope my last attack of malaria. It was a beastly
                    experience but all is now well and I am eating like a horse and will soon regain my
                    bounce.

                    I took ill on the evening of the day I wrote my last letter to you. It started with a
                    splitting headache and fits of shivering. The symptoms were all too familiar to George
                    who got me into bed and filled me up with quinine. He then piled on all the available
                    blankets and packed me in hot water bottles. I thought I’d explode and said so and
                    George said just to lie still and I’d soon break into a good sweat. However nothing of the
                    kind happened and next day my temperature was 105 degrees. Instead of feeling
                    miserable as I had done at the onset, I now felt very merry and most chatty. George
                    now tells me I sang the most bawdy songs but I hardly think it likely. Do you?
                    You cannot imagine how tenderly George nursed me, not only that day but
                    throughout the whole eight days I was ill. As we do not employ any African house
                    women, and there are no white women in the neighbourhood at present to whom we
                    could appeal for help, George had to do everything for me. It was unbearably hot in the
                    tent so George decided to move me across to the Hickson-Woods vacant house. They
                    have not yet returned from the coast.

                    George decided I was too weak to make the trip in the car so he sent a
                    messenger over to the Woods’ house for their Machila. A Machila is a canopied canvas
                    hammock slung from a bamboo pole and carried by four bearers. The Machila duly
                    arrived and I attempted to walk to it, clinging to George’s arm, but collapsed in a faint so
                    the trip was postponed to the next morning when I felt rather better. Being carried by
                    Machila is quite pleasant but I was in no shape to enjoy anything and got thankfully into
                    bed in the Hickson-Woods large, cool and rather dark bedroom. My condition did not
                    improve and George decided to send a runner for the Government Doctor at Tukuyu
                    about 60 miles away. Two days later Dr Theis arrived by car and gave me two
                    injections of quinine which reduced the fever. However I still felt very weak and had to
                    spend a further four days in bed.

                    We have now decided to stay on here until the Hickson-Woods return by which
                    time our own house should be ready. George goes off each morning and does not
                    return until late afternoon. However don’t think “poor Eleanor” because I am very
                    comfortable here and there are lots of books to read and the days seem to pass very
                    quickly.

                    The Hickson-Wood’s house was built by Major Jones and I believe the one on
                    his shamba is just like it. It is a square red brick building with a wide verandah all around
                    and, rather astonishingly, a conical thatched roof. There is a beautiful view from the front
                    of the house and a nice flower garden. The coffee shamba is lower down on the hill.
                    Mrs Wood’s first husband, George’s friend Vi Lumb, is buried in the flower
                    garden. He died of blackwater fever about five years ago. I’m told that before her
                    second marriage Kath lived here alone with her little daughter, Maureen, and ran the farm
                    entirely on her own. She must be quite a person. I bet she didn’t go and get malaria
                    within a few weeks of her marriage.

                    The native tribe around here are called Wasafwa. They are pretty primitive but
                    seem amiable people. Most of the men, when they start work, wear nothing but some
                    kind of sheet of unbleached calico wrapped round their waists and hanging to mid calf. As soon as they have drawn their wages they go off to a duka and buy a pair of khaki
                    shorts for five or six shillings. Their women folk wear very short beaded skirts. I think the
                    base is goat skin but have never got close enough for a good look. They are very shy.
                    I hear from George that they have started on the roof of our house but I have not
                    seen it myself since the day I was carried here by Machila. My letters by the way go to
                    the Post Office by runner. George’s farm labourers take it in turn to act in this capacity.
                    The mail bag is given to them on Friday afternoon and by Saturday evening they are
                    back with our very welcome mail.

                    Very much love,
                    Eleanor.

                    Mbeya 23rd December 1930

                    Dearest Family,

                    George drove to Mbeya for stores last week and met Col. Sherwood-Kelly VC.
                    who has been sent by the Government to Mbeya as Game Ranger. His job will be to
                    protect native crops from raiding elephants and hippo etc., and to protect game from
                    poachers. He has had no training for this so he has asked George to go with him on his
                    first elephant safari to show him the ropes.

                    George likes Col. Kelly and was quite willing to go on safari but not willing to
                    leave me alone on the farm as I am still rather shaky after malaria. So it was arranged that
                    I should go to Mbeya and stay with Mrs Harmer, the wife of the newly appointed Lands
                    and Mines Officer, whose husband was away on safari.

                    So here I am in Mbeya staying in the Harmers temporary wattle and daub
                    house. Unfortunately I had a relapse of the malaria and stayed in bed for three days with
                    a temperature. Poor Mrs Harmer had her hands full because in the room next to mine
                    she was nursing a digger with blackwater fever. I could hear his delirious babble through
                    the thin wall – very distressing. He died poor fellow , and leaves a wife and seven
                    children.

                    I feel better than I have done for weeks and this afternoon I walked down to the
                    store. There are great signs of activity and people say that Mbeya will grow rapidly now
                    owing to the boom on the gold fields and also to the fact that a large aerodrome is to be
                    built here. Mbeya is to be a night stop on the proposed air service between England
                    and South Africa. I seem to be the last of the pioneers. If all these schemes come about
                    Mbeya will become quite suburban.

                    26th December 1930

                    George, Col. Kelly and Mr Harmer all returned to Mbeya on Christmas Eve and
                    it was decided that we should stay and have midday Christmas dinner with the
                    Harmers. Col. Kelly and the Assistant District Commissioner came too and it was quite a
                    festive occasion, We left Mbeya in the early afternoon and had our evening meal here at
                    Hickson-Wood’s farm. I wore my wedding dress.

                    I went across to our house in the car this morning. George usually walks across to
                    save petrol which is very expensive here. He takes a short cut and wades through the
                    river. The distance by road is very much longer than the short cut. The men are now
                    thatching the roof of our cottage and it looks charming. It consists of a very large living
                    room-dinning room with a large inglenook fireplace at one end. The bedroom is a large
                    square room with a smaller verandah room adjoining it. There is a wide verandah in the
                    front, from which one has a glorious view over a wide valley to the Livingstone
                    Mountains on the horizon. Bathroom and storeroom are on the back verandah and the
                    kitchen is some distance behind the house to minimise the risk of fire.

                    You can imagine how much I am looking forward to moving in. We have some
                    furniture which was made by an Indian carpenter at Iringa, refrectory dining table and
                    chairs, some small tables and two armchairs and two cupboards and a meatsafe. Other
                    things like bookshelves and extra cupboards we will have to make ourselves. George
                    has also bought a portable gramophone and records which will be a boon.
                    We also have an Irish wolfhound puppy, a skinny little chap with enormous feet
                    who keeps me company all day whilst George is across at our farm working on the
                    house.

                    Lots and lots of love,
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate 8th Jan 1931

                    Dearest Family,

                    Alas, I have lost my little companion. The Doctor called in here on Boxing night
                    and ran over and killed Paddy, our pup. It was not his fault but I was very distressed
                    about it and George has promised to try and get another pup from the same litter.
                    The Hickson-Woods returned home on the 29th December so we decided to
                    move across to our nearly finished house on the 1st January. Hicky Wood decided that
                    we needed something special to mark the occasion so he went off and killed a sucking
                    pig behind the kitchen. The piglet’s screams were terrible and I felt that I would not be
                    able to touch any dinner. Lamek cooked and served sucking pig up in the traditional way
                    but it was high and quite literally, it stank. Our first meal in our own home was not a
                    success.

                    However next day all was forgotten and I had something useful to do. George
                    hung doors and I held the tools and I also planted rose cuttings I had brought from
                    Mbeya and sowed several boxes with seeds.

                    Dad asked me about the other farms in the area. I haven’t visited any but there
                    are five besides ours. One belongs to the Lutheran Mission at Utengule, a few miles
                    from here. The others all belong to British owners. Nearest to Mbeya, at the foot of a
                    very high peak which gives Mbeya its name, are two farms, one belonging to a South
                    African mining engineer named Griffiths, the other to I.G.Stewart who was an officer in the
                    Kings African Rifles. Stewart has a young woman called Queenie living with him. We are
                    some miles further along the range of hills and are some 23 miles from Mbeya by road.
                    The Mchewe River divides our land from the Hickson-Woods and beyond their farm is
                    Major Jones.

                    All these people have been away from their farms for some time but have now
                    returned so we will have some neighbours in future. However although the houses are
                    not far apart as the crow flies, they are all built high in the foothills and it is impossible to
                    connect the houses because of the rivers and gorges in between. One has to drive right
                    down to the main road and then up again so I do not suppose we will go visiting very
                    often as the roads are very bumpy and eroded and petrol is so expensive that we all
                    save it for occasional trips to Mbeya.

                    The rains are on and George has started to plant out some coffee seedlings. The
                    rains here are strange. One can hear the rain coming as it moves like a curtain along the
                    range of hills. It comes suddenly, pours for a little while and passes on and the sun
                    shines again.

                    I do like it here and I wish you could see or dear little home.

                    Your loving,
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate. 1st April 1931

                    Dearest Family,

                    Everything is now running very smoothly in our home. Lamek continues to
                    produce palatable meals and makes wonderful bread which he bakes in a four gallon
                    petrol tin as we have no stove yet. He puts wood coals on the brick floor of the kitchen,
                    lays the tin lengh-wise on the coals and heaps more on top. The bread tins are then put
                    in the petrol tin, which has one end cut away, and the open end is covered by a flat
                    piece of tin held in place by a brick. Cakes are also backed in this make-shift oven and I
                    have never known Lamek to have a failure yet.

                    Lamek has a helper, known as the ‘mpishi boy’ , who does most of the hard
                    work, cleans pots and pans and chops the firewood etc. Another of the mpishi boy’s
                    chores is to kill the two chickens we eat each day. The chickens run wild during the day
                    but are herded into a small chicken house at night. One of the kitchen boy’s first duties is
                    to let the chickens out first thing in the early morning. Some time after breakfast it dawns
                    on Lamek that he will need a chicken for lunch. he informs the kitchen boy who selects a
                    chicken and starts to chase it in which he is enthusiastically joined by our new Irish
                    wolfhound pup, Kelly. Together they race after the frantic fowl, over the flower beds and
                    around the house until finally the chicken collapses from sheer exhaustion. The kitchen
                    boy then hands it over to Lamek who murders it with the kitchen knife and then pops the
                    corpse into boiling water so the feathers can be stripped off with ease.

                    I pointed out in vain, that it would be far simpler if the doomed chickens were kept
                    in the chicken house in the mornings when the others were let out and also that the correct
                    way to pluck chickens is when they are dry. Lamek just smiled kindly and said that that
                    may be so in Europe but that his way is the African way and none of his previous
                    Memsahibs has complained.

                    My houseboy, named James, is clean and capable in the house and also a
                    good ‘dhobi’ or washboy. He takes the washing down to the river and probably
                    pounds it with stones, but I prefer not to look. The ironing is done with a charcoal iron
                    only we have no charcoal and he uses bits of wood from the kitchen fire but so far there
                    has not been a mishap.

                    It gets dark here soon after sunset and then George lights the oil lamps and we
                    have tea and toast in front of the log fire which burns brightly in our inglenook. This is my
                    favourite hour of the day. Later George goes for his bath. I have mine in the mornings
                    and we have dinner at half past eight. Then we talk a bit and read a bit and sometimes
                    play the gramophone. I expect it all sounds pretty unexciting but it doesn’t seem so to
                    me.

                    Very much love,
                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate 20th April 1931

                    Dearest Family,

                    It is still raining here and the countryside looks very lush and green, very different
                    from the Mbeya district I first knew, when plains and hills were covered in long brown
                    grass – very course stuff that grows shoulder high.

                    Most of the labourers are hill men and one can see little patches of cultivation in
                    the hills. Others live in small villages near by, each consisting of a cluster of thatched huts
                    and a few maize fields and perhaps a patch of bananas. We do not have labour lines on
                    the farm because our men all live within easy walking distance. Each worker has a labour
                    card with thirty little squares on it. One of these squares is crossed off for each days work
                    and when all thirty are marked in this way the labourer draws his pay and hies himself off
                    to the nearest small store and blows the lot. The card system is necessary because
                    these Africans are by no means slaves to work. They work only when they feel like it or
                    when someone in the family requires a new garment, or when they need a few shillings
                    to pay their annual tax. Their fields, chickens and goats provide them with the food they
                    need but they draw rations of maize meal beans and salt. Only our headman is on a
                    salary. His name is Thomas and he looks exactly like the statues of Julius Caesar, the
                    same bald head and muscular neck and sardonic expression. He comes from Northern
                    Rhodesia and is more intelligent than the locals.

                    We still live mainly on chickens. We have a boy whose job it is to scour the
                    countryside for reasonable fat ones. His name is Lucas and he is quite a character. He
                    has such long horse teeth that he does not seem able to close his mouth and wears a
                    perpetual amiable smile. He brings his chickens in beehive shaped wicker baskets
                    which are suspended on a pole which Lucas carries on his shoulder.

                    We buy our groceries in bulk from Mbeya, our vegetables come from our
                    garden by the river and our butter from Kath Wood. Our fresh milk we buy from the
                    natives. It is brought each morning by three little totos each carrying one bottle on his
                    shaven head. Did I tell you that the local Wasafwa file their teeth to points. These kids
                    grin at one with their little sharks teeth – quite an “all-ready-to-eat-you-with-my-dear” look.
                    A few nights ago a message arrived from Kath Wood to say that Queenie
                    Stewart was very ill and would George drive her across to the Doctor at Tukuyu. I
                    wanted George to wait until morning because it was pouring with rain, and the mountain
                    road to Tukuyu is tricky even in dry weather, but he said it is dangerous to delay with any
                    kind of fever in Africa and he would have to start at once. So off he drove in the rain and I
                    did not see him again until the following night.

                    George said that it had been a nightmare trip. Queenie had a high temperature
                    and it was lucky that Kath was able to go to attend to her. George needed all his
                    attention on the road which was officially closed to traffic, and very slippery, and in some
                    places badly eroded. In some places the decking of bridges had been removed and
                    George had to get out in the rain and replace it. As he had nothing with which to fasten
                    the decking to the runners it was a dangerous undertaking to cross the bridges especially
                    as the rivers are now in flood and flowing strongly. However they reached Tukuyu safely
                    and it was just as well they went because the Doctor diagnosed Queenies illness as
                    Spirillium Tick Fever which is a very nasty illness indeed.

                    Eleanor.

                    Mchewe Estate. 20th May 1931

                    Dear Family,

                    I’m feeling fit and very happy though a bit lonely sometimes because George
                    spends much of his time away in the hills cutting a furrow miles long to bring water to the
                    house and to the upper part of the shamba so that he will be able to irrigate the coffee
                    during the dry season.

                    It will be quite an engineering feat when it is done as George only has makeshift
                    surveying instruments. He has mounted an ordinary cheap spirit level on an old camera
                    tripod and has tacked two gramophone needles into the spirit level to give him a line.
                    The other day part of a bank gave way and practically buried two of George’s labourers
                    but they were quickly rescued and no harm was done. However he will not let them
                    work unless he is there to supervise.

                    I keep busy so that the days pass quickly enough. I am delighted with the
                    material you sent me for curtains and loose covers and have hired a hand sewing
                    machine from Pedro-of-the-overcoat and am rattling away all day. The machine is an
                    ancient German one and when I say rattle, I mean rattle. It is a most cumbersome, heavy
                    affair of I should say, the same vintage as George Stevenson’s Rocket locomotive.
                    Anyway it sews and I am pleased with my efforts. We made a couch ourselves out of a
                    native bed, a mattress and some planks but all this is hidden under the chintz cover and
                    it looks quite the genuine bought article. I have some diversions too. Small black faced
                    monkeys sit in the trees outside our bedroom window and they are most entertaining to
                    watch. They are very mischievous though. When I went out into the garden this morning
                    before breakfast I found that the monkeys had pulled up all my carnations. There they
                    lay, roots in the air and whether they will take again I don’t know.

                    I like the monkeys but hate the big mountain baboons that come and hang
                    around our chicken house. I am terrified that they will tear our pup into bits because he is
                    a plucky young thing and will rush out to bark at the baboons.

                    George usually returns for the weekends but last time he did not because he had
                    a touch of malaria. He sent a boy down for the mail and some fresh bread. Old Lucas
                    arrived with chickens just as the messenger was setting off with mail and bread in a
                    haversack on his back. I thought it might be a good idea to send a chicken to George so
                    I selected a spry young rooster which I handed to the messenger. He, however,
                    complained that he needed both hands for climbing. I then had one of my bright ideas
                    and, putting a layer of newspaper over the bread, I tucked the rooster into the haversack
                    and buckled down the flap so only his head protruded.

                    I thought no more about it until two days later when the messenger again
                    appeared for fresh bread. He brought a rather terse note from George saying that the
                    previous bread was uneatable as the rooster had eaten some of it and messed on the
                    rest. Ah me!

                    The previous weekend the Hickson-Woods, Stewarts and ourselves, went
                    across to Tukuyu to attend a dance at the club there. the dance was very pleasant. All
                    the men wore dinner jackets and the ladies wore long frocks. As there were about
                    twenty men and only seven ladies we women danced every dance whilst the surplus
                    men got into a huddle around the bar. George and I spent the night with the Agricultural
                    Officer, Mr Eustace, and I met his fiancee, Lillian Austin from South Africa, to whom I took
                    a great liking. She is Governess to the children of Major Masters who has a farm in the
                    Tukuyu district.

                    On the Sunday morning we had a look at the township. The Boma was an old German one and was once fortified as the Africans in this district are a very warlike tribe.
                    They are fine looking people. The men wear sort of togas and bands of cloth around
                    their heads and look like Roman Senators, but the women go naked except for a belt
                    from which two broad straps hang down, one in front and another behind. Not a graceful
                    garb I assure you.

                    We also spent a pleasant hour in the Botanical Gardens, laid out during the last
                    war by the District Commissioner, Major Wells, with German prisoner of war labour.
                    There are beautiful lawns and beds of roses and other flowers and shady palm lined
                    walks and banana groves. The gardens are terraced with flights of brick steps connecting
                    the different levels and there is a large artificial pond with little islands in it. I believe Major
                    Wells designed the lake to resemble in miniature, the Lakes of Killarney.
                    I enjoyed the trip very much. We got home at 8 pm to find the front door locked
                    and the kitchen boy fast asleep on my newly covered couch! I hastily retreated to the
                    bedroom whilst George handled the situation.

                    Eleanor.

                    #6145

                    The moving lorry had been parked outside the Beige House for hours.

                    The driver was furious, as nobody has been able to answer their calls or guide them. At least the manager had let them park in front of the entrance, but it might have been based on a misunderstanding. “That’s for the removal of the Lady’s stuff, is it?” He’d nodded, it was only half a lie, his client was a lady, except she wasn’t moving out. She was moving in.

                    He shouted to his partner who was smoking outside.

                    George! Bloody hell, if this Ms June isn’t picking up the phone or showing up, I’m going to dump all her stuff here, I don’t care how precious is her cargo!”

                    “Come on, Fred! Don’t get mad, you’ve seen how particular she was when we loaded the boat’s content, so full of her sentimental knick-knacks!”

                    “What do you expect? Us keeping all these stone statues that weigh a ton! I don’t care. I tell you, she better show up in the next minutes, or else…”

                    #4502
                    AvatarJib
                    Participant

                      Shawn-Paul exited Finn’s Bakery on the crowded Cobble street with his precious cargo of granola cookies. They were wrapped in a cute purple box pommeled with pink hearts. He put on a disdainful attitude, adjusting his scarf for better effect, while already salivating in anticipation of the granola melting in his hot chocolate at home. He was sure that would revive his fleeting inspiration for his novel.
                      It was hard not to swallow as saliva accumulated in his mouth, but he had had years of practices since he was eight. His aunt Begonia had just given him a snicker bar that he had swallowed in one gulp, spreading some chocolate on his face in the process. She had accused him of being a dirty little piglet and he was so upset of being compared to the animal, that he had vowed to never show his love for food again. Instead he developed a public dislike of food and a slender frame quite fitting his bohemian lifestyle, while always having some cookies in store.

                      Shawn-Paul turned right on Quagmire street. It was bordered with Plane trees that kept it cool and bearable in summer. He was thinking about the suggestion of his writing coach to spend some time with his artist self, thinking that he had not done it for quite some time, but immediately felt guilty about not writing and firmed his resolution to go back home and write. He walked past a group of two elder woman and a man arguing in front of Liz’s Antique. One of the woman had a caved in mouth and used her hands profusely to make her point to the man. She was wearing pink slippers with pompon.

                      Italian tourists, Shawn-Paul thought rolling his eyes.

                      He swallowed and almost choked on his saliva when he glimpsed an improbable reflection on the Antique’s window. A woman, smiling and waving at him from a branch of a plane tree behind him, balancing her legs. He particularly noticed her feet and the red sandals, the rest of the body was a blur.

                      As Shawn-Paul turned, the toothless Italian tourist whirled her arms about like an inflated tubewoman, frightening a nearby sparrow. The bird took off and followed a curve around Shawn-Paul. Caught together in a twirl worthy of the best dervishes, the man and the bird connected in one of those perfect moment that Shawn-Paul would long but fail to transcribe into words afterwards.

                      There was no woman in the tree. A male dog stopped to mark his territory. A bit disappointed and confused, Shawn-Paul felt the need to talk.

                      “Did you see her?” he asked the Italian tourists. They stopped arguing and looked at him suspiciously for a moment. “She was right there with her red sandals,” he said showing the branch where he was sure she had sat. “I saw her in the window,” he felt compelled to add, not sure if they understood him.

                      The other tourist woman, who had all her teeth, rolled her eyes and pointed behind him.

                      “There’s a woman in red right over there!” she said with a chanting accent.

                      Shawn-Paul turned and just had the time to glimpse a woman dressed all in red, skirt, vest, hat and sandals before she disappeared at the corner of Fortune street.

                      Moved by a sudden impulse and forgetting all about his writing, he thanked the tourist and ran after the red woman.

                      #4498

                      “Tagada” said Margoritt to Tak, after feeding him the last spoon of the red clay paste mixture he had to take daily for the past week.

                      Glynnis had mixed a fine clay powder with the yellow flowers of the prikkperikum that grew in the nearby woods. It would little by little absorb the effects of the potion, and hopefully neutralise that garish greenish color off his face and fur.

                      Meanwhile, Glynnis had perfected her own treatment by analysing the leftover salvaged from the lotion. Tak, with his sharp olfactory senses when he turned into a puppy, had helped her identify the plants and minerals used in the potion, as he felt bad about the whole thing. She’d liked to spend time chasing with puppy Tak after plants into the mountain woods, the nearby plains, and once even as they went as far as the heathlands where a evil wind blew… too close to the heinous machinations of Leroway to desecrate the land of old.

                      Thankfully, this time, she had properly labelled the lotion, with the cute picture of a skull adorned with a flower garland, under a smiling full moon. She wasn’t sure it would be of much use to ward off gluttons, but it put a smile on her face every time she looked at it.

                      With the full moon a day’s ahead, she started to grow restless. Even Eleri had noticed, and she wasn’t one to notice subtleties. While she’d encouraged Hasam’ to start to work at something outside with his hands, like building a magic rainproof dome — working with his hands was something the God would find himself endlessly bemused at — she’d started her plan to glamour-bomb the forest with placing at the most unusual places hundreds of concrete statues of little fat men wearing doilies. Something Gorrash obviously felt he was the inspiration for. In truth, it wasn’t far from it, as she’d taken the opportunity of a bright day of his stone sleep to make a plaster mold of him, and then artistically adjust postures and decorum to get her little fat men done. Gorrash had felt so appreciative of the likeness, probably encouraged in that thought by the rest of Rainbow’s babies dancing around him, that he even helped her ferry the heavy cargoes to the oddest destinations.

                      #4330

                      In the past twenty days since he got out of the forest, backtracking on his steps, Rukshan didn’t have much luck finding or locating either of the six others strands.
                      At first, he thought his best hint was the connection with the potion-maker, but it seemed difficult to find her if she didn’t want to be found.

                      So, for lack of a better plan, he had come back to Margoritt’s shack and was quite pleased at the idea of meeting the old lady and Tak again.
                      Her cottage had been most busy with guests, and in the spring time, it was a stark contrast with the last time he was there, to see all the motley assemblage she had gathered around her.

                      First, there was Margoritt of course, Emma the goat, then Tak, who was a very convincing little boy these days, and looked happy at all the people visiting. Then, there was Lahmom, the mountain explorer, who had come down from her trek and enjoyed a glass of goat milk tea with roast barley nuggets.
                      Then there were a couple of strange guests, a redhair man with a nose for things, and his pet statue, a gnome with a temper, he said. Margoritt had offered them shelter during the last of the blizzard.

                      With so many unexpected guests, Margoritt quickly found her meager provisions dwindling, and told Rukshan she was about to decide for an early return to the city, since the next cargo of her benefactor Mr Minn would take too long to arrive.

                      That was the day before she arrived to the cottage with her companion: Eleri and Yorath, had arrived surprisingly just in time with a small carriage of provisions. “How great that mushrooms don’t weigh anything, we have so many to share!” Eleri was happy at the sight of the cottage and its guests, and started to look around at all the nooks and crannies for secret treasures to assemble and unknown shrooms.
                      While Yorath explained to Margoritt how Mr Minn had send him ahead with food, Margoritt was delighted and amazed at such prescience.

                      Rukshan, for his part, was amazed at something else. There seemed to be something at play, to join together people of such variety in this instant. Maybe the solution he was looking for was just in front of his nose.
                      He would have to look carefully at which of them could be an unknown holder of the shards of the Gem.

                      He was consigning his thoughts on a random blank page of his vanishing book, not to store the knowledge, but rather to engage on a inner dialogue, and seek illumination, when some commotion happened outside the cottage.

                      A towering figure followed by a boy had just arrived in the clearing. “Witch! You will pay for what you did!” pointing at Eleri, backed behind Yorath who had jumped protectively in front of her.

                      That can’t be another coincidence Rukshan thought, recognizing the two new guests: the reanimated god statue of the tower, and Olliver, the boy who, he deduced, had managed to wake up the old teleporting device.

                      #3624

                      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                      EricEric
                      Keymaster

                        Godfrey was a supervisor of the miners team. After the landing, and the greetings by the locals, the lucky draw had him and his team assigned to the sulfur mines, which were vital to the colonies to fertilize the plants.
                        For him, hardly lucky at all.
                        Rotten eggs and smelly fish, he thought, at least one of us will be pleased

                        Norbert!” he called “Are all the equipments ready to move?”
                        “One more cargo, and we’re good to go.”
                        “OK, everybody, let’s get ready to move.”

                        Somehow, the outlook didn’t feel as bad,… almost a breather of fresh oxygen and freedom.

                        #3593

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        EricEric
                        Keymaster

                          Maya was overlooking the crops when her son arrived.

                          “The kales are adapting well to the soil. I didn’t expect them to arrive so fast.”
                          “I wonder what they’ll taste like, they seem to have that unusual purplish tinge to them, nothing like those in hydroponics…”
                          “The water we extracted from those rocks seems to contain a very interesting blend of minerals, could be that… we know so little about this place. All of this, these changes, it’s very exciting, to think of the prospect…”

                          John hugged his mother.

                          “I came to ask you if you would join the welcome party tonight?”
                          “I thought it wouldn’t be before another day?”
                          “The ship apparently had some trouble and felt it would be safer to land their cargo one day ahead of schedule.”
                          “Really? That’s so unlike them, to be in advance… Well, as you know, my social agenda isn’t too busy, so I guess yes, I’ll join. If only to see what this new batch looks like. We have to give a nice impression if we want to get more of them to stay as settlers. The machines are helping fine, but it’s not enough.”
                          “We’ll see, last I heard, there are about 10 miners and about the same of religious nutters. The miners are there on a contract, but some usually take well to here and chose to stay. We’ll see…”
                          “What about the upgrades they promised?”
                          “Yeah, they talked about that too, saying they had to fix some bugs before downloading the new AI. They’ll leave some of the cybernetic bodies here too, see if they can support the stress. I’ll ask them to assign one here to help you with the plants.”
                          “That would be lovely, thanks Johnny.”

                          #3573

                          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                          EricEric
                          Keymaster

                            Commercial Spaceline MX757#33, Mars orbit

                            Finnley, the board computer of the mothership had started to wake up the suspended animated bodies in preparation for the landing as per its usual instructions.
                            The craft had arrived in vicinity of the planet just a day ago (counted in SET, or Standard Earth Time), and was in stationary orbit over the main settlement and de facto capital of Mars.
                            Smaller pods would be flown from there to land the various cargo and the travelling guests, as soon as they would have had time to acclimate.

                            Everyone was becoming quite excited, and hungry as well, once the initial shock was passed. Finnley’s synthetic voice was as smooth and silky as the modelled butt of her twenty one robotic bodies.

                            All of her guests were accounted for. A large number of them were sent by a rich Covenant of Holy Elietics, which hoped to enlighten the natives.
                            A second group was sent by a mining corporation for prospecting purposes.
                            Finally, travelling in the economy section were a pair of winners from a worldwide raffle that sent people to a promised new life. It was believed to be largely a scam, but the one-trip tickets were valid. That was the only thing that was provided to the winners, the rest was up to them.

                            Finnley had been craftily programmed to display a wide range of human emotions, although she didn’t really feel them as human did. If that were the case, she would have logged in her journal her feeling to be in a great hurry to get rid of all the now terribly noisy humanity in her ship.

                            #3536

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

                              John was about to leave the pod for the airlock when a sharp voice startled him.

                              “Where are you going on your own Johnny? You know the rules!”

                              He could tell she was only pretending indignation. She had this fun smirk at her pursed lips that he knew by heart. She was most likely vexed at not being asked to come along for the venture past curfew.

                              At 15, Yz was 5 years younger than him (in Earth years), and only half his height, but her brains were razor sharp, as well as her tongue. She was also a gifted mechanic, and a fearless young girl.

                              They exchanged a conniving smile. No more than three minutes after, she was back, silent as a cat, and suited up for the harsh environment of Mars.
                              Over the years, small adjustments had been made to the suits, some purely out of fashion, but the main elements remained the same, which little change from one Earth cargo to the next. Ensuring their survival at minimal cost to their movements and senses.
                              Survival outposts were also planted all across the area, so as long as they stayed at safe distance to their pod, they were in no real danger.

                              The sand scooters were always free to take for a ride. A matter of life and death, it would be a crime to put locks on them. At any moment, anybody could be in dire need for a ride. And besides, in all that expanse of land, where to run to?

                              #3269

                              Gliding through layers of consciousness, Belen carried her precious cargo of the Santa Maria and its birds towards her destination.
                              There were various variations of the same 2222, and she carefully adjusted the course along the 202 years gap, so as to swim to her favourite version of it. It required much love work on her part, addressing, piecing and peacing off many parts of human consciousness, while at the same time tenderly caring for the memories stored with her immense ghost body.
                              The 2020 version they had just left, she knew, was already on the proper track towards global enlightenment. There were still horrors, concerns and anxiety about the course of the future, but with a greater perspective, it looked like the positive actions were gaining momentum and leaning towards a brighter fuller and richer future.

                              She could feel the Contact Crystal pulsate steadily and it opened her blowhole chakra. Blowing her mind, as it were.

                              The Big Island was like a beacon, with the flows of lava rippling heatwave signatures in the ocean, and it didn’t take long to enter the stream that would lead them to the pod and the meeting point.

                              As she sensed they’d arrived in 2222, and that they were floating on the surface of a calm ocean, she gently opened the energy bubble sealing the ghost and alive cargo of birds and vegetation, so they could breathe in the pure air and enjoy discovering around.

                              Belen, look at you, not a ounce more of blubber since we last met! You ought to tell me how you keep so fit”
                              “Batshatsassani!” Belen was pleased the see the great female orca who’d come to greet her.
                              “Still with your entourage, it seems” her friend said without a hint of malice, blowing a few rings of bubbles around in a relaxed manner. “Let me accompany you to the ceremony.”
                              “With great pleasure, dear. Rest assured, I won’t carry my entourage along for the time of the ceremony.”
                              “It would have been cumbersome, no?” Oftentimes humour (and irony in particular) were a lost subtlety on the orca’s mind. Belen just smiled to answer, revealing a great range of ghostwhite perfect baleens.

                              As they swam their way along the beautiful clear ocean, they were greeted by a pod of joyously rambunctious great dolphins, a good half size bigger than their common dolphins cousins she’d seen swimming near the coasts of Portugal. The leader of the pod was doing acrobatics to retrieve and play with a funny scarf made of colorful feathers. It was no surprise the dolphins were playing games, really. That or chasing food took the best of their time. But the scarf was the strangest thing Belen had seen in a long time and it triggered some kind of forgotten memory. Odd thing for her to not remember a memory, unless it was from another probable dimension… She followed the urge to ask.

                              “Were did they get that?”
                              “Oh, it’s nothing important… Four strange aquatic thingies went down earlier this morning, making a whole lot of noise around. They looked like one of those aliens, but so clumsy we thought they were probably sickly and left there to die by their tribe. The ‘phins took the fancy red gills from one of them.”
                              “Are you serious? Are they OK?” Belen huge heart felt panicky at the thought of the small creatures left to die without help.
                              “Of course they are, I knoooow we have to keep our reputation, you know. Where they are now, I’m not too sure. But the octopi from the camouflage squad are on it, following them. According to the last I know, the aliens have been lost for awhile in the underwater caves. When they’re exhausted, we’ll send them somewhere else… Can’t attract too much attention to ourselves, with the ceremony and all…”

                              #3123

                              Sanso was positively bummed. With the sudden blanket of cold and snow falling down on the road and his carriage, he couldn’t use the transdimensional puddles which were either dried out or closed by a layer of ice. To make things worse, he had to take care that the barrel of champagne would not burst out at the rear, with all the bumps in the road, and had to slow down the zebras a little. The poor beasts were looking paler at every mile. He had promised to return them in good health to the Royal Menagerie of Versailles, and started to fear he’d gone over his head to impress Sadie and her lots.
                              Chair, the appointed footman seated on the champagne with his cork bum didn’t look reassured either at every bump of the road.
                              Of course, he had a plan B. Linda Paul wouldn’t have hired him if it were not for his knack for over-the-top unexpected and brilliant out-of-the-box solutions to problems he hadn’t planned for. He would give Linda Paul the show they deserved.
                              They would have to go through one of the tunnels down the road, which he knew would lead them to Versailles in no time. But for that, he had to find the proper one, large enough and clear enough to allow passage for the carriage and his cargo. The entrance was near, and with a bit of magical focus, they could arrive before sunrise through the Grotto of Thétys, an artificial cave, now mostly demolished, but its residual cave energetic imprint could do well enough to let them through.

                              #2893
                              EricEric
                              Keymaster

                                Dru Hammond’s flight was being delayed at Charles de Gaulle airport.
                                Not the most brilliant idea to fly with Air Frange for this mission, he thought…
                                He held from well informed source that airports days were counted, and that airports would soon become deserted museums – in truth, teleportation tech was being developed and soon would be mainstreamed by Ganga, the mammoth merger of Amazoom and Koogle companies.
                                That was why he tried to enjoy this vintage means of transportation as much as he could now, and collected plane tickets from all possible flight companies from around the world.
                                Dru was an auditor from Passadena, working for the Team, or actually for Ed Steam, the boss himself. His mission was usually to discretely assess the Team’s strengths and shortcomings. However, in this case, he was sent to Malaga for the Three Kings’ Parade, and there was a catch to his assignment. But he wasn’t at liberty to think too much about it. Ed had means to read minds, and thinking too much wouldn’t do him any good. So instead he tried to focus on something innocuous, like fluffy white rabbits dancing in a snow field.
                                The security check was taking forever. After an unending stream of Italian tourists, there was a Frenchman stuck into the security gate with a folded drying rack that he was trying to bargain his right to carry it into the plane with lots of ample movements, while the gatekeeper was stubbornly nodding his head.
                                Dru after some initial irritation started to find the whole barter amusing. His flight wasn’t boarding before four more hours, so he had time.
                                He suddenly wasn’t as much amused when, after relenting and letting the security guy take the rack back to be sent in the cargo hold, the French guy accidentally let his suitcase drop and burst open, revealing a clunky mess of things among which: a heavy black hammer, a humongous book as large as the suitcase itself, crockery, tin canned foods and lots of multicoloured clothes pegs.
                                All his auditor’s instincts were crying at him right now that without the shadow of a doubt this man was a dangerous terrorist, hiding under an innocent awkward guise. Sighing of relief when he overheard he was going to Shanghai instead of his European destination, he wondered what terrorists would do in a world of easy free teleportation…

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