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    TracyTracy
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      From Tanganyika with Love

      continued  ~ part 3

      With thanks to Mike Rushby.

      Mchewe Estate. 22nd March 1935

      Dearest Family,

      I am feeling much better now that I am five months pregnant and have quite got
      my appetite back. Once again I go out with “the Mchewe Hunt” which is what George
      calls the procession made up of the donkey boy and donkey with Ann confidently riding
      astride, me beside the donkey with Georgie behind riding the stick which he much
      prefers to the donkey. The Alsatian pup, whom Ann for some unknown reason named
      ‘Tubbage’, and the two cats bring up the rear though sometimes Tubbage rushes
      ahead and nearly knocks me off my feet. He is not the loveable pet that Kelly was.
      It is just as well that I have recovered my health because my mother-in-law has
      decided to fly out from England to look after Ann and George when I am in hospital. I am
      very grateful for there is no one lse to whom I can turn. Kath Hickson-Wood is seldom on
      their farm because Hicky is working a guano claim and is making quite a good thing out of
      selling bat guano to the coffee farmers at Mbosi. They camp out at the claim, a series of
      caves in the hills across the valley and visit the farm only occasionally. Anne Molteno is
      off to Cape Town to have her baby at her mothers home and there are no women in
      Mbeya I know well. The few women are Government Officials wives and they come
      and go. I make so few trips to the little town that there is no chance to get on really
      friendly terms with them.

      Janey, the ayah, is turning into a treasure. She washes and irons well and keeps
      the children’s clothes cupboard beautifully neat. Ann and George however are still
      reluctant to go for walks with her. They find her dull because, like all African ayahs, she
      has no imagination and cannot play with them. She should however be able to help with
      the baby. Ann is very excited about the new baby. She so loves all little things.
      Yesterday she went into ecstasies over ten newly hatched chicks.

      She wants a little sister and perhaps it would be a good thing. Georgie is so very
      active and full of mischief that I feel another wild little boy might be more than I can
      manage. Although Ann is older, it is Georgie who always thinks up the mischief. They
      have just been having a fight. Georgie with the cooks umbrella versus Ann with her frilly
      pink sunshade with the inevitable result that the sunshade now has four broken ribs.
      Any way I never feel lonely now during the long hours George is busy on the
      shamba. The children keep me on my toes and I have plenty of sewing to do for the
      baby. George is very good about amusing the children before their bedtime and on
      Sundays. In the afternoons when it is not wet I take Ann and Georgie for a walk down
      the hill. George meets us at the bottom and helps me on the homeward journey. He
      grabs one child in each hand by the slack of their dungarees and they do a sort of giant
      stride up the hill, half walking half riding.

      Very much love,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 14th June 1935

      Dearest Family,

      A great flap here. We had a letter yesterday to say that mother-in-law will be
      arriving in four days time! George is very amused at my frantic efforts at spring cleaning
      but he has told me before that she is very house proud so I feel I must make the best
      of what we have.

      George is very busy building a store for the coffee which will soon be ripening.
      This time he is doing the bricklaying himself. It is quite a big building on the far end of the
      farm and close to the river. He is also making trays of chicken wire nailed to wooden
      frames with cheap calico stretched over the wire.

      Mother will have to sleep in the verandah room which leads off the bedroom
      which we share with the children. George will have to sleep in the outside spare room as
      there is no door between the bedroom and the verandah room. I am sewing frantically
      to make rose coloured curtains and bedspread out of material mother-in-law sent for
      Christmas and will have to make a curtain for the doorway. The kitchen badly needs
      whitewashing but George says he cannot spare the labour so I hope mother won’t look.
      To complicate matters, George has been invited to lunch with the Governor on the day
      of Mother’s arrival. After lunch they are to visit the newly stocked trout streams in the
      Mporotos. I hope he gets back to Mbeya in good time to meet mother’s plane.
      Ann has been off colour for a week. She looks very pale and her pretty fair hair,
      normally so shiny, is dull and lifeless. It is such a pity that mother should see her like this
      because first impressions do count so much and I am looking to the children to attract
      attention from me. I am the size of a circus tent and hardly a dream daughter-in-law.
      Georgie, thank goodness, is blooming but he has suddenly developed a disgusting
      habit of spitting on the floor in the manner of the natives. I feel he might say “Gran, look
      how far I can spit and give an enthusiastic demonstration.

      Just hold thumbs that all goes well.

      your loving but anxious,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 28th June 1935

      Dearest Family,

      Mother-in-law duly arrived in the District Commissioner’s car. George did not dare
      to use the A.C. as she is being very temperamental just now. They also brought the
      mail bag which contained a parcel of lovely baby clothes from you. Thank you very
      much. Mother-in-law is very put out because the large parcel she posted by surface
      mail has not yet arrived.

      Mother arrived looking very smart in an ankle length afternoon frock of golden
      brown crepe and smart hat, and wearing some very good rings. She is a very
      handsome woman with the very fair complexion that goes with red hair. The hair, once
      Titan, must now be grey but it has been very successfully tinted and set. I of course,
      was shapeless in a cotton maternity frock and no credit to you. However, so far, motherin-
      law has been uncritical and friendly and charmed with the children who have taken to
      her. Mother does not think that the children resemble me in any way. Ann resembles her
      family the Purdys and Georgie is a Morley, her mother’s family. She says they had the
      same dark eyes and rather full mouths. I say feebly, “But Georgie has my colouring”, but
      mother won’t hear of it. So now you know! Ann is a Purdy and Georgie a Morley.
      Perhaps number three will be a Leslie.

      What a scramble I had getting ready for mother. Her little room really looks pretty
      and fresh, but the locally woven grass mats arrived only minutes before mother did. I
      also frantically overhauled our clothes and it a good thing that I did so because mother
      has been going through all the cupboards looking for mending. Mother is kept so busy
      in her own home that I think she finds time hangs on her hands here. She is very good at
      entertaining the children and has even tried her hand at picking coffee a couple of times.
      Mother cannot get used to the native boy servants but likes Janey, so Janey keeps her
      room in order. Mother prefers to wash and iron her own clothes.

      I almost lost our cook through mother’s surplus energy! Abel our previous cook
      took a new wife last month and, as the new wife, and Janey the old, were daggers
      drawn, Abel moved off to a job on the Lupa leaving Janey and her daughter here.
      The new cook is capable, but he is a fearsome looking individual called Alfani. He has a
      thick fuzz of hair which he wears long, sometimes hidden by a dingy turban, and he
      wears big brass earrings. I think he must be part Somali because he has a hawk nose
      and a real Brigand look. His kitchen is never really clean but he is an excellent cook and
      as cooks are hard to come by here I just keep away from the kitchen. Not so mother!
      A few days after her arrival she suggested kindly that I should lie down after lunch
      so I rested with the children whilst mother, unknown to me, went out to the kitchen and
      not only scrubbed the table and shelves but took the old iron stove to pieces and
      cleaned that. Unfortunately in her zeal she poked a hole through the stove pipe.
      Had I known of these activities I would have foreseen the cook’s reaction when
      he returned that evening to cook the supper. he was furious and wished to leave on the
      spot and demanded his wages forthwith. The old Memsahib had insulted him by
      scrubbing his already spotless kitchen and had broken his stove and made it impossible
      for him to cook. This tirade was accompanied by such waving of hands and rolling of
      eyes that I longed to sack him on the spot. However I dared not as I might not get
      another cook for weeks. So I smoothed him down and he patched up the stove pipe
      with a bit of tin and some wire and produced a good meal. I am wondering what
      transformations will be worked when I am in hospital.

      Our food is really good but mother just pecks at it. No wonder really, because
      she has had some shocks. One day she found the kitchen boy diligently scrubbing the box lavatory seat with a scrubbing brush which he dipped into one of my best large
      saucepans! No one can foresee what these boys will do. In these remote areas house
      servants are usually recruited from the ranks of the very primitive farm labourers, who first
      come to the farm as naked savages, and their notions of hygiene simply don’t exist.
      One day I said to mother in George’s presence “When we were newly married,
      mother, George used to brag about your cooking and say that you would run a home
      like this yourself with perhaps one ‘toto’. Mother replied tartly, “That was very bad of
      George and not true. If my husband had brought me out here I would not have stayed a
      month. I think you manage very well.” Which reply made me warm to mother a lot.
      To complicate things we have a new pup, a little white bull terrier bitch whom
      George has named Fanny. She is tiny and not yet house trained but seems a plucky
      and attractive little animal though there is no denying that she does look like a piglet.

      Very much love to all,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 3rd August 1935

      Dearest Family,

      Here I am in hospital, comfortably in bed with our new daughter in her basket
      beside me. She is a lovely little thing, very plump and cuddly and pink and white and
      her head is covered with tiny curls the colour of Golden Syrup. We meant to call her
      Margery Kate, after our Marj and my mother-in-law whose name is Catherine.
      I am enjoying the rest, knowing that George and mother will be coping
      successfully on the farm. My room is full of flowers, particularly with the roses and
      carnations which grow so well here. Kate was not due until August 5th but the doctor
      wanted me to come in good time in view of my tiresome early pregnancy.

      For weeks beforehand George had tinkered with the A.C. and we started for
      Mbeya gaily enough on the twenty ninth, however, after going like a dream for a couple
      of miles, she simply collapsed from exhaustion at the foot of a hill and all the efforts of
      the farm boys who had been sent ahead for such an emergency failed to start her. So
      George sent back to the farm for the machila and I sat in the shade of a tree, wondering
      what would happen if I had the baby there and then, whilst George went on tinkering
      with the car. Suddenly she sprang into life and we roared up that hill and all the way into
      Mbeya. The doctor welcomed us pleasantly and we had tea with his family before I
      settled into my room. Later he examined me and said that it was unlikely that the baby
      would be born for several days. The new and efficient German nurse said, “Thank
      goodness for that.” There was a man in hospital dying from a stomach cancer and she
      had not had a decent nights sleep for three nights.

      Kate however had other plans. I woke in the early morning with labour pains but
      anxious not to disturb the nurse, I lay and read or tried to read a book, hoping that I
      would not have to call the nurse until daybreak. However at four a.m., I went out into the
      wind which was howling along the open verandah and knocked on the nurse’s door. She
      got up and very crossly informed me that I was imagining things and should get back to
      bed at once. She said “It cannot be so. The Doctor has said it.” I said “Of course it is,”
      and then and there the water broke and clinched my argument. She then went into a flat
      spin. “But the bed is not ready and my instruments are not ready,” and she flew around
      to rectify this and also sent an African orderly to call the doctor. I paced the floor saying
      warningly “Hurry up with that bed. I am going to have the baby now!” She shrieked
      “Take off your dressing gown.” But I was passed caring. I flung myself on the bed and
      there was Kate. The nurse had done all that was necessary by the time the doctor
      arrived.

      A funny thing was, that whilst Kate was being born on the bed, a black cat had
      kittens under it! The doctor was furious with the nurse but the poor thing must have crept
      in out of the cold wind when I went to call the nurse. A happy omen I feel for the baby’s
      future. George had no anxiety this time. He stayed at the hospital with me until ten
      o’clock when he went down to the hotel to sleep and he received the news in a note
      from me with his early morning tea. He went to the farm next morning but will return on
      the sixth to fetch me home.

      I do feel so happy. A very special husband and three lovely children. What
      more could anyone possibly want.

      Lots and lots of love,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 20th August 1935

      Dearest Family,

      Well here we are back at home and all is very well. The new baby is very placid
      and so pretty. Mother is delighted with her and Ann loved her at sight but Georgie is not
      so sure. At first he said, “Your baby is no good. Chuck her in the kalonga.” The kalonga
      being the ravine beside the house , where, I regret to say, much of the kitchen refuse is
      dumped. he is very jealous when I carry Kate around or feed her but is ready to admire
      her when she is lying alone in her basket.

      George walked all the way from the farm to fetch us home. He hired a car and
      native driver from the hotel, but drove us home himself going with such care over ruts
      and bumps. We had a great welcome from mother who had had the whole house
      spring cleaned. However George loyally says it looks just as nice when I am in charge.
      Mother obviously, had had more than enough of the back of beyond and
      decided to stay on only one week after my return home. She had gone into the kitchen
      one day just in time to see the houseboy scooping the custard he had spilt on the table
      back into the jug with the side of his hand. No doubt it would have been served up
      without a word. On another occasion she had walked in on the cook’s daily ablutions. He
      was standing in a small bowl of water in the centre of the kitchen, absolutely naked,
      enjoying a slipper bath. She left last Wednesday and gave us a big laugh before she
      left. She never got over her horror of eating food prepared by our cook and used to
      push it around her plate. Well, when the time came for mother to leave for the plane, she
      put on the very smart frock in which she had arrived, and then came into the sitting room
      exclaiming in dismay “Just look what has happened, I must have lost a stone!’ We
      looked, and sure enough, the dress which had been ankle deep before, now touched
      the floor. “Good show mother.” said George unfeelingly. “You ought to be jolly grateful,
      you needed to lose weight and it would have cost you the earth at a beauty parlour to
      get that sylph-like figure.”

      When mother left she took, in a perforated matchbox, one of the frilly mantis that
      live on our roses. She means to keep it in a goldfish bowl in her dining room at home.
      Georgie and Ann filled another matchbox with dead flies for food for the mantis on the
      journey.

      Now that mother has left, Georgie and Ann attach themselves to me and firmly
      refuse to have anything to do with the ayah,Janey. She in any case now wishes to have
      a rest. Mother tipped her well and gave her several cotton frocks so I suspect she wants
      to go back to her hometown in Northern Rhodesia to show off a bit.
      Georgie has just sidled up with a very roguish look. He asked “You like your
      baby?” I said “Yes indeed I do.” He said “I’ll prick your baby with a velly big thorn.”

      Who would be a mother!
      Eleanor

      Mchewe Estate. 20th September 1935

      Dearest Family,

      I have been rather in the wars with toothache and as there is still no dentist at
      Mbeya to do the fillings, I had to have four molars extracted at the hospital. George
      says it is fascinating to watch me at mealtimes these days because there is such a gleam
      of satisfaction in my eye when I do manage to get two teeth to meet on a mouthful.
      About those scissors Marj sent Ann. It was not such a good idea. First she cut off tufts of
      George’s hair so that he now looks like a bad case of ringworm and then she cut a scalp
      lock, a whole fist full of her own shining hair, which George so loves. George scolded
      Ann and she burst into floods of tears. Such a thing as a scolding from her darling daddy
      had never happened before. George immediately made a long drooping moustache
      out of the shorn lock and soon had her smiling again. George is always very gentle with
      Ann. One has to be , because she is frightfully sensitive to criticism.

      I am kept pretty busy these days, Janey has left and my houseboy has been ill
      with pneumonia. I now have to wash all the children’s things and my own, (the cook does
      George’s clothes) and look after the three children. Believe me, I can hardly keep awake
      for Kate’s ten o’clock feed.

      I do hope I shall get some new servants next month because I also got George
      to give notice to the cook. I intercepted him last week as he was storming down the hill
      with my large kitchen knife in his hand. “Where are you going with my knife?” I asked.
      “I’m going to kill a man!” said Alfani, rolling his eyes and looking extremely ferocious. “He
      has taken my wife.” “Not with my knife”, said I reaching for it. So off Alfani went, bent on
      vengeance and I returned the knife to the kitchen. Dinner was served and I made no
      enquiries but I feel that I need someone more restful in the kitchen than our brigand
      Alfani.

      George has been working on the car and has now fitted yet another radiator. This
      is a lorry one and much too tall to be covered by the A.C.’s elegant bonnet which is
      secured by an old strap. The poor old A.C. now looks like an ancient shoe with a turned
      up toe. It only needs me in it with the children to make a fine illustration to the old rhyme!
      Ann and Georgie are going through a climbing phase. They practically live in
      trees. I rushed out this morning to investigate loud screams and found Georgie hanging
      from a fork in a tree by one ankle, whilst Ann stood below on tiptoe with hands stretched
      upwards to support his head.

      Do I sound as though I have straws in my hair? I have.
      Lots of love,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 11th October 1935

      Dearest Family,

      Thank goodness! I have a new ayah name Mary. I had heard that there was a
      good ayah out of work at Tukuyu 60 miles away so sent a messenger to fetch her. She
      arrived after dark wearing a bright dress and a cheerful smile and looked very suitable by
      the light of a storm lamp. I was horrified next morning to see her in daylight. She was
      dressed all in black and had a rather sinister look. She reminds me rather of your old maid
      Candace who overheard me laughing a few days before Ann was born and croaked
      “Yes , Miss Eleanor, today you laugh but next week you might be dead.” Remember
      how livid you were, dad?

      I think Mary has the same grim philosophy. Ann took one look at her and said,
      “What a horrible old lady, mummy.” Georgie just said “Go away”, both in English and Ki-
      Swahili. Anyway Mary’s references are good so I shall keep her on to help with Kate
      who is thriving and bonny and placid.

      Thank you for the offer of toys for Christmas but, if you don’t mind, I’d rather have
      some clothing for the children. Ann is quite contented with her dolls Barbara and Yvonne.
      Barbara’s once beautiful face is now pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle having come
      into contact with Georgie’s ever busy hammer. However Ann says she will love her for
      ever and she doesn’t want another doll. Yvonne’s hay day is over too. She
      disappeared for weeks and we think Fanny, the pup, was the culprit. Ann discovered
      Yvonne one morning in some long wet weeds. Poor Yvonne is now a ghost of her
      former self. All the sophisticated make up was washed off her papier-mâché face and
      her hair is decidedly bedraggled, but Ann was radiant as she tucked her back into bed
      and Yvonne is as precious to Ann as she ever was.

      Georgie simply does not care for toys. His paint box, hammer and the trenching
      hoe George gave him for his second birthday are all he wants or needs. Both children
      love books but I sometimes wonder whether they stimulate Ann’s imagination too much.
      The characters all become friends of hers and she makes up stories about them to tell
      Georgie. She adores that illustrated children’s Bible Mummy sent her but you would be
      astonished at the yarns she spins about “me and my friend Jesus.” She also will call
      Moses “Old Noses”, and looking at a picture of Jacob’s dream, with the shining angels
      on the ladder between heaven and earth, she said “Georgie, if you see an angel, don’t
      touch it, it’s hot.”

      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 17th October 1935

      Dearest Family,

      I take back the disparaging things I said about my new Ayah, because she has
      proved her worth in an unexpected way. On Wednesday morning I settled Kate in he
      cot after her ten o’clock feed and sat sewing at the dining room table with Ann and
      Georgie opposite me, both absorbed in painting pictures in identical seed catalogues.
      Suddenly there was a terrific bang on the back door, followed by an even heavier blow.
      The door was just behind me and I got up and opened it. There, almost filling the door
      frame, stood a huge native with staring eyes and his teeth showing in a mad grimace. In
      his hand he held a rolled umbrella by the ferrule, the shaft I noticed was unusually long
      and thick and the handle was a big round knob.

      I was terrified as you can imagine, especially as, through the gap under the
      native’s raised arm, I could see the new cook and the kitchen boy running away down to
      the shamba! I hastily tried to shut and lock the door but the man just brushed me aside.
      For a moment he stood over me with the umbrella raised as though to strike. Rather
      fortunately, I now think, I was too petrified to say a word. The children never moved but
      Tubbage, the Alsatian, got up and jumped out of the window!

      Then the native turned away and still with the same fixed stare and grimace,
      began to attack the furniture with his umbrella. Tables and chairs were overturned and
      books and ornaments scattered on the floor. When the madman had his back turned and
      was busily bashing the couch, I slipped round the dining room table, took Ann and
      Georgie by the hand and fled through the front door to the garage where I hid the
      children in the car. All this took several minutes because naturally the children were
      terrified. I was worried to death about the baby left alone in the bedroom and as soon
      as I had Ann and Georgie settled I ran back to the house.

      I reached the now open front door just as Kianda the houseboy opened the back
      door of the lounge. He had been away at the river washing clothes but, on hearing of the
      madman from the kitchen boy he had armed himself with a stout stick and very pluckily,
      because he is not a robust boy, had returned to the house to eject the intruder. He
      rushed to attack immediately and I heard a terrific exchange of blows behind me as I
      opened our bedroom door. You can imagine what my feelings were when I was
      confronted by an empty cot! Just then there was an uproar inside as all the farm
      labourers armed with hoes and pangas and sticks, streamed into the living room from the
      shamba whence they had been summoned by the cook. In no time at all the huge
      native was hustled out of the house, flung down the front steps, and securely tied up
      with strips of cloth.

      In the lull that followed I heard a frightened voice calling from the bathroom.
      ”Memsahib is that you? The child is here with me.” I hastily opened the bathroom door
      to find Mary couched in a corner by the bath, shielding Kate with her body. Mary had
      seen the big native enter the house and her first thought had been for her charge. I
      thanked her and promised her a reward for her loyalty, and quickly returned to the garage
      to reassure Ann and Georgie. I met George who looked white and exhausted as well
      he might having run up hill all the way from the coffee store. The kitchen boy had led him
      to expect the worst and he was most relieved to find us all unhurt if a bit shaken.
      We returned to the house by the back way whilst George went to the front and
      ordered our labourers to take their prisoner and lock him up in the store. George then
      discussed the whole affair with his Headman and all the labourers after which he reported
      to me. “The boys say that the bastard is an ex-Askari from Nyasaland. He is not mad as
      you thought but he smokes bhang and has these attacks. I suppose I should take him to
      Mbeya and have him up in court. But if I do that you’ll have to give evidence and that will be a nuisance as the car won’t go and there is also the baby to consider.”

      Eventually we decided to leave the man to sleep off the effects of the Bhang
      until evening when he would be tried before an impromptu court consisting of George,
      the local Jumbe(Headman) and village Elders, and our own farm boys and any other
      interested spectators. It was not long before I knew the verdict because I heard the
      sound of lashes. I was not sorry at all because I felt the man deserved his punishment
      and so did all the Africans. They love children and despise anyone who harms or
      frightens them. With great enthusiasm they frog-marched him off our land, and I sincerely
      hope that that is the last we see or him. Ann and Georgie don’t seem to brood over this
      affair at all. The man was naughty and he was spanked, a quite reasonable state of
      affairs. This morning they hid away in the small thatched chicken house. This is a little brick
      building about four feet square which Ann covets as a dolls house. They came back
      covered in stick fleas which I had to remove with paraffin. My hens are laying well but
      they all have the ‘gapes’! I wouldn’t run a chicken farm for anything, hens are such fussy,
      squawking things.

      Now don’t go worrying about my experience with the native. Such things
      happen only once in a lifetime. We are all very well and happy, and life, apart from the
      children’s pranks is very tranquil.

      Lots and lots of love,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 25th October 1935

      Dearest Family,

      The hot winds have dried up the shamba alarmingly and we hope every day for
      rain. The prices for coffee, on the London market, continue to be low and the local
      planters are very depressed. Coffee grows well enough here but we are over 400
      miles from the railway and transport to the railhead by lorry is very expensive. Then, as
      there is no East African Marketing Board, the coffee must be shipped to England for
      sale. Unless the coffee fetches at least 90 pounds a ton it simply doesn’t pay to grow it.
      When we started planting in 1931 coffee was fetching as much as 115 pounds a ton but
      prices this year were between 45 and 55 pounds. We have practically exhausted our
      capitol and so have all our neighbours. The Hickson -Woods have been keeping their
      pot boiling by selling bat guano to the coffee farmers at Mbosi but now everyone is
      broke and there is not a market for fertilisers. They are offering their farm for sale at a very
      low price.

      Major Jones has got a job working on the district roads and Max Coster talks of
      returning to his work as a geologist. George says he will have to go gold digging on the
      Lupa unless there is a big improvement in the market. Luckily we can live quite cheaply
      here. We have a good vegetable garden, milk is cheap and we have plenty of fruit.
      There are mulberries, pawpaws, grenadillas, peaches, and wine berries. The wine
      berries are very pretty but insipid though Ann and Georgie love them. Each morning,
      before breakfast, the old garden boy brings berries for Ann and Georgie. With a thorn
      the old man pins a large leaf from a wild fig tree into a cone which he fills with scarlet wine
      berries. There is always a cone for each child and they wait eagerly outside for the daily
      ceremony of presentation.

      The rats are being a nuisance again. Both our cats, Skinny Winnie and Blackboy
      disappeared a few weeks ago. We think they made a meal for a leopard. I wrote last
      week to our grocer at Mbalizi asking him whether he could let us have a couple of kittens
      as I have often seen cats in his store. The messenger returned with a nailed down box.
      The kitchen boy was called to prize up the lid and the children stood by in eager
      anticipation. Out jumped two snarling and spitting creatures. One rushed into the kalonga
      and the other into the house and before they were captured they had drawn blood from
      several boys. I told the boys to replace the cats in the box as I intended to return them
      forthwith. They had the colouring, stripes and dispositions of wild cats and I certainly
      didn’t want them as pets, but before the boys could replace the lid the cats escaped
      once more into the undergrowth in the kalonga. George fetched his shotgun and said he
      would shoot the cats on sight or they would kill our chickens. This was more easily said
      than done because the cats could not be found. However during the night the cats
      climbed up into the loft af the house and we could hear them moving around on the reed
      ceiling.

      I said to George,”Oh leave the poor things. At least they might frighten the rats
      away.” That afternoon as we were having tea a thin stream of liquid filtered through the
      ceiling on George’s head. Oh dear!!! That of course was the end. Some raw meat was
      put on the lawn for bait and yesterday George shot both cats.

      I regret to end with the sad story of Mary, heroine in my last letter and outcast in
      this. She came to work quite drunk two days running and I simply had to get rid of her. I
      have heard since from Kath Wood that Mary lost her last job at Tukuyu for the same
      reason. She was ayah to twin girls and one day set their pram on fire.

      So once again my hands are more than full with three lively children. I did say
      didn’t I, when Ann was born that I wanted six children?

      Very much love from us all, Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 8th November 1935

      Dearest Family,

      To set your minds at rest I must tell you that the native who so frightened me and
      the children is now in jail for attacking a Greek at Mbalizi. I hear he is to be sent back to
      Rhodesia when he has finished his sentence.

      Yesterday we had one of our rare trips to Mbeya. George managed to get a couple of
      second hand tyres for the old car and had again got her to work so we are celebrating our
      wedding anniversary by going on an outing. I wore the green and fawn striped silk dress
      mother bought me and the hat and shoes you sent for my birthday and felt like a million
      dollars, for a change. The children all wore new clothes too and I felt very proud of them.
      Ann is still very fair and with her refined little features and straight silky hair she
      looks like Alice in Wonderland. Georgie is dark and sturdy and looks best in khaki shirt
      and shorts and sun helmet. Kate is a pink and gold baby and looks good enough to eat.
      We went straight to the hotel at Mbeya and had the usual warm welcome from
      Ken and Aunty May Menzies. Aunty May wears her hair cut short like a mans and
      usually wears shirt and tie and riding breeches and boots. She always looks ready to go
      on safari at a moments notice as indeed she is. She is often called out to a case of illness
      at some remote spot.

      There were lots of people at the hotel from farms in the district and from the
      diggings. I met women I had not seen for four years. One, a Mrs Masters from Tukuyu,
      said in the lounge, “My God! Last time I saw you , you were just a girl and here you are
      now with two children.” To which I replied with pride, “There is another one in a pram on
      the verandah if you care to look!” Great hilarity in the lounge. The people from the
      diggings seem to have plenty of money to throw around. There was a big party on the
      go in the bar.

      One of our shamba boys died last Friday and all his fellow workers and our
      house boys had the day off to attend the funeral. From what I can gather the local
      funerals are quite cheery affairs. The corpse is dressed in his best clothes and laid
      outside his hut and all who are interested may view the body and pay their respects.
      The heir then calls upon anyone who had a grudge against the dead man to say his say
      and thereafter hold his tongue forever. Then all the friends pay tribute to the dead man
      after which he is buried to the accompaniment of what sounds from a distance, very
      cheerful keening.

      Most of our workmen are pagans though there is a Lutheran Mission nearby and
      a big Roman Catholic Mission in the area too. My present cook, however, claims to be
      a Christian. He certainly went to a mission school and can read and write and also sing
      hymns in Ki-Swahili. When I first engaged him I used to find a large open Bible
      prominently displayed on the kitchen table. The cook is middle aged and arrived here
      with a sensible matronly wife. To my surprise one day he brought along a young girl,
      very plump and giggly and announced proudly that she was his new wife, I said,”But I
      thought you were a Christian Jeremiah? Christians don’t have two wives.” To which he
      replied, “Oh Memsahib, God won’t mind. He knows an African needs two wives – one
      to go with him when he goes away to work and one to stay behind at home to cultivate
      the shamba.

      Needles to say, it is the old wife who has gone to till the family plot.

      With love to all,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 21st November 1935

      Dearest Family,

      The drought has broken with a bang. We had a heavy storm in the hills behind
      the house. Hail fell thick and fast. So nice for all the tiny new berries on the coffee! The
      kids loved the excitement and three times Ann and Georgie ran out for a shower under
      the eaves and had to be changed. After the third time I was fed up and made them both
      lie on their beds whilst George and I had lunch in peace. I told Ann to keep the
      casement shut as otherwise the rain would drive in on her bed. Half way through lunch I
      heard delighted squeals from Georgie and went into the bedroom to investigate. Ann
      was standing on the outer sill in the rain but had shut the window as ordered. “Well
      Mummy , you didn’t say I mustn’t stand on the window sill, and I did shut the window.”
      George is working so hard on the farm. I have a horrible feeling however that it is
      what the Africans call ‘Kazi buri’ (waste of effort) as there seems no chance of the price of
      coffee improving as long as this world depression continues. The worry is that our capitol
      is nearly exhausted. Food is becoming difficult now that our neighbours have left. I used
      to buy delicious butter from Kath Hickson-Wood and an African butcher used to kill a
      beast once a week. Now that we are his only European customers he very rarely kills
      anything larger than a goat, and though we do eat goat, believe me it is not from choice.
      We have of course got plenty to eat, but our diet is very monotonous. I was
      delighted when George shot a large bushbuck last week. What we could not use I cut
      into strips and the salted strips are now hanging in the open garage to dry.

      With love to all,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 6th December 1935

      Dearest Family,

      We have had a lot of rain and the countryside is lovely and green. Last week
      George went to Mbeya taking Ann with him. This was a big adventure for Ann because
      never before had she been anywhere without me. She was in a most blissful state as
      she drove off in the old car clutching a little basket containing sandwiches and half a bottle
      of milk. She looked so pretty in a new blue frock and with her tiny plaits tied with
      matching blue ribbons. When Ann is animated she looks charming because her normally
      pale cheeks become rosy and she shows her pretty dimples.

      As I am still without an ayah I rather looked forward to a quiet morning with only
      Georgie and Margery Kate to care for, but Georgie found it dull without Ann and wanted
      to be entertained and even the normally placid baby was peevish. Then in mid morning
      the rain came down in torrents, the result of a cloudburst in the hills directly behind our
      house. The ravine next to our house was a terrifying sight. It appeared to be a great
      muddy, roaring waterfall reaching from the very top of the hill to a point about 30 yards
      behind our house and then the stream rushed on down the gorge in an angry brown
      flood. The roar of the water was so great that we had to yell at one another to be heard.
      By lunch time the rain had stopped and I anxiously awaited the return of Ann and
      George. They returned on foot, drenched and hungry at about 2.30pm . George had
      had to abandon the car on the main road as the Mchewe River had overflowed and
      turned the road into a muddy lake. The lower part of the shamba had also been flooded
      and the water receded leaving branches and driftwood amongst the coffee. This was my
      first experience of a real tropical storm. I am afraid that after the battering the coffee has
      had there is little hope of a decent crop next year.

      Anyway Christmas is coming so we don’t dwell on these mishaps. The children
      have already chosen their tree from amongst the young cypresses in the vegetable
      garden. We all send our love and hope that you too will have a Happy Christmas.

      Eleanor

      Mchewe Estate. 22nd December 1935

      Dearest Family,

      I’ve been in the wars with my staff. The cook has been away ill for ten days but is
      back today though shaky and full of self pity. The houseboy, who really has been a brick
      during the cooks absence has now taken to his bed and I feel like taking to Mine! The
      children however have the Christmas spirit and are making weird and wonderful paper
      decorations. George’s contribution was to have the house whitewashed throughout and
      it looks beautifully fresh.

      My best bit of news is that my old ayah Janey has been to see me and would
      like to start working here again on Jan 1st. We are all very well. We meant to give
      ourselves an outing to Mbeya as a Christmas treat but here there is an outbreak of
      enteric fever there so will now not go. We have had two visitors from the Diggings this
      week. The children see so few strangers that they were fascinated and hung around
      staring. Ann sat down on the arm of the couch beside one and studied his profile.
      Suddenly she announced in her clear voice, “Mummy do you know, this man has got
      wax in his ears!” Very awkward pause in the conversation. By the way when I was
      cleaning out little Kate’s ears with a swab of cotton wool a few days ago, Ann asked
      “Mummy, do bees have wax in their ears? Well, where do you get beeswax from
      then?”

      I meant to keep your Christmas parcel unopened until Christmas Eve but could
      not resist peeping today. What lovely things! Ann so loves pretties and will be
      delighted with her frocks. My dress is just right and I love Georgie’s manly little flannel
      shorts and blue shirt. We have bought them each a watering can. I suppose I shall
      regret this later. One of your most welcome gifts is the album of nursery rhyme records. I
      am so fed up with those that we have. Both children love singing. I put a record on the
      gramophone geared to slow and off they go . Georgie sings more slowly than Ann but
      much more tunefully. Ann sings in a flat monotone but Georgie with great expression.
      You ought to hear him render ‘Sing a song of sixpence’. He cannot pronounce an R or
      an S. Mother has sent a large home made Christmas pudding and a fine Christmas
      cake and George will shoot some partridges for Christmas dinner.
      Think of us as I shall certainly think of you.

      Your very loving,
      Eleanor.

      Mchewe Estate. 2nd January 1936

      Dearest Family,

      Christmas was fun! The tree looked very gay with its load of tinsel, candles and
      red crackers and the coloured balloons you sent. All the children got plenty of toys
      thanks to Grandparents and Aunts. George made Ann a large doll’s bed and I made
      some elegant bedding, Barbara, the big doll is now permanently bed ridden. Her poor
      shattered head has come all unstuck and though I have pieced it together again it is a sad
      sight. If you have not yet chosen a present for her birthday next month would you
      please get a new head from the Handy House. I enclose measurements. Ann does so
      love the doll. She always calls her, “My little girl”, and she keeps the doll’s bed beside
      her own and never fails to kiss her goodnight.

      We had no guests for Christmas this year but we were quite festive. Ann
      decorated the dinner table with small pink roses and forget-me-knots and tinsel and the
      crackers from the tree. It was a wet day but we played the new records and both
      George and I worked hard to make it a really happy day for the children. The children
      were hugely delighted when George made himself a revolting set of false teeth out of
      plasticine and a moustache and beard of paper straw from a chocolate box. “Oh Daddy
      you look exactly like Father Christmas!” cried an enthralled Ann. Before bedtime we lit
      all the candles on the tree and sang ‘Away in a Manger’, and then we opened the box of
      starlights you sent and Ann and Georgie had their first experience of fireworks.
      After the children went to bed things deteriorated. First George went for his bath
      and found and killed a large black snake in the bathroom. It must have been in the
      bathroom when I bathed the children earlier in the evening. Then I developed bad
      toothache which kept me awake all night and was agonising next day. Unfortunately the
      bridge between the farm and Mbeya had been washed away and the water was too
      deep for the car to ford until the 30th when at last I was able to take my poor swollen
      face to Mbeya. There is now a young German woman dentist working at the hospital.
      She pulled out the offending molar which had a large abscess attached to it.
      Whilst the dentist attended to me, Ann and Georgie played happily with the
      doctor’s children. I wish they could play more often with other children. Dr Eckhardt was
      very pleased with Margery Kate who at seven months weighs 17 lbs and has lovely
      rosy cheeks. He admired Ann and told her that she looked just like a German girl. “No I
      don’t”, cried Ann indignantly, “I’m English!”

      We were caught in a rain storm going home and as the old car still has no
      windscreen or side curtains we all got soaked except for the baby who was snugly
      wrapped in my raincoat. The kids thought it great fun. Ann is growing up fast now. She
      likes to ‘help mummy’. She is a perfectionist at four years old which is rather trying. She
      gets so discouraged when things do not turn out as well as she means them to. Sewing
      is constantly being unpicked and paintings torn up. She is a very sensitive child.
      Georgie is quite different. He is a man of action, but not silent. He talks incessantly
      but lisps and stumbles over some words. At one time Ann and Georgie often
      conversed in Ki-Swahili but they now scorn to do so. If either forgets and uses a Swahili
      word, the other points a scornful finger and shouts “You black toto”.

      With love to all,
      Eleanor.

      #6261
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        From Tanganyika with Love

        continued

        With thanks to Mike Rushby.

        Mchewe Estate. 11th July 1931.

        Dearest Family,

        You say that you would like to know more about our neighbours. Well there is
        not much to tell. Kath Wood is very good about coming over to see me. I admire her
        very much because she is so capable as well as being attractive. She speaks very
        fluent Ki-Swahili and I envy her the way she can carry on a long conversation with the
        natives. I am very slow in learning the language possibly because Lamek and the
        houseboy both speak basic English.

        I have very little to do with the Africans apart from the house servants, but I do
        run a sort of clinic for the wives and children of our employees. The children suffer chiefly
        from sore eyes and worms, and the older ones often have bad ulcers on their legs. All
        farmers keep a stock of drugs and bandages.

        George also does a bit of surgery and last month sewed up the sole of the foot
        of a boy who had trodden on the blade of a panga, a sort of sword the Africans use for
        hacking down bush. He made an excellent job of it. George tells me that the Africans
        have wonderful powers of recuperation. Once in his bachelor days, one of his men was
        disembowelled by an elephant. George washed his “guts” in a weak solution of
        pot.permang, put them back in the cavity and sewed up the torn flesh and he
        recovered.

        But to get back to the neighbours. We see less of Hicky Wood than of Kath.
        Hicky can be charming but is often moody as I believe Irishmen often are.
        Major Jones is now at home on his shamba, which he leaves from time to time
        for temporary jobs on the district roads. He walks across fairly regularly and we are
        always glad to see him for he is a great bearer of news. In this part of Africa there is no
        knocking or ringing of doorbells. Front doors are always left open and visitors always
        welcome. When a visitor approaches a house he shouts “Hodi”, and the owner of the
        house yells “Karibu”, which I believe means “Come near” or approach, and tea is
        produced in a matter of minutes no matter what hour of the day it is.
        The road that passes all our farms is the only road to the Gold Diggings and
        diggers often drop in on the Woods and Major Jones and bring news of the Goldfields.
        This news is sometimes about gold but quite often about whose wife is living with
        whom. This is a great country for gossip.

        Major Jones now has his brother Llewyllen living with him. I drove across with
        George to be introduced to him. Llewyllen’s health is poor and he looks much older than
        his years and very like the portrait of Trader Horn. He has the same emaciated features,
        burning eyes and long beard. He is proud of his Welsh tenor voice and often bursts into
        song.

        Both brothers are excellent conversationalists and George enjoys walking over
        sometimes on a Sunday for a bit of masculine company. The other day when George
        walked across to visit the Joneses, he found both brothers in the shamba and Llew in a
        great rage. They had been stooping to inspect a water furrow when Llew backed into a
        hornets nest. One furious hornet stung him on the seat and another on the back of his
        neck. Llew leapt forward and somehow his false teeth shot out into the furrow and were
        carried along by the water. When George arrived Llew had retrieved his teeth but
        George swears that, in the commotion, the heavy leather leggings, which Llew always
        wears, had swivelled around on his thin legs and were calves to the front.
        George has heard that Major Jones is to sell pert of his land to his Swedish brother-in-law, Max Coster, so we will soon have another couple in the neighbourhood.

        I’ve had a bit of a pantomime here on the farm. On the day we went to Tukuyu,
        all our washing was stolen from the clothes line and also our new charcoal iron. George
        reported the matter to the police and they sent out a plain clothes policeman. He wears
        the long white Arab gown called a Kanzu much in vogue here amongst the African elite
        but, alas for secrecy, huge black police boots protrude from beneath the Kanzu and, to
        add to this revealing clue, the askari springs to attention and salutes each time I pass by.
        Not much hope of finding out the identity of the thief I fear.

        George’s furrow was entirely successful and we now have water running behind
        the kitchen. Our drinking water we get from a lovely little spring on the farm. We boil and
        filter it for safety’s sake. I don’t think that is necessary. The furrow water is used for
        washing pots and pans and for bath water.

        Lots of love,
        Eleanor

        Mchewe Estate. 8th. August 1931

        Dearest Family,

        I think it is about time I told you that we are going to have a baby. We are both
        thrilled about it. I have not seen a Doctor but feel very well and you are not to worry. I
        looked it up in my handbook for wives and reckon that the baby is due about February
        8th. next year.

        The announcement came from George, not me! I had been feeling queasy for
        days and was waiting for the right moment to tell George. You know. Soft lights and
        music etc. However when I was listlessly poking my food around one lunch time
        George enquired calmly, “When are you going to tell me about the baby?” Not at all
        according to the book! The problem is where to have the baby. February is a very wet
        month and the nearest Doctor is over 50 miles away at Tukuyu. I cannot go to stay at
        Tukuyu because there is no European accommodation at the hospital, no hotel and no
        friend with whom I could stay.

        George thinks I should go South to you but Capetown is so very far away and I
        love my little home here. Also George says he could not come all the way down with
        me as he simply must stay here and get the farm on its feet. He would drive me as far
        as the railway in Northern Rhodesia. It is a difficult decision to take. Write and tell me what
        you think.

        The days tick by quietly here. The servants are very willing but have to be
        supervised and even then a crisis can occur. Last Saturday I was feeling squeamish and
        decided not to have lunch. I lay reading on the couch whilst George sat down to a
        solitary curry lunch. Suddenly he gave an exclamation and pushed back his chair. I
        jumped up to see what was wrong and there, on his plate, gleaming in the curry gravy
        were small bits of broken glass. I hurried to the kitchen to confront Lamek with the plate.
        He explained that he had dropped the new and expensive bottle of curry powder on
        the brick floor of the kitchen. He did not tell me as he thought I would make a “shauri” so
        he simply scooped up the curry powder, removed the larger pieces of glass and used
        part of the powder for seasoning the lunch.

        The weather is getting warmer now. It was very cold in June and July and we had
        fires in the daytime as well as at night. Now that much of the land has been cleared we
        are able to go for pleasant walks in the weekends. My favourite spot is a waterfall on the
        Mchewe River just on the boundary of our land. There is a delightful little pool below the
        waterfall and one day George intends to stock it with trout.

        Now that there are more Europeans around to buy meat the natives find it worth
        their while to kill an occasional beast. Every now and again a native arrives with a large
        bowl of freshly killed beef for sale. One has no way of knowing whether the animal was
        healthy and the meat is often still warm and very bloody. I hated handling it at first but am
        becoming accustomed to it now and have even started a brine tub. There is no other
        way of keeping meat here and it can only be kept in its raw state for a few hours before
        going bad. One of the delicacies is the hump which all African cattle have. When corned
        it is like the best brisket.

        See what a housewife I am becoming.
        With much love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. Sept.6th. 1931

        Dearest Family,

        I have grown to love the life here and am sad to think I shall be leaving
        Tanganyika soon for several months. Yes I am coming down to have the baby in the
        bosom of the family. George thinks it best and so does the doctor. I didn’t mention it
        before but I have never recovered fully from the effects of that bad bout of malaria and
        so I have been persuaded to leave George and our home and go to the Cape, in the
        hope that I shall come back here as fit as when I first arrived in the country plus a really
        healthy and bouncing baby. I am torn two ways, I long to see you all – but how I would
        love to stay on here.

        George will drive me down to Northern Rhodesia in early October to catch a
        South bound train. I’ll telegraph the date of departure when I know it myself. The road is
        very, very bad and the car has been giving a good deal of trouble so, though the baby
        is not due until early February, George thinks it best to get the journey over soon as
        possible, for the rains break in November and the the roads will then be impassable. It
        may take us five or six days to reach Broken Hill as we will take it slowly. I am looking
        forward to the drive through new country and to camping out at night.
        Our days pass quietly by. George is out on the shamba most of the day. He
        goes out before breakfast on weekdays and spends most of the day working with the
        men – not only supervising but actually working with his hands and beating the labourers
        at their own jobs. He comes to the house for meals and tea breaks. I potter around the
        house and garden, sew, mend and read. Lamek continues to be a treasure. he turns out
        some surprising dishes. One of his specialities is stuffed chicken. He carefully skins the
        chicken removing all bones. He then minces all the chicken meat and adds minced onion
        and potatoes. He then stuffs the chicken skin with the minced meat and carefully sews it
        together again. The resulting dish is very filling because the boned chicken is twice the
        size of a normal one. It lies on its back as round as a football with bloated legs in the air.
        Rather repulsive to look at but Lamek is most proud of his accomplishment.
        The other day he produced another of his masterpieces – a cooked tortoise. It
        was served on a dish covered with parsley and crouched there sans shell but, only too
        obviously, a tortoise. I took one look and fled with heaving diaphragm, but George said
        it tasted quite good. He tells me that he has had queerer dishes produced by former
        cooks. He says that once in his hunting days his cook served up a skinned baby
        monkey with its hands folded on its breast. He says it would take a cannibal to eat that
        dish.

        And now for something sad. Poor old Llew died quite suddenly and it was a sad
        shock to this tiny community. We went across to the funeral and it was a very simple and
        dignified affair. Llew was buried on Joni’s farm in a grave dug by the farm boys. The
        body was wrapped in a blanket and bound to some boards and lowered into the
        ground. There was no service. The men just said “Good-bye Llew.” and “Sleep well
        Llew”, and things like that. Then Joni and his brother-in-law Max, and George shovelled
        soil over the body after which the grave was filled in by Joni’s shamba boys. It was a
        lovely bright afternoon and I thought how simple and sensible a funeral it was.
        I hope you will be glad to have me home. I bet Dad will be holding thumbs that
        the baby will be a girl.

        Very much love,
        Eleanor.

        Note
        “There are no letters to my family during the period of Sept. 1931 to June 1932
        because during these months I was living with my parents and sister in a suburb of
        Cape Town. I had hoped to return to Tanganyika by air with my baby soon after her
        birth in Feb.1932 but the doctor would not permit this.

        A month before my baby was born, a company called Imperial Airways, had
        started the first passenger service between South Africa and England. One of the night
        stops was at Mbeya near my husband’s coffee farm, and it was my intention to take the
        train to Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia and to fly from there to Mbeya with my month
        old baby. In those days however, commercial flying was still a novelty and the doctor
        was not sure that flying at a high altitude might not have an adverse effect upon a young
        baby.

        He strongly advised me to wait until the baby was four months old and I did this
        though the long wait was very trying to my husband alone on our farm in Tanganyika,
        and to me, cherished though I was in my old home.

        My story, covering those nine long months is soon told. My husband drove me
        down from Mbeya to Broken Hill in NorthernRhodesia. The journey was tedious as the
        weather was very hot and dry and the road sandy and rutted, very different from the
        Great North road as it is today. The wooden wheel spokes of the car became so dry
        that they rattled and George had to bind wet rags around them. We had several
        punctures and with one thing and another I was lucky to catch the train.
        My parents were at Cape Town station to welcome me and I stayed
        comfortably with them, living very quietly, until my baby was born. She arrived exactly
        on the appointed day, Feb.8th.

        I wrote to my husband “Our Charmian Ann is a darling baby. She is very fair and
        rather pale and has the most exquisite hands, with long tapering fingers. Daddy
        absolutely dotes on her and so would you, if you were here. I can’t bear to think that you
        are so terribly far away. Although Ann was born exactly on the day, I was taken quite by
        surprise. It was awfully hot on the night before, and before going to bed I had a fancy for
        some water melon. The result was that when I woke in the early morning with labour
        pains and vomiting I thought it was just an attack of indigestion due to eating too much
        melon. The result was that I did not wake Marjorie until the pains were pretty frequent.
        She called our next door neighbour who, in his pyjamas, drove me to the nursing home
        at breakneck speed. The Matron was very peeved that I had left things so late but all
        went well and by nine o’clock, Mother, positively twittering with delight, was allowed to
        see me and her first granddaughter . She told me that poor Dad was in such a state of
        nerves that he was sick amongst the grapevines. He says that he could not bear to go
        through such an anxious time again, — so we will have to have our next eleven in
        Tanganyika!”

        The next four months passed rapidly as my time was taken up by the demands
        of my new baby. Dr. Trudy King’s method of rearing babies was then the vogue and I
        stuck fanatically to all the rules he laid down, to the intense exasperation of my parents
        who longed to cuddle the child.

        As the time of departure drew near my parents became more and more reluctant
        to allow me to face the journey alone with their adored grandchild, so my brother,
        Graham, very generously offered to escort us on the train to Broken Hill where he could
        put us on the plane for Mbeya.

        Eleanor Rushby

         

        Mchewe Estate. June 15th 1932

        Dearest Family,

        You’ll be glad to know that we arrived quite safe and sound and very, very
        happy to be home.The train Journey was uneventful. Ann slept nearly all the way.
        Graham was very kind and saw to everything. He even sat with the baby whilst I went
        to meals in the dining car.

        We were met at Broken Hill by the Thoms who had arranged accommodation for
        us at the hotel for the night. They also drove us to the aerodrome in the morning where
        the Airways agent told us that Ann is the first baby to travel by air on this section of the
        Cape to England route. The plane trip was very bumpy indeed especially between
        Broken Hill and Mpika. Everyone was ill including poor little Ann who sicked up her milk
        all over the front of my new coat. I arrived at Mbeya looking a sorry caricature of Radiant
        Motherhood. I must have been pale green and the baby was snow white. Under the
        circumstances it was a good thing that George did not meet us. We were met instead
        by Ken Menzies, the owner of the Mbeya Hotel where we spent the night. Ken was
        most fatherly and kind and a good nights rest restored Ann and me to our usual robust
        health.

        Mbeya has greatly changed. The hotel is now finished and can accommodate
        fifty guests. It consists of a large main building housing a large bar and dining room and
        offices and a number of small cottage bedrooms. It even has electric light. There are
        several buildings out at the aerodrome and private houses going up in Mbeya.
        After breakfast Ken Menzies drove us out to the farm where we had a warm
        welcome from George, who looks well but rather thin. The house was spotless and the
        new cook, Abel, had made light scones for tea. George had prepared all sorts of lovely
        surprises. There is a new reed ceiling in the living room and a new dresser gay with
        willow pattern plates which he had ordered from England. There is also a writing table
        and a square table by the door for visitors hats. More personal is a lovely model ship
        which George assembled from one of those Hobbie’s kits. It puts the finishing touch to
        the rather old world air of our living room.

        In the bedroom there is a large double bed which George made himself. It has
        strips of old car tyres nailed to a frame which makes a fine springy mattress and on top
        of this is a thick mattress of kapok.In the kitchen there is a good wood stove which
        George salvaged from a Mission dump. It looks a bit battered but works very well. The
        new cook is excellent. The only blight is that he will wear rubber soled tennis shoes and
        they smell awful. I daren’t hurt his feelings by pointing this out though. Opposite the
        kitchen is a new laundry building containing a forty gallon hot water drum and a sink for
        washing up. Lovely!

        George has been working very hard. He now has forty acres of coffee seedlings
        planted out and has also found time to plant a rose garden and fruit trees. There are
        orange and peach trees, tree tomatoes, paw paws, guavas and berries. He absolutely
        adores Ann who has been very good and does not seem at all unsettled by the long
        journey.

        It is absolutely heavenly to be back and I shall be happier than ever now that I
        have a baby to play with during the long hours when George is busy on the farm,
        Thank you for all your love and care during the many months I was with you. Ann
        sends a special bubble for granddad.

        Your very loving,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate Mbeya July 18th 1932

        Dearest Family,

        Ann at five months is enchanting. She is a very good baby, smiles readily and is
        gaining weight steadily. She doesn’t sleep much during the day but that does not
        matter, because, apart from washing her little things, I have nothing to do but attend to
        her. She sleeps very well at night which is a blessing as George has to get up very
        early to start work on the shamba and needs a good nights rest.
        My nights are not so good, because we are having a plague of rats which frisk
        around in the bedroom at night. Great big ones that come up out of the long grass in the
        gorge beside the house and make cosy homes on our reed ceiling and in the thatch of
        the roof.

        We always have a night light burning so that, if necessary, I can attend to Ann
        with a minimum of fuss, and the things I see in that dim light! There are gaps between
        the reeds and one night I heard, plop! and there, before my horrified gaze, lay a newly
        born hairless baby rat on the floor by the bed, plop, plop! and there lay two more.
        Quite dead, poor things – but what a careless mother.

        I have also seen rats scampering around on the tops of the mosquito nets and
        sometimes we have them on our bed. They have a lovely game. They swarm down
        the cord from which the mosquito net is suspended, leap onto the bed and onto the
        floor. We do not have our net down now the cold season is here and there are few
        mosquitoes.

        Last week a rat crept under Ann’s net which hung to the floor and bit her little
        finger, so now I tuck the net in under the mattress though it makes it difficult for me to
        attend to her at night. We shall have to get a cat somewhere. Ann’s pram has not yet
        arrived so George carries her when we go walking – to her great content.
        The native women around here are most interested in Ann. They come to see
        her, bearing small gifts, and usually bring a child or two with them. They admire my child
        and I admire theirs and there is an exchange of gifts. They produce a couple of eggs or
        a few bananas or perhaps a skinny fowl and I hand over sugar, salt or soap as they
        value these commodities. The most lavish gift went to the wife of Thomas our headman,
        who produced twin daughters in the same week as I had Ann.

        Our neighbours have all been across to welcome me back and to admire the
        baby. These include Marion Coster who came out to join her husband whilst I was in
        South Africa. The two Hickson-Wood children came over on a fat old white donkey.
        They made a pretty picture sitting astride, one behind the other – Maureen with her arms
        around small Michael’s waist. A native toto led the donkey and the children’ s ayah
        walked beside it.

        It is quite cold here now but the sun is bright and the air dry. The whole
        countryside is beautifully green and we are a very happy little family.

        Lots and lots of love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate August 11th 1932

        Dearest Family,

        George has been very unwell for the past week. He had a nasty gash on his
        knee which went septic. He had a swelling in the groin and a high temperature and could
        not sleep at night for the pain in his leg. Ann was very wakeful too during the same
        period, I think she is teething. I luckily have kept fit though rather harassed. Yesterday the
        leg looked so inflamed that George decided to open up the wound himself. he made
        quite a big cut in exactly the right place. You should have seen the blackish puss
        pouring out.

        After he had thoroughly cleaned the wound George sewed it up himself. he has
        the proper surgical needles and gut. He held the cut together with his left hand and
        pushed the needle through the flesh with his right. I pulled the needle out and passed it
        to George for the next stitch. I doubt whether a surgeon could have made a neater job
        of it. He is still confined to the couch but today his temperature is normal. Some
        husband!

        The previous week was hectic in another way. We had a visit from lions! George
        and I were having supper about 8.30 on Tuesday night when the back verandah was
        suddenly invaded by women and children from the servants quarters behind the kitchen.
        They were all yelling “Simba, Simba.” – simba means lions. The door opened suddenly
        and the houseboy rushed in to say that there were lions at the huts. George got up
        swiftly, fetched gun and ammunition from the bedroom and with the houseboy carrying
        the lamp, went off to investigate. I remained at the table, carrying on with my supper as I
        felt a pioneer’s wife should! Suddenly something big leapt through the open window
        behind me. You can imagine what I thought! I know now that it is quite true to say one’s
        hair rises when one is scared. However it was only Kelly, our huge Irish wolfhound,
        taking cover.

        George returned quite soon to say that apparently the commotion made by the
        women and children had frightened the lions off. He found their tracks in the soft earth
        round the huts and a bag of maize that had been playfully torn open but the lions had
        moved on.

        Next day we heard that they had moved to Hickson-Wood’s shamba. Hicky
        came across to say that the lions had jumped over the wall of his cattle boma and killed
        both his white Muskat riding donkeys.
        He and a friend sat up all next night over the remains but the lions did not return to
        the kill.

        Apart from the little set back last week, Ann is blooming. She has a cap of very
        fine fair hair and clear blue eyes under straight brow. She also has lovely dimples in both
        cheeks. We are very proud of her.

        Our neighbours are picking coffee but the crops are small and the price is low. I
        am amazed that they are so optimistic about the future. No one in these parts ever
        seems to grouse though all are living on capital. They all say “Well if the worst happens
        we can always go up to the Lupa Diggings.”

        Don’t worry about us, we have enough to tide us over for some time yet.

        Much love to all,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 28th Sept. 1932

        Dearest Family,

        News! News! I’m going to have another baby. George and I are delighted and I
        hope it will be a boy this time. I shall be able to have him at Mbeya because things are
        rapidly changing here. Several German families have moved to Mbeya including a
        German doctor who means to build a hospital there. I expect he will make a very good
        living because there must now be some hundreds of Europeans within a hundred miles
        radius of Mbeya. The Europeans are mostly British or German but there are also
        Greeks and, I believe, several other nationalities are represented on the Lupa Diggings.
        Ann is blooming and developing according to the Book except that she has no
        teeth yet! Kath Hickson-Wood has given her a very nice high chair and now she has
        breakfast and lunch at the table with us. Everything within reach goes on the floor to her
        amusement and my exasperation!

        You ask whether we have any Church of England missionaries in our part. No we
        haven’t though there are Lutheran and Roman Catholic Missions. I have never even
        heard of a visiting Church of England Clergyman to these parts though there are babies
        in plenty who have not been baptised. Jolly good thing I had Ann Christened down
        there.

        The R.C. priests in this area are called White Fathers. They all have beards and
        wear white cassocks and sun helmets. One, called Father Keiling, calls around frequently.
        Though none of us in this area is Catholic we take it in turn to put him up for the night. The
        Catholic Fathers in their turn are most hospitable to travellers regardless of their beliefs.
        Rather a sad thing has happened. Lucas our old chicken-boy is dead. I shall miss
        his toothy smile. George went to the funeral and fired two farewell shots from his rifle
        over the grave – a gesture much appreciated by the locals. Lucas in his day was a good
        hunter.

        Several of the locals own muzzle loading guns but the majority hunt with dogs
        and spears. The dogs wear bells which make an attractive jingle but I cannot bear the
        idea of small antelope being run down until they are exhausted before being clubbed of
        stabbed to death. We seldom eat venison as George does not care to shoot buck.
        Recently though, he shot an eland and Abel rendered down the fat which is excellent for
        cooking and very like beef fat.

        Much love to all,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. P.O.Mbeya 21st November 1932

        Dearest Family,

        George has gone off to the Lupa for a week with John Molteno. John came up
        here with the idea of buying a coffee farm but he has changed his mind and now thinks of
        staking some claims on the diggings and also setting up as a gold buyer.

        Did I tell you about his arrival here? John and George did some elephant hunting
        together in French Equatorial Africa and when John heard that George had married and
        settled in Tanganyika, he also decided to come up here. He drove up from Cape Town
        in a Baby Austin and arrived just as our labourers were going home for the day. The little
        car stopped half way up our hill and John got out to investigate. You should have heard
        the astonished exclamations when John got out – all 6 ft 5 ins. of him! He towered over
        the little car and even to me it seemed impossible for him to have made the long
        journey in so tiny a car.

        Kath Wood has been over several times lately. She is slim and looks so right in
        the shirt and corduroy slacks she almost always wears. She was here yesterday when
        the shamba boy, digging in the front garden, unearthed a large earthenware cooking pot,
        sealed at the top. I was greatly excited and had an instant mental image of fabulous
        wealth. We made the boy bring the pot carefully on to the verandah and opened it in
        happy anticipation. What do you think was inside? Nothing but a grinning skull! Such a
        treat for a pregnant female.

        We have a tree growing here that had lovely straight branches covered by a
        smooth bark. I got the garden boy to cut several of these branches of a uniform size,
        peeled off the bark and have made Ann a playpen with the poles which are much like
        broom sticks. Now I can leave her unattended when I do my chores. The other morning
        after breakfast I put Ann in her playpen on the verandah and gave her a piece of toast
        and honey to keep her quiet whilst I laundered a few of her things. When I looked out a
        little later I was horrified to see a number of bees buzzing around her head whilst she
        placidly concentrated on her toast. I made a rapid foray and rescued her but I still don’t
        know whether that was the thing to do.

        We all send our love,
        Eleanor.

        Mbeya Hospital. April 25th. 1933

        Dearest Family,

        Here I am, installed at the very new hospital, built by Dr Eckhardt, awaiting the
        arrival of the new baby. George has gone back to the farm on foot but will walk in again
        to spend the weekend with us. Ann is with me and enjoys the novelty of playing with
        other children. The Eckhardts have two, a pretty little girl of two and a half and a very fair
        roly poly boy of Ann’s age. Ann at fourteen months is very active. She is quite a little girl
        now with lovely dimples. She walks well but is backward in teething.

        George, Ann and I had a couple of days together at the hotel before I moved in
        here and several of the local women visited me and have promised to visit me in
        hospital. The trip from farm to town was very entertaining if not very comfortable. There
        is ten miles of very rough road between our farm and Utengule Mission and beyond the
        Mission there is a fair thirteen or fourteen mile road to Mbeya.

        As we have no car now the doctor’s wife offered to drive us from the Mission to
        Mbeya but she would not risk her car on the road between the Mission and our farm.
        The upshot was that I rode in the Hickson-Woods machila for that ten mile stretch. The
        machila is a canopied hammock, slung from a bamboo pole, in which I reclined, not too
        comfortably in my unwieldy state, with Ann beside me or sometime straddling me. Four
        of our farm boys carried the machila on their shoulders, two fore and two aft. The relief
        bearers walked on either side. There must have been a dozen in all and they sang a sort
        of sea shanty song as they walked. One man would sing a verse and the others took up
        the chorus. They often improvise as they go. They moaned about my weight (at least
        George said so! I don’t follow Ki-Swahili well yet) and expressed the hope that I would
        have a son and that George would reward them handsomely.

        George and Kelly, the dog, followed close behind the machila and behind
        George came Abel our cook and his wife and small daughter Annalie, all in their best
        attire. The cook wore a palm beach suit, large Terai hat and sunglasses and two colour
        shoes and quite lent a tone to the proceedings! Right at the back came the rag tag and
        bobtail who joined the procession just for fun.

        Mrs Eckhardt was already awaiting us at the Mission when we arrived and we had
        an uneventful trip to the Mbeya Hotel.

        During my last week at the farm I felt very tired and engaged the cook’s small
        daughter, Annalie, to amuse Ann for an hour after lunch so that I could have a rest. They
        played in the small verandah room which adjoins our bedroom and where I keep all my
        sewing materials. One afternoon I was startled by a scream from Ann. I rushed to the
        room and found Ann with blood steaming from her cheek. Annalie knelt beside her,
        looking startled and frightened, with my embroidery scissors in her hand. She had cut off
        half of the long curling golden lashes on one of Ann’s eyelids and, in trying to finish the
        job, had cut off a triangular flap of skin off Ann’s cheek bone.

        I called Abel, the cook, and demanded that he should chastise his daughter there and
        then and I soon heard loud shrieks from behind the kitchen. He spanked her with a
        bamboo switch but I am sure not as well as she deserved. Africans are very tolerant
        towards their children though I have seen husbands and wives fighting furiously.
        I feel very well but long to have the confinement over.

        Very much love,
        Eleanor.

        Mbeya Hospital. 2nd May 1933.

        Dearest Family,

        Little George arrived at 7.30 pm on Saturday evening 29 th. April. George was
        with me at the time as he had walked in from the farm for news, and what a wonderful bit
        of luck that was. The doctor was away on a case on the Diggings and I was bathing Ann
        with George looking on, when the pains started. George dried Ann and gave her
        supper and put her to bed. Afterwards he sat on the steps outside my room and a
        great comfort it was to know that he was there.

        The confinement was short but pretty hectic. The Doctor returned to the Hospital
        just in time to deliver the baby. He is a grand little boy, beautifully proportioned. The
        doctor says he has never seen a better formed baby. He is however rather funny
        looking just now as his head is, very temporarily, egg shaped. He has a shock of black
        silky hair like a gollywog and believe it or not, he has a slight black moustache.
        George came in, looked at the baby, looked at me, and we both burst out
        laughing. The doctor was shocked and said so. He has no sense of humour and couldn’t
        understand that we, though bursting with pride in our son, could never the less laugh at
        him.

        Friends in Mbeya have sent me the most gorgeous flowers and my room is
        transformed with delphiniums, roses and carnations. The room would be very austere
        without the flowers. Curtains, bedspread and enamelware, walls and ceiling are all
        snowy white.

        George hired a car and took Ann home next day. I have little George for
        company during the day but he is removed at night. I am longing to get him home and
        away from the German nurse who feeds him on black tea when he cries. She insists that
        tea is a medicine and good for him.

        Much love from a proud mother of two.
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate 12May 1933

        Dearest Family,

        We are all together at home again and how lovely it feels. Even the house
        servants seem pleased. The boy had decorated the lounge with sprays of
        bougainvillaea and Abel had backed one of his good sponge cakes.

        Ann looked fat and rosy but at first was only moderately interested in me and the
        new baby but she soon thawed. George is good with her and will continue to dress Ann
        in the mornings and put her to bed until I am satisfied with Georgie.

        He, poor mite, has a nasty rash on face and neck. I am sure it is just due to that
        tea the nurse used to give him at night. He has lost his moustache and is fast loosing his
        wild black hair and emerging as quite a handsome babe. He is a very masculine looking
        infant with much more strongly marked eyebrows and a larger nose that Ann had. He is
        very good and lies quietly in his basket even when awake.

        George has been making a hatching box for brown trout ova and has set it up in
        a small clear stream fed by a spring in readiness for the ova which is expected from
        South Africa by next weeks plane. Some keen fishermen from Mbeya and the District
        have clubbed together to buy the ova. The fingerlings are later to be transferred to
        streams in Mbeya and Tukuyu Districts.

        I shall now have my hands full with the two babies and will not have much time for the
        garden, or I fear, for writing very long letters. Remember though, that no matter how
        large my family becomes, I shall always love you as much as ever.

        Your affectionate,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 14th June 1933

        Dearest Family,

        The four of us are all well but alas we have lost our dear Kelly. He was rather a
        silly dog really, although he grew so big he retained all his puppy ways but we were all
        very fond of him, especially George because Kelly attached himself to George whilst I
        was away having Ann and from that time on he was George’s shadow. I think he had
        some form of biliary fever. He died stretched out on the living room couch late last night,
        with George sitting beside him so that he would not feel alone.

        The children are growing fast. Georgie is a darling. He now has a fluff of pale
        brown hair and his eyes are large and dark brown. Ann is very plump and fair.
        We have had several visitors lately. Apart from neighbours, a car load of diggers
        arrived one night and John Molteno and his bride were here. She is a very attractive girl
        but, I should say, more suited to life in civilisation than in this back of beyond. She has
        gone out to the diggings with her husband and will have to walk a good stretch of the fifty
        or so miles.

        The diggers had to sleep in the living room on the couch and on hastily erected
        camp beds. They arrived late at night and left after breakfast next day. One had half a
        beard, the other side of his face had been forcibly shaved in the bar the night before.

        your affectionate,
        Eleanor

        Mchewe Estate. August 10 th. 1933

        Dearest Family,

        George is away on safari with two Indian Army officers. The money he will get for
        his services will be very welcome because this coffee growing is a slow business, and
        our capitol is rapidly melting away. The job of acting as White Hunter was unexpected
        or George would not have taken on the job of hatching the ova which duly arrived from
        South Africa.

        George and the District Commissioner, David Pollock, went to meet the plane
        by which the ova had been consigned but the pilot knew nothing about the package. It
        came to light in the mail bag with the parcels! However the ova came to no harm. David
        Pollock and George brought the parcel to the farm and carefully transferred the ova to
        the hatching box. It was interesting to watch the tiny fry hatch out – a process which took
        several days. Many died in the process and George removed the dead by sucking
        them up in a glass tube.

        When hatched, the tiny fry were fed on ant eggs collected by the boys. I had to
        take over the job of feeding and removing the dead when George left on safari. The fry
        have to be fed every four hours, like the baby, so each time I have fed Georgie. I hurry
        down to feed the trout.

        The children are very good but keep me busy. Ann can now say several words
        and understands more. She adores Georgie. I long to show them off to you.

        Very much love
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. October 27th 1933

        Dear Family,

        All just over flu. George and Ann were very poorly. I did not fare so badly and
        Georgie came off best. He is on a bottle now.

        There was some excitement here last Wednesday morning. At 6.30 am. I called
        for boiling water to make Georgie’s food. No water arrived but muffled shouting and the
        sound of blows came from the kitchen. I went to investigate and found a fierce fight in
        progress between the house boy and the kitchen boy. In my efforts to make them stop
        fighting I went too close and got a sharp bang on the mouth with the edge of an
        enamelled plate the kitchen boy was using as a weapon. My teeth cut my lip inside and
        the plate cut it outside and blood flowed from mouth to chin. The boys were petrified.
        By the time I had fed Georgie the lip was stiff and swollen. George went in wrath
        to the kitchen and by breakfast time both house boy and kitchen boy had swollen faces
        too. Since then I have a kettle of boiling water to hand almost before the words are out
        of my mouth. I must say that the fight was because the house boy had clouted the
        kitchen boy for keeping me waiting! In this land of piece work it is the job of the kitchen
        boy to light the fire and boil the kettle but the houseboy’s job to carry the kettle to me.
        I have seen little of Kath Wood or Marion Coster for the past two months. Major
        Jones is the neighbour who calls most regularly. He has a wireless set and calls on all of
        us to keep us up to date with world as well as local news. He often brings oranges for
        Ann who adores him. He is a very nice person but no oil painting and makes no effort to
        entertain Ann but she thinks he is fine. Perhaps his monocle appeals to her.

        George has bought a six foot long galvanised bath which is a great improvement
        on the smaller oval one we have used until now. The smaller one had grown battered
        from much use and leaks like a sieve. Fortunately our bathroom has a cement floor,
        because one had to fill the bath to the brim and then bath extremely quickly to avoid
        being left high and dry.

        Lots and lots of love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 1st December 1933

        Dearest Family,

        Ann has not been well. We think she has had malaria. She has grown a good
        deal lately and looks much thinner and rather pale. Georgie is thriving and has such
        sparkling brown eyes and a ready smile. He and Ann make a charming pair, one so fair
        and the other dark.

        The Moltenos’ spent a few days here and took Georgie and me to Mbeya so
        that Georgie could be vaccinated. However it was an unsatisfactory trip because the
        doctor had no vaccine.

        George went to the Lupa with the Moltenos and returned to the farm in their Baby
        Austin which they have lent to us for a week. This was to enable me to go to Mbeya to
        have a couple of teeth filled by a visiting dentist.

        We went to Mbeya in the car on Saturday. It was quite a squash with the four of
        us on the front seat of the tiny car. Once George grabbed the babies foot instead of the
        gear knob! We had Georgie vaccinated at the hospital and then went to the hotel where
        the dentist was installed. Mr Dare, the dentist, had few instruments and they were very
        tarnished. I sat uncomfortably on a kitchen chair whilst he tinkered with my teeth. He filled
        three but two of the fillings came out that night. This meant another trip to Mbeya in the
        Baby Austin but this time they seem all right.

        The weather is very hot and dry and the garden a mess. We are having trouble
        with the young coffee trees too. Cut worms are killing off seedlings in the nursery and
        there is a borer beetle in the planted out coffee.

        George bought a large grey donkey from some wandering Masai and we hope
        the children will enjoy riding it later on.

        Very much love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 14th February 1934.

        Dearest Family,

        You will be sorry to hear that little Ann has been very ill, indeed we were terribly
        afraid that we were going to lose her. She enjoyed her birthday on the 8th. All the toys
        you, and her English granny, sent were unwrapped with such delight. However next
        day she seemed listless and a bit feverish so I tucked her up in bed after lunch. I dosed
        her with quinine and aspirin and she slept fitfully. At about eleven o’clock I was
        awakened by a strange little cry. I turned up the night light and was horrified to see that
        Ann was in a convulsion. I awakened George who, as always in an emergency, was
        perfectly calm and practical. He filled the small bath with very warm water and emersed
        Ann in it, placing a cold wet cloth on her head. We then wrapped her in blankets and
        gave her an enema and she settled down to sleep. A few hours later we had the same
        thing over again.

        At first light we sent a runner to Mbeya to fetch the doctor but waited all day in
        vain and in the evening the runner returned to say that the doctor had gone to a case on
        the diggings. Ann had been feverish all day with two or three convulsions. Neither
        George or I wished to leave the bedroom, but there was Georgie to consider, and in
        the afternoon I took him out in the garden for a while whilst George sat with Ann.
        That night we both sat up all night and again Ann had those wretched attacks of
        convulsions. George and I were worn out with anxiety by the time the doctor arrived the
        next afternoon. Ann had not been able to keep down any quinine and had had only
        small sips of water since the onset of the attack.

        The doctor at once diagnosed the trouble as malaria aggravated by teething.
        George held Ann whilst the Doctor gave her an injection. At the first attempt the needle
        bent into a bow, George was furious! The second attempt worked and after a few hours
        Ann’s temperature dropped and though she was ill for two days afterwards she is now
        up and about. She has also cut the last of her baby teeth, thank God. She looks thin and
        white, but should soon pick up. It has all been a great strain to both of us. Georgie
        behaved like an angel throughout. He played happily in his cot and did not seem to
        sense any tension as people say, babies do. Our baby was cheerful and not at all
        subdued.

        This is the rainy season and it is a good thing that some work has been done on
        our road or the doctor might not have got through.

        Much love to all,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 1st October 1934

        Dearest Family,

        We are all well now, thank goodness, but last week Georgie gave us such a
        fright. I was sitting on the verandah, busy with some sewing and not watching Ann and
        Georgie, who were trying to reach a bunch of bananas which hung on a rope from a
        beam of the verandah. Suddenly I heard a crash, Georgie had fallen backward over the
        edge of the verandah and hit the back of his head on the edge of the brick furrow which
        carries away the rainwater. He lay flat on his back with his arms spread out and did not
        move or cry. When I picked him up he gave a little whimper, I carried him to his cot and
        bathed his face and soon he began sitting up and appeared quite normal. The trouble
        began after he had vomited up his lunch. He began to whimper and bang his head
        against the cot.

        George and I were very worried because we have no transport so we could not
        take Georgie to the doctor and we could not bear to go through again what we had gone
        through with Ann earlier in the year. Then, in the late afternoon, a miracle happened. Two
        men George hardly knew, and complete strangers to me, called in on their way from the
        diggings to Mbeya and they kindly drove Georgie and me to the hospital. The Doctor
        allowed me to stay with Georgie and we spent five days there. Luckily he responded to
        treatment and is now as alive as ever. Children do put years on one!

        There is nothing much else to report. We have a new vegetable garden which is
        doing well but the earth here is strange. Gardens seem to do well for two years but by
        that time the soil is exhausted and one must move the garden somewhere else. The
        coffee looks well but it will be another year before we can expect even a few bags of
        coffee and prices are still low. Anyway by next year George should have some good
        return for all his hard work.

        Lots of love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. November 4th 1934

        Dearest Family,

        George is home from his White Hunting safari looking very sunburnt and well.
        The elderly American, who was his client this time, called in here at the farm to meet me
        and the children. It is amazing what spirit these old lads have! This one looked as though
        he should be thinking in terms of slippers and an armchair but no, he thinks in terms of
        high powered rifles with telescopic sights.

        It is lovely being together again and the children are delighted to have their Dad
        home. Things are always exciting when George is around. The day after his return
        George said at breakfast, “We can’t go on like this. You and the kids never get off the
        shamba. We’ll simply have to get a car.” You should have heard the excitement. “Get a
        car Daddy?’” cried Ann jumping in her chair so that her plaits bounced. “Get a car
        Daddy?” echoed Georgie his brown eyes sparkling. “A car,” said I startled, “However
        can we afford one?”

        “Well,” said George, “on my way back from Safari I heard that a car is to be sold
        this week at the Tukuyu Court, diseased estate or bankruptcy or something, I might get it
        cheap and it is an A.C.” The name meant nothing to me, but George explained that an
        A.C. is first cousin to a Rolls Royce.

        So off he went to the sale and next day the children and I listened all afternoon for
        the sound of an approaching car. We had many false alarms but, towards evening we
        heard what appeared to be the roar of an aeroplane engine. It was the A.C. roaring her
        way up our steep hill with a long plume of steam waving gaily above her radiator.
        Out jumped my beaming husband and in no time at all, he was showing off her
        points to an admiring family. Her lines are faultless and seats though worn are most
        comfortable. She has a most elegant air so what does it matter that the radiator leaks like
        a sieve, her exhaust pipe has broken off, her tyres are worn almost to the canvas and
        she has no windscreen. She goes, and she cost only five pounds.

        Next afternoon George, the kids and I piled into the car and drove along the road
        on lookout for guinea fowl. All went well on the outward journey but on the homeward
        one the poor A.C. simply gasped and died. So I carried the shot gun and George
        carried both children and we trailed sadly home. This morning George went with a bunch
        of farmhands and brought her home. Truly temperamental, she came home literally
        under her own steam.

        George now plans to get a second hand engine and radiator for her but it won’t
        be an A.C. engine. I think she is the only one of her kind in the country.
        I am delighted to hear, dad, that you are sending a bridle for Joseph for
        Christmas. I am busy making a saddle out of an old piece of tent canvas stuffed with
        kapok, some webbing and some old rug straps. A car and a riding donkey! We’re
        definitely carriage folk now.

        Lots of love to all,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 28th December 1934

        Dearest Family,

        Thank you for the wonderful Christmas parcel. My frock is a splendid fit. George
        declares that no one can knit socks like Mummy and the children love their toys and new
        clothes.

        Joseph, the donkey, took his bit with an air of bored resignation and Ann now
        rides proudly on his back. Joseph is a big strong animal with the looks and disposition of
        a mule. he will not go at all unless a native ‘toto’ walks before him and when he does go
        he wears a pained expression as though he were carrying fourteen stone instead of
        Ann’s fly weight. I walk beside the donkey carrying Georgie and our cat, ‘Skinny Winnie’,
        follows behind. Quite a cavalcade. The other day I got so exasperated with Joseph that
        I took Ann off and I got on. Joseph tottered a few paces and sat down! to the huge
        delight of our farm labourers who were going home from work. Anyway, one good thing,
        the donkey is so lazy that there is little chance of him bolting with Ann.

        The Moltenos spent Christmas with us and left for the Lupa Diggings yesterday.
        They arrived on the 22nd. with gifts for the children and chocolates and beer. That very
        afternoon George and John Molteno left for Ivuna, near Lake Ruckwa, to shoot some
        guinea fowl and perhaps a goose for our Christmas dinner. We expected the menfolk
        back on Christmas Eve and Anne and I spent a busy day making mince pies and
        sausage rolls. Why I don’t know, because I am sure Abel could have made them better.
        We decorated the Christmas tree and sat up very late but no husbands turned up.
        Christmas day passed but still no husbands came. Anne, like me, is expecting a baby
        and we both felt pretty forlorn and cross. Anne was certain that they had been caught up
        in a party somewhere and had forgotten all about us and I must say when Boxing Day
        went by and still George and John did not show up I felt ready to agree with her.
        They turned up towards evening and explained that on the homeward trip the car
        had bogged down in the mud and that they had spent a miserable Christmas. Anne
        refused to believe their story so George, to prove their case, got the game bag and
        tipped the contents on to the dining room table. Out fell several guinea fowl, long past
        being edible, followed by a large goose so high that it was green and blue where all the
        feathers had rotted off.

        The stench was too much for two pregnant girls. I shot out of the front door
        closely followed by Anne and we were both sick in the garden.

        I could not face food that evening but Anne is made of stronger stuff and ate her
        belated Christmas dinner with relish.

        I am looking forward enormously to having Marjorie here with us. She will be able
        to carry back to you an eyewitness account of our home and way of life.

        Much love to you all,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 5th January 1935

        Dearest Family,

        You cannot imagine how lovely it is to have Marjorie here. She came just in time
        because I have had pernicious vomiting and have lost a great deal of weight and she
        took charge of the children and made me spend three days in hospital having treatment.
        George took me to the hospital on the afternoon of New Years Eve and decided
        to spend the night at the hotel and join in the New Years Eve celebrations. I had several
        visitors at the hospital that evening and George actually managed to get some imported
        grapes for me. He returned to the farm next morning and fetched me from the hospital
        four days later. Of course the old A.C. just had to play up. About half way home the
        back axle gave in and we had to send a passing native some miles back to a place
        called Mbalizi to hire a lorry from a Greek trader to tow us home to the farm.
        The children looked well and were full of beans. I think Marjorie was thankful to
        hand them over to me. She is delighted with Ann’s motherly little ways but Georgie she
        calls “a really wild child”. He isn’t, just has such an astonishing amount of energy and is
        always up to mischief. Marjorie brought us all lovely presents. I am so thrilled with my
        sewing machine. It may be an old model but it sews marvellously. We now have an
        Alsatian pup as well as Joseph the donkey and the two cats.

        Marjorie had a midnight encounter with Joseph which gave her quite a shock but
        we had a good laugh about it next day. Some months ago George replaced our wattle
        and daub outside pit lavatory by a substantial brick one, so large that Joseph is being
        temporarily stabled in it at night. We neglected to warn Marj about this and one night,
        storm lamp in hand, she opened the door and Joseph walked out braying his thanks.
        I am afraid Marjorie is having a quiet time, a shame when the journey from Cape
        Town is so expensive. The doctor has told me to rest as much as I can, so it is
        impossible for us to take Marj on sight seeing trips.

        I hate to think that she will be leaving in ten days time.

        Much love,
        Eleanor.

        Mchewe Estate. 18th February 1935

        Dearest Family,

        You must be able to visualise our life here quite well now that Marj is back and
        has no doubt filled in all the details I forget to mention in my letters. What a journey we
        had in the A.C. when we took her to the plane. George, the children and I sat in front and
        Marj sat behind with numerous four gallon tins of water for the insatiable radiator. It was
        raining and the canvas hood was up but part of the side flaps are missing and as there is
        no glass in the windscreen the rain blew in on us. George got fed up with constantly
        removing the hot radiator cap so simply stuffed a bit of rag in instead. When enough
        steam had built up in the radiator behind the rag it blew out and we started all over again.
        The car still roars like an aeroplane engine and yet has little power so that George sent
        gangs of boys to the steep hills between the farm and the Mission to give us a push if
        necessary. Fortunately this time it was not, and the boys cheered us on our way. We
        needed their help on the homeward journey however.

        George has now bought an old Chev engine which he means to install before I
        have to go to hospital to have my new baby. It will be quite an engineering feet as
        George has few tools.

        I am sorry to say that I am still not well, something to do with kidneys or bladder.
        George bought me some pills from one of the several small shops which have opened
        in Mbeya and Ann is most interested in the result. She said seriously to Kath Wood,
        “Oh my Mummy is a very clever Mummy. She can do blue wee and green wee as well
        as yellow wee.” I simply can no longer manage the children without help and have
        engaged the cook’s wife, Janey, to help. The children are by no means thrilled. I plead in
        vain that I am not well enough to go for walks. Ann says firmly, “Ann doesn’t want to go
        for a walk. Ann will look after you.” Funny, though she speaks well for a three year old,
        she never uses the first person. Georgie say he would much rather walk with
        Keshokutwa, the kitchen boy. His name by the way, means day-after-tomorrow and it
        suits him down to the ground, Kath Wood walks over sometimes with offers of help and Ann will gladly go walking with her but Georgie won’t. He on the other hand will walk with Anne Molteno
        and Ann won’t. They are obstinate kids. Ann has developed a very fertile imagination.
        She has probably been looking at too many of those nice women’s magazines you
        sent. A few days ago she said, “You are sick Mummy, but Ann’s got another Mummy.
        She’s not sick, and my other mummy (very smugly) has lovely golden hair”. This
        morning’ not ten minutes after I had dressed her, she came in with her frock wet and
        muddy. I said in exasperation, “Oh Ann, you are naughty.” To which she instantly
        returned, “My other Mummy doesn’t think I am naughty. She thinks I am very nice.” It
        strikes me I shall have to get better soon so that I can be gay once more and compete
        with that phantom golden haired paragon.

        We had a very heavy storm over the farm last week. There was heavy rain with
        hail which stripped some of the coffee trees and the Mchewe River flooded and the
        water swept through the lower part of the shamba. After the water had receded George
        picked up a fine young trout which had been stranded. This was one of some he had
        put into the river when Georgie was a few months old.

        The trials of a coffee farmer are legion. We now have a plague of snails. They
        ring bark the young trees and leave trails of slime on the glossy leaves. All the ring
        barked trees will have to be cut right back and this is heartbreaking as they are bearing
        berries for the first time. The snails are collected by native children, piled upon the
        ground and bashed to a pulp which gives off a sickening stench. I am sorry for the local
        Africans. Locusts ate up their maize and now they are losing their bean crop to the snails.

        Lots of love, 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.

          #6259
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            George “Mike” Rushby

            A short autobiography of George Gilman Rushby’s son, published in the Blackwall Bugle, Australia.

            Early in 2009, Ballina Shire Council Strategic and
            Community Services Group Manager, Steve Barnier,
            suggested that it would be a good idea for the Wardell
            and District community to put out a bi-monthly
            newsletter. I put my hand up to edit the publication and
            since then, over 50 issues of “The Blackwall Bugle”
            have been produced, encouraged by Ballina Shire
            Council who host the newsletter on their website.
            Because I usually write the stories that other people
            generously share with me, I have been asked by several
            community members to let them know who I am. Here is
            my attempt to let you know!

            My father, George Gilman Rushby was born in England
            in 1900. An Electrician, he migrated to Africa as a young
            man to hunt and to prospect for gold. He met Eleanor
            Dunbar Leslie who was a high school teacher in Cape
            Town. They later married in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika.
            I was the second child and first son and was born in a
            mud hut in Tanganyika in 1933. I spent my first years on
            a coffee plantation. When four years old, and with
            parents and elder sister on a remote goldfield, I caught
            typhoid fever. I was seriously ill and had no access to
            proper medical facilities. My paternal grandmother
            sailed out to Africa from England on a steam ship and
            took me back to England for medical treatment. My
            sister Ann came too. Then Adolf Hitler started WWII and
            Ann and I were separated from our parents for 9 years.

            Sister Ann and I were not to see him or our mother for
            nine years because of the war. Dad served as a Captain in
            the King’s African Rifles operating in the North African
            desert, while our Mum managed the coffee plantation at
            home in Tanganyika.

            Ann and I lived with our Grandmother and went to
            school in Nottingham England. In 1946 the family was
            reunited. We lived in Mbeya in Southern Tanganyika
            where my father was then the District Manager of the
            National Parks and Wildlife Authority. There was no
            high school in Tanganyika so I had to go to school in
            Nairobi, Kenya. It took five days travelling each way by
            train and bus including two days on a steamer crossing
            Lake Victoria.

            However, the school year was only two terms with long
            holidays in between.

            When I was seventeen, I left high school. There was
            then no university in East Africa. There was no work
            around as Tanganyika was about to become
            independent of the British Empire and become
            Tanzania. Consequently jobs were reserved for
            Africans.

            A war had broken out in Korea. I took a day off from
            high school and visited the British Army headquarters
            in Nairobi. I signed up for military service intending to
            go to Korea. The army flew me to England. During
            Army basic training I was nicknamed ‘Mike’ and have
            been called Mike ever since. I never got to Korea!
            After my basic training I volunteered for the Parachute
            Regiment and the army sent me to Egypt where the
            Suez Canal was under threat. I carried out parachute
            operations in the Sinai Desert and in Cyprus and
            Jordan. I was then selected for officer training and was
            sent to England to the Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School
            in Cheshire. Whilst in Cheshire, I met my future wife
            Jeanette. I graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the
            Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and was posted to West
            Berlin, which was then one hundred miles behind the
            Iron Curtain. My duties included patrolling the
            demarcation line that separated the allies from the
            Russian forces. The Berlin Wall was yet to be built. I
            also did occasional duty as guard commander of the
            guard at Spandau Prison where Adolf Hitler’s deputy
            Rudolf Hess was the only prisoner.

            From Berlin, my Regiment was sent to Malaya to
            undertake deep jungle operations against communist
            terrorists that were attempting to overthrow the
            Malayan Government. I was then a Lieutenant in
            command of a platoon of about 40 men which would go
            into the jungle for three weeks to a month with only air
            re-supply to keep us going. On completion of my jungle
            service, I returned to England and married Jeanette. I
            had to stand up throughout the church wedding
            ceremony because I had damaged my right knee in a
            competitive cross-country motorcycle race and wore a
            splint and restrictive bandage for the occasion!
            At this point I took a career change and transferred
            from the infantry to the Royal Military Police. I was in
            charge of the security of British, French and American
            troops using the autobahn link from West Germany to
            the isolated Berlin. Whilst in Germany and Austria I
            took up snow skiing as a sport.

            Jeanette and I seemed to attract unusual little
            adventures along the way — each adventure trivial in
            itself but adding up to give us a ‘different’ path through
            life. Having climbed Mount Snowdon up the ‘easy way’
            we were witness to a serious climbing accident where a
            member of the staff of a Cunard Shipping Line
            expedition fell and suffered serious injury. It was
            Sunday a long time ago. The funicular railway was
            closed. There was no telephone. So I ran all the way
            down Mount Snowdon to raise the alarm.

            On a road trip from Verden in Germany to Berlin with
            our old Opel Kapitan motor car stacked to the roof with
            all our worldly possessions, we broke down on the ice and snow covered autobahn. We still had a hundred kilometres to go.

            A motorcycle patrolman flagged down a B-Double
            tanker. He hooked us to the tanker with a very short tow
            cable and off we went. The truck driver couldn’t see us
            because we were too close and his truck threw up a
            constant deluge of ice and snow so we couldn’t see
            anyway. We survived the hundred kilometre ‘sleigh
            ride!’

            I then went back to the other side of the world where I
            carried out military police duties in Singapore and
            Malaya for three years. I took up scuba diving and
            loved the ocean. Jeanette and I, with our two little
            daughters, took a holiday to South Africa to see my
            parents. We sailed on a ship of the Holland-Afrika Line.
            It broke down for four days and drifted uncontrollably
            in dangerous waters off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia
            until the crew could get the ship’s motor running again.
            Then, in Cape Town, we were walking the beach near
            Hermanus with my youngest brother and my parents,
            when we found the dead body of a man who had thrown
            himself off a cliff. The police came and secured the site.
            Back with the army, I was promoted to Major and
            appointed Provost Marshal of the ACE Mobile Force
            (Allied Command Europe) with dual headquarters in
            Salisbury, England and Heidelberg, Germany. The cold
            war was at its height and I was on operations in Greece,
            Denmark and Norway including the Arctic. I had
            Norwegian, Danish, Italian and American troops in my
            unit and I was then also the Winter Warfare Instructor
            for the British contingent to the Allied Command
            Europe Mobile Force that operated north of the Arctic
            Circle.

            The reason for being in the Arctic Circle? From there
            our special forces could look down into northern
            Russia.

            I was not seeing much of my two young daughters. A
            desk job was looming my way and I decided to leave
            the army and migrate to Australia. Why Australia?
            Well, I didn’t want to go back to Africa, which
            seemed politically unstable and the people I most
            liked working with in the army, were the Australian
            troops I had met in Malaya.

            I migrated to Brisbane, Australia in 1970 and started
            working for Woolworths. After management training,
            I worked at Garden City and Brookside then became
            the manager in turn of Woolworths stores at
            Paddington, George Street and Redcliff. I was also the
            first Director of FAUI Queensland (The Federation of
            Underwater Diving Instructors) and spent my spare
            time on the Great Barrier Reef. After 8 years with
            Woollies, I opted for a sea change.

            I moved with my family to Evans Head where I
            converted a convenience store into a mini
            supermarket. When IGA moved into town, I decided
            to take up beef cattle farming and bought a cattle
            property at Collins Creek Kyogle in 1990. I loved
            everything about the farm — the Charolais cattle, my
            horses, my kelpie dogs, the open air, fresh water
            creek, the freedom, the lifestyle. I also became a
            volunteer fire fighter with the Green Pigeon Brigade.
            In 2004 I sold our farm and moved to Wardell.
            My wife Jeanette and I have been married for 60 years
            and are now retired. We have two lovely married
            daughters and three fine grandchildren. We live in the
            greatest part of the world where we have been warmly
            welcomed by the Wardell community and by the
            Wardell Brigade of the Rural Fire Service. We are
            very happy here.

            Mike Rushby

            A short article sent to Jacksdale in England from Mike Rushby in Australia:

            Rushby Family

            #6253
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              My Grandparents Kitchen

              My grandmother used to have golden syrup in her larder, hanging on the white plastic coated storage rack that was screwed to the inside of the larder door. Mostly the larder door was left propped open with an old flat iron, so you could see the Heinz ketchup and home made picallilli (she made a particularly good picallili), the Worcester sauce and the jar of pickled onions, as you sat at the kitchen table.

              If you were sitting to the right of the kitchen table you could see an assortment of mismatched crockery, cups and bowls, shoe cleaning brushes, and at the back, tiny tins of baked beans and big ones of plum tomatoes,  and normal sized tins of vegetable and mushroom soup.  Underneath the little shelves that housed the tins was a blue plastic washing up bowl with a few onions, some in, some out of the yellow string bag they came home from the expensive little village supermarket in.

              There was much more to the left in the awkward triangular shape under the stairs, but you couldn’t see under there from your seat at the kitchen table.  You could see the shelf above the larder door which held an ugly china teapot of graceless modern lines, gazed with metallic silver which was wearing off in places. Beside the teapot sat a serving bowl, squat and shapely with little handles, like a flattened Greek urn, in white and reddish brown with flecks of faded gilt. A plain white teapot completed the trio, a large cylindrical one with neat vertical ridges and grooves.

              There were two fridges under the high shallow wooden wall cupboard.  A waist high bulbous old green one with a big handle that pulled out with a clunk, and a chest high sleek white one with a small freezer at the top with a door of its own.  On the top of the fridges were biscuit and cracker tins, big black keys, pencils and brittle yellow notepads, rubber bands and aspirin value packs and a bottle of Brufen.  There was a battered old maroon spectacle case and a whicker letter rack, letters crammed in and fanning over the top.  There was always a pile of glossy advertising pamphlets and flyers on top of the fridges, of the sort that were best put straight into the tiny pedal bin.

              My grandmother never lined the pedal bin with a used plastic bag, nor with a specially designed plastic bin liner. The bin was so small that the flip top lid was often gaping, resting on a mound of cauliflower greens and soup tins.  Behind the pedal bin, but on the outer aspect of the kitchen wall, was the big black dustbin with the rubbery lid. More often than not, the lid was thrust upwards. If Thursday when the dustbin men came was several days away, you’d wish you hadn’t put those newspapers in, or those old shoes!  You stood in the softly drizzling rain in your slippers, the rubbery sheild of a lid in your left hand and the overflowing pedal bin in the other.  The contents of the pedal bin are not going to fit into the dustbin.  You sigh, put the pedal bin and the dustbin lid down, and roll up your sleeves ~ carefully, because you’ve poked your fingers into a porridge covered teabag.  You grab the sides of the protruding black sack and heave. All being well,  the contents should settle and you should have several inches more of plastic bag above the rim of the dustbin.  Unless of course it’s a poor quality plastic bag in which case your fingernail will go through and a horizontal slash will appear just below rubbish level.  Eventually you upend the pedal bin and scrape the cigarette ash covered potato peelings into the dustbin with your fingers. By now the fibres of your Shetland wool jumper are heavy with damp, just like the fuzzy split ends that curl round your pale frowning brow.  You may push back your hair with your forearm causing the moisture to bead and trickle down your face, as you turn the brass doorknob with your palm and wrist, tea leaves and cigarette ash clinging unpleasantly to your fingers.

              The pedal bin needs rinsing in the kitchen sink, but the sink is full of mismatched saucepans, some new in shades of harvest gold, some battered and mishapen in stainless steel and aluminium, bits of mashed potato stuck to them like concrete pebbledash. There is a pale pink octagonally ovoid shallow serving dish and a little grey soup bowl with a handle like a miniature pottery saucepan decorated with kitcheny motifs.

              The water for the coffee bubbles in a suacepan on the cream enamelled gas cooker. My grandmother never used a kettle, although I do remember a heavy flame orange one. The little pan for boiling water had a lip for easy pouring and a black plastic handle.

              The steam has caused the condensation on the window over the sink to race in rivulets down to the fablon coated windowsill.  The yellow gingham curtains hang limply, the left one tucked behind the back of the cooker.

              You put the pedal bin back it it’s place below the tea towel holder, and rinse your mucky fingers under the tap. The gas water heater on the wall above you roars into life just as you turn the tap off, and disappointed, subsides.

              As you lean over to turn the cooker knob, the heat from the oven warms your arm. The gas oven was almost always on, the oven door open with clean tea towels and sometimes large white pants folded over it to air.

              The oven wasn’t the only heat in my grandparents kitchen. There was an electric bar fire near the red formica table which used to burn your legs. The kitchen table was extended by means of a flap at each side. When I was small I wasn’t allowed to snap the hinge underneath shut as my grandmother had pinched the skin of her palm once.

              The electric fire was plugged into the same socket as the radio. The radio took a minute or two to warm up when you switched it on, a bulky thing with sharp seventies edges and a reddish wood effect veneer and big knobs.  The light for my grandfathers workshop behind the garage (where he made dentures) was plugged into the same socket, which had a big heavy white three way adaptor in. The plug for the washing machine was hooked by means of a bit of string onto a nail or hook so that it didn’t fall down behing the washing machine when it wasn’t plugged in. Everything was unplugged when it wasn’t in use.  Sometimes there was a shrivelled Christmas cactus on top of the radio, but it couldn’t hide the adaptor and all those plugs.

              Above the washing machine was a rhomboid wooden wall cupboard with sliding frsoted glass doors.  It was painted creamy gold, the colour of a nicotine stained pub ceiling, and held packets of Paxo stuffing and little jars of Bovril and Marmite, packets of Bisto and a jar of improbably red Maraschino cherries.

              The nicotine coloured cupboard on the opposite wall had half a dozen large hooks screwed under the bottom shelf. A variety of mugs and cups hung there when they weren’t in the bowl waiting to be washed up. Those cupboard doors seemed flimsy for their size, and the thin beading on the edge of one door had come unstuck at the bottom and snapped back if you caught it with your sleeve.  The doors fastened with a little click in the centre, and the bottom of the door reverberated slightly as you yanked it open. There were always crumbs in the cupboard from the numerous packets of bisucits and crackers and there was always an Allbran packet with the top folded over to squeeze it onto the shelf. The sugar bowl was in there, sticky grains like sandpaper among the biscuit crumbs.

              Half of one of the shelves was devoted to medicines: grave looking bottles of codeine linctus with no nonsense labels,  brown glass bottles with pills for rheumatism and angina.  Often you would find a large bottle, nearly full, of Brewers yeast or vitamin supplements with a dollar price tag, souvenirs of the familys last visit.  Above the medicines you’d find a faded packet of Napolitana pasta bows or a dusty packet of muesli. My grandparents never used them but she left them in the cupboard. Perhaps the dollar price tags and foreign foods reminded her of her children.

              If there had been a recent visit you would see monstrous jars of Sanka and Maxwell House coffee in there too, but they always used the coffee.  They liked evaporated milk in their coffee, and used tins and tins of “evap” as they called it. They would pour it over tinned fruit, or rhubard crumble or stewed apples.

              When there was just the two of them, or when I was there as well, they’d eat at the kitchen table. The table would be covered in a white embroidered cloth and the food served in mismatched serving dishes. The cutlery was large and bent, the knife handles in varying shades of bone. My grandfathers favourite fork had the tip of each prong bent in a different direction. He reckoned it was more efficient that way to spear his meat.  He often used to chew his meat and then spit it out onto the side of his plate. Not in company, of course.  I can understand why he did that, not having eaten meat myself for so long. You could chew a piece of meat for several hours and still have a stringy lump between your cheek and your teeth.

              My grandfather would always have a bowl of Allbran with some Froment wheat germ for his breakfast, while reading the Daily Mail at the kitchen table.  He never worse slippers, always shoes indoors,  and always wore a tie.  He had lots of ties but always wore a plain maroon one.  His shirts were always cream and buttoned at throat and cuff, and eventually started wearing shirts without detachable collars. He wore greeny grey trousers and a cardigan of the same shade most of the time, the same colour as a damp English garden.

              The same colour as the slimy green wooden clothes pegs that I threw away and replaced with mauve and fuschia pink plastic ones.  “They’re a bit bright for up the garden, aren’t they,” he said.  He was right. I should have ignored the green peg stains on the laundry.  An English garden should be shades of moss and grassy green, rich umber soil and brick red walls weighed down with an atmosphere of dense and heavy greyish white.

              After Grandma died and Mop had retired (I always called him Mop, nobody knows why) at 10:00am precisely Mop would  have a cup of instant coffee with evap. At lunch, a bowl of tinned vegetable soup in his special soup bowl, and a couple of Krackawheat crackers and a lump of mature Cheddar. It was a job these days to find a tasty cheddar, he’d say.

              When he was working, and he worked until well into his seventies, he took sandwiches. Every day he had the same sandwich filling: a combination of cheese, peanut butter and marmite.  It was an unusal choice for an otherwise conventional man.  He loved my grandmothers cooking, which wasn’t brilliant but was never awful. She was always generous with the cheese in cheese sauces and the meat in meat pies. She overcooked the cauliflower, but everyone did then. She made her gravy in the roasting pan, and made onion sauce, bread sauce, parsley sauce and chestnut stuffing.  She had her own version of cosmopolitan favourites, and called her quiche a quiche when everyone was still calling it egg and bacon pie. She used to like Auntie Daphne’s ratatouille, rather exotic back then, and pronounced it Ratta Twa.  She made pizza unlike any other, with shortcrust pastry smeared with tomato puree from a tube, sprinkled with oregano and great slabs of cheddar.

              The roast was always overdone. “We like our meat well done” she’d say. She’d walk up the garden to get fresh mint for the mint sauce and would announce with pride “these runner beans are out of the garding”. They always grew vegetables at the top of the garden, behind the lawn and the silver birch tree.  There was always a pudding: a slice of almond tart (always with home made pastry), a crumble or stewed fruit. Topped with evap, of course.

              #6222
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                George Gilman Rushby: The Cousin Who Went To Africa

                The portrait of the woman has “mother of Catherine Housley, Smalley” written on the back, and one of the family photographs has “Francis Purdy” written on the back. My first internet search was “Catherine Housley Smalley Francis Purdy”. Easily found was the family tree of George (Mike) Rushby, on one of the genealogy websites. It seemed that it must be our family, but the African lion hunter seemed unlikely until my mother recalled her father had said that he had a cousin who went to Africa. I also noticed that the lion hunter’s middle name was Gilman ~ the name that Catherine Housley’s daughter ~ my great grandmother, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy ~ adopted, from her aunt and uncle who brought her up.

                I tried to contact George (Mike) Rushby via the ancestry website, but got no reply. I searched for his name on Facebook and found a photo of a wildfire in a place called Wardell, in Australia, and he was credited with taking the photograph. A comment on the photo, which was a few years old, got no response, so I found a Wardell Community group on Facebook, and joined it. A very small place, population some 700 or so, and I had an immediate response on the group to my question. They knew Mike, exchanged messages, and we were able to start emailing. I was in the chair at the dentist having an exceptionally long canine root canal at the time that I got the message with his email address, and at that moment the song Down in Africa started playing.

                Mike said it was clever of me to track him down which amused me, coming from the son of an elephant and lion hunter.  He didn’t know why his father’s middle name was Gilman, and was not aware that Catherine Housley’s sister married a Gilman.

                Mike Rushby kindly gave me permission to include his family history research in my book.  This is the story of my grandfather George Marshall’s cousin.  A detailed account of George Gilman Rushby’s years in Africa can be found in another chapter called From Tanganyika With Love; the letters Eleanor wrote to her family.

                George Gilman Rushby:

                George Gilman Rushby

                 

                The story of George Gilman Rushby 1900-1969, as told by his son Mike:

                George Gilman Rushby:
                Elephant hunter,poacher, prospector, farmer, forestry officer, game ranger, husband to Eleanor, and father of 6 children who now live around the world.

                George Gilman Rushby was born in Nottingham on 28 Feb 1900 the son of Catherine Purdy and John Henry Payling Rushby. But John Henry died when his son was only one and a half years old, and George shunned his drunken bullying stepfather Frank Freer and was brought up by Gypsies who taught him how to fight and took him on regular poaching trips. His love of adventure and his ability to hunt were nurtured at an early stage of his life.
                The family moved to Eastwood, where his mother Catherine owned and managed The Three Tuns Inn, but when his stepfather died in mysterious circumstances, his mother married a wealthy bookmaker named Gregory Simpson. He could afford to send George to Worksop College and to Rugby School. This was excellent schooling for George, but the boarding school environment, and the lack of a stable home life, contributed to his desire to go out in the world and do his own thing. When he finished school his first job was as a trainee electrician with Oaks & Co at Pye Bridge. He also worked part time as a motor cycle mechanic and as a professional boxer to raise the money for a voyage to South Africa.

                In May 1920 George arrived in Durban destitute and, like many others, living on the beach and dependant upon the Salvation Army for a daily meal. However he soon got work as an electrical mechanic, and after a couple of months had earned enough money to make the next move North. He went to Lourenco Marques where he was appointed shift engineer for the town’s power station. However he was still restless and left the comfort of Lourenco Marques for Beira in August 1921.

                Beira was the start point of the new railway being built from the coast to Nyasaland. George became a professional hunter providing essential meat for the gangs of construction workers building the railway. He was a self employed contractor with his own support crew of African men and began to build up a satisfactory business. However, following an incident where he had to shoot and kill a man who attacked him with a spear in middle of the night whilst he was sleeping, George left the lower Zambezi and took a paddle steamer to Nyasaland (Malawi). On his arrival in Karongo he was encouraged to shoot elephant which had reached plague proportions in the area – wrecking African homes and crops, and threatening the lives of those who opposed them.

                His next move was to travel by canoe the five hundred kilometre length of Lake Nyasa to Tanganyika, where he hunted for a while in the Lake Rukwa area, before walking through Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to the Congo. Hunting his way he overachieved his quota of ivory resulting in his being charged with trespass, the confiscation of his rifles, and a fine of one thousand francs. He hunted his way through the Congo to Leopoldville then on to the Portuguese enclave, near the mouth of the mighty river, where he worked as a barman in a rough and tough bar until he received a message that his old friend Lumb had found gold at Lupa near Chunya. George set sail on the next boat for Antwerp in Belgium, then crossed to England and spent a few weeks with his family in Jacksdale before returning by sea to Dar es Salaam. Arriving at the gold fields he pegged his claim and almost immediately went down with blackwater fever – an illness that used to kill three out of four within a week.

                When he recovered from his fever, George exchanged his gold lease for a double barrelled .577 elephant rifle and took out a special elephant control licence with the Tanganyika Government. He then headed for the Congo again and poached elephant in Northern Rhodesia from a base in the Congo. He was known by the Africans as “iNyathi”, or the Buffalo, because he was the most dangerous in the long grass. After a profitable hunting expedition in his favourite hunting ground of the Kilombera River he returned to the Congo via Dar es Salaam and Mombassa. He was after the Kabalo district elephant, but hunting was restricted, so he set up his base in The Central African Republic at a place called Obo on the Congo tributary named the M’bomu River. From there he could make poaching raids into the Congo and the Upper Nile regions of the Sudan. He hunted there for two and a half years. He seldom came across other Europeans; hunters kept their own districts and guarded their own territories. But they respected one another and he made good and lasting friendships with members of that small select band of adventurers.

                Leaving for Europe via the Congo, George enjoyed a short holiday in Jacksdale with his mother. On his return trip to East Africa he met his future bride in Cape Town. She was 24 year old Eleanor Dunbar Leslie; a high school teacher and daughter of a magistrate who spent her spare time mountaineering, racing ocean yachts, and riding horses. After a whirlwind romance, they were betrothed within 36 hours.

                On 25 July 1930 George landed back in Dar es Salaam. He went directly to the Mbeya district to find a home. For one hundred pounds he purchased the Waizneker’s farm on the banks of the Mntshewe Stream. Eleanor, who had been delayed due to her contract as a teacher, followed in November. Her ship docked in Dar es Salaam on 7 Nov 1930, and they were married that day. At Mchewe Estate, their newly acquired farm, they lived in a tent whilst George with some help built their first home – a lovely mud-brick cottage with a thatched roof. George and Eleanor set about developing a coffee plantation out of a bush block. It was a very happy time for them. There was no electricity, no radio, and no telephone. Newspapers came from London every two months. There were a couple of neighbours within twenty miles, but visitors were seldom seen. The farm was a haven for wild life including snakes, monkeys and leopards. Eleanor had to go South all the way to Capetown for the birth of her first child Ann, but with the onset of civilisation, their first son George was born at a new German Mission hospital that had opened in Mbeya.

                Occasionally George had to leave the farm in Eleanor’s care whilst he went off hunting to make his living. Having run the coffee plantation for five years with considerable establishment costs and as yet no return, George reluctantly started taking paying clients on hunting safaris as a “white hunter”. This was an occupation George didn’t enjoy. but it brought him an income in the days when social security didn’t exist. Taking wealthy clients on hunting trips to kill animals for trophies and for pleasure didn’t amuse George who hunted for a business and for a way of life. When one of George’s trackers was killed by a leopard that had been wounded by a careless client, George was particularly upset.
                The coffee plantation was approaching the time of its first harvest when it was suddenly attacked by plagues of borer beetles and ring barking snails. At the same time severe hail storms shredded the crop. The pressure of the need for an income forced George back to the Lupa gold fields. He was unlucky in his gold discoveries, but luck came in a different form when he was offered a job with the Forestry Department. The offer had been made in recognition of his initiation and management of Tanganyika’s rainbow trout project. George spent most of his short time with the Forestry Department encouraging the indigenous people to conserve their native forests.

                In November 1938 he transferred to the Game Department as Ranger for the Eastern Province of Tanganyika, and over several years was based at Nzasa near Dar es Salaam, at the old German town of Morogoro, and at lovely Lyamungu on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Then the call came for him to be transferred to Mbeya in the Southern Province for there was a serious problem in the Njombe district, and George was selected by the Department as the only man who could possibly fix the problem.

                Over a period of several years, people were being attacked and killed by marauding man-eating lions. In the Wagingombe area alone 230 people were listed as having been killed. In the Njombe district, which covered an area about 200 km by 300 km some 1500 people had been killed. Not only was the rural population being decimated, but the morale of the survivors was so low, that many of them believed that the lions were not real. Many thought that evil witch doctors were controlling the lions, or that lion-men were changing form to kill their enemies. Indeed some wichdoctors took advantage of the disarray to settle scores and to kill for reward.

                By hunting down and killing the man-eaters, and by showing the flesh and blood to the doubting tribes people, George was able to instil some confidence into the villagers. However the Africans attributed the return of peace and safety, not to the efforts of George Rushby, but to the reinstallation of their deposed chief Matamula Mangera who had previously been stood down for corruption. It was Matamula , in their eyes, who had called off the lions.

                Soon after this adventure, George was appointed Deputy Game Warden for Tanganyika, and was based in Arusha. He retired in 1956 to the Njombe district where he developed a coffee plantation, and was one of the first in Tanganyika to plant tea as a major crop. However he sensed a swing in the political fortunes of his beloved Tanganyika, and so sold the plantation and settled in a cottage high on a hill overlooking the Navel Base at Simonstown in the Cape. It was whilst he was there that TV Bulpin wrote his biography “The Hunter is Death” and George wrote his book “No More The Tusker”. He died in the Cape, and his youngest son Henry scattered his ashes at the Southern most tip of Africa where the currents of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet .

                George Gilman Rushby:

                #6211
                AvatarJib
                Participant

                  Today the planets are aligned, thought Liz as she looked at the blue sky out the French door. The frills of her glitter pink Charnel bathing suit wiggled with excitement.

                  It was one of those rare days of this summer where rain wasn’t pouring somewhere in the garden. Every single day: clouds, clouds, clouds. If they weren’t above the mansion, they were above the pool. If they weren’t above the pool, they were flooding the lawn in between the mansion and the pool.

                  But today, the sun had risen in a sky free of clouds and Liz was determined to have that dip in the newly repaired swimming pool with a watermelon mojito served by Roberto in his shiny leather speedo. The pool had been half frozen half boiling for so long that they had forgotten the swimming part. Once fixed, the summer had turned into a mid season rainy weather.

                  ‘I don’t want to get wet before I get into the pool’, Liz had said to Finnley.

                  Liz looked at her pink notebook lying on the coffee table. Resisting the temptation to fill in the empty pages with gripping stories, she hopped on the patio, flounces bouncing and her goocci flip-flops clacking. With a sparkling foot, Liz tested the grass. It was dry enough, which meant she would not inadvertently walk on a slug or a snail. She particularly hated the cracking noise and the wetness afterward under her feet.

                  Roberto was bent forward. Liz frowned. He was not wearing his leather speedo. And his hands and pants were covered in green goo.

                  ‘What happened?’ she asked in front of the disaster.

                  Roberto shrugged, obviously overwhelmed by the goo.

                  ‘Green algae’, said Godfrey popping up out of nowhere with a handful of cashews. ‘The ice and fire had kept it at bay for some time. But once it was back to normal the pool was a perfect environment for their development. I already called the maintenance company. They come next week.’

                  ‘What? Next week?’

                  ‘Yes. That’s sad. It’s the season. We are not the only ones to have that problem.’

                  That said he threw a cashew in his mouth and popped back to nowhere he came from.

                  #6178

                  Nora woke to the sun streaming  in the little dormer window in the attic bedroom. She stretched under the feather quilt and her feet encountered the cool air, an intoxicating contrast to the snug warmth of the bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well and was reluctant to awaken fully and confront the day. She felt peaceful and rested, and oddly, at home.

                  Unfortunately that thought roused her to sit and frown, and look around the room.  The dust was dancing in the sunbeams and rivulets of condensation trickled down the window panes.   A small statue of an owl was silhouetted on the sill, and a pitcher of dried herbs or flowers, strands of spider webs sparkled like silver thread between the desiccated buds.

                  An old whicker chair in the corner was piled with folded blankets and bed linens, and the bookshelf behind it  ~ Nora threw back the covers and padded over to the books. Why were they all facing the wall?   The spines were at the back, with just the pages showing. Intrigued, Nora extracted a book to see what it was, just as a gentle knock sounded on the door.

                  Yes? she said, turning, placing the book on top of the pile of bedclothes on the chair, her thoughts now on the events of the previous night.

                  “I expect you’re ready for some coffee!” Will called brightly. Nora opened the door, smiling. What a nice man he was, making her so welcome, and such a pleasant evening they’d spent, drinking sweet home made wine and sharing stories.  It had been late, very late, when he’d shown her to her room.  Nora has been tempted to invite him in with her (very tempted if the truth be known) and wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t.

                  “I slept so well!” she said, thanking him as he handed her the mug.  “It looks like a lovely day today,” she added brightly, and then frowned a little. She didn’t really want to leave.  She was supposed to continue her journey, of course she knew that.  But she really wanted to stay a little bit longer.

                  “I’ve got a surprise planned for lunch,” he said, “and something I’d like to show you this morning.  No rush!”  he added with a twinkly smile.

                  Nora beamed at him and promptly ditched any thoughts of continuing her trip today.

                  “No rush” she repeated softly.

                  #6133

                  In reply to: Tart Wreck Repackage

                  “Will you look at these prices!” exclaimed one of the middle aged ladies.

                  Privately, Tara called them the miserable old bag and the crazy old witch, or Mob and Cow for ease of reference. Anyway, it was Mob who was banging on about the prices.

                  “Feel free to take yourself somewhere cheaper to eat,” she snarled.

                  “Oh, no, that’s okay, as long as you’re happy paying these outrageous prices.”

                  Cow cackled. “I’ve not eaten for a month so bugger the prices! Not that I need to eat, airs good enough for me seeing as I have special powers. Still, a raspberry bun wouldn’t go amiss. Thank you, Ladies!”

                  Star sighed heavily and glanced reproachfully at Rosamund.

                  “Sorry, I were trying to help,” she said with a shrug.

                  Tara scanned the room. The only other people in the cafe were an elderly gentleman reading the newspaper and a bedraggled mother with two noisy snot-bags in tow. Tara shuddered and turned her attention to the elderly man. “Those deep wrinkles and wasted muscles look genuine,” she whispered to Star. “There’s nobody here who could possibly be Vince French. I’m going to go and keep watch by the door.”

                  “Good thinking,” said Star, after covertly checking her Lemoon quote of the day app on her phone; she realised uneasily she was increasingly relying on it for guidance. “There’s a sunny seat over there; I’ll grab a coffee and look inconspicuous by doing nothing. I don’t want to blow our cover.”

                  Tara glared at her. “I saw you checking your app! What did the oracle say?”

                  “Oh, just some crazy stuff.” She laughed nervously. “There is some kind of peace in not feelign like there’s anythign to do.

                  “Well that’s not going to get us far, is it now?”

                  #6128

                  In reply to: Tart Wreck Repackage

                  “Never again,” said Tara, pouring her second black coffee.  “I’m done with these hangovers. You’ll have to find someone else to drink with from now on.”

                  “You say that every week, Tara.  What are we going to do next? We’re floundering. We don’t even have a plan. Everything we do takes us further away from the case. I don’t even remember what the case is!”

                  “Here, have some more coffee.  Don’t roll your eyes at me like that, cases are always like this, they always go through this phase.”  Tara wasn’t in the mood for this kind of depressing talk, it was much too complicated. Surely it was simply a matter of drinking another coffee, until everything fell back into place.

                  “Cases do, do they?” Star asked, “Do they really? And what phase would that be, and how would you know?”

                  “Snarky tart, yes they do. I’ve been researching things you know, not just swanning around.  We’ve reached the part of the case where nothing makes sense and the investigators don’t know what to do next. It’s an essential part of the process, everyone knows that.  The important thing is not to try and work things out too early. The danger is preconceived ideas, you see,” Tara pontificated, warming to the theme.

                  “I can assure you that I have no preconceived ideas because I have no clue what’s going to happen next,” replied Star, trying not to roll her eyes too obviously.  She knew from experience not to provoke Tara too much until at least the third cup of coffee.

                  “Precisely!” Tara said triumphantly. “Now it will all start to come together and make sense. ”

                  Star didn’t look convinced.  “What are we going to do about the middle aged lady we locked in the wardrobe last night, though?”

                  “What did we do that for?!” asked Tara in astonishment.

                  “I can’t remember.  Maybe we thought it was Aunt April?”

                  “Wait, if Aunt April isn’t in the wardrobe, then where is she?”

                  “That’s what I”m saying!” cried Star in exasperation. “What do we do next?”

                  #6067
                  AvatarJib
                  Participant

                    Since the sudden disappearance of the two au pair maids, a lot had happened. But for August Finest it has been a lot of the same routine going on.

                    He wakes up in the early, early morning, his eyelids rubs on his eyeballs as if they are made of sandpaper. He seizes his belly with his hands, feels a little guilty about the nice meals prepared by Noor Mary especially for him since the start of the confinement. His six packs have started to fade away under a layer of fatty insulation and he tries to compensate by a daily routine in white T-shirt and underwear.

                    The coffee machine has detected his movements and starts to make what it does. It’s always cleaned and replenished by the discrete Mary. The noise and the smell creates an ambiance and when it rings he eats breakfast before taking his shower.

                    When he’s dressed up, his real work starts. It had not been easy for a man of his origins to appear as the best choice for the job under the Lump administration. President Lump was known to make bad jokes about his tan and him having spent too much time at the beach, and other worse things. But his worth was in the network he could connect the president with, his high discretion, which Lump was in dire need to compensate his innate tendency to boasting, and a strong adaptability to fix the president’s frequent messing around.

                    If August Finest had once admired the man and accepted the job for him, it soon changed when he realised there was nothing more underneath the boasting than more boasting and unpredictability. At the moment the only thing that make him continue was his ability to go stealth when the president had a fit of nerves, and the imposed confinement that made it impossible to leave the Beige House.

                    After the morning meeting during which the president asked him to fire a few members of the staff, August had to prepare a press conference. President Lump said he had thought about a few remarks about China and making a connection with the Mexican immigrants threatening the country by stealing the masks of the American People. After which, he had to plan a charity with first Lady Mellie Noma and redefine what a Masquerade meant. He had been asked to invite nurses and medical personnel, meaning republican and good looking in a blouse with a medical mask to make the promotion of the new mask industry Made in America. One of Mr Lump’s friend had just started a brand and was in need of some media promotion.

                    August reread the memo to be addressed to the director of the FBI, a good friend of his. A special cell at the FBI had been created especially since Lump came to power. For this particular occasion, agents posing as patients victims of the virus would be sent in the best ranked hospitals in the country with the task to look for the best nurse and doctor candidates and send them an invitation printed by Lump’s nephew’s printing company.

                    As Lump always said: “America Fist! And don’t forget people, I am America.”

                    August hit the enter button and closed the window of his professional mail account, leaving the draft of a personal mail on screen. He wasn’t sure if he could send this one. It was addressed to Noor Mary and he feared she would misunderstand the meaning of it.

                    #6062

                    In reply to: The Pistil Maze

                    AvatarJib
                    Participant

                      The journey to the Pistil itself would have been worth its own story, thought Charlton. They had to avoid road blocks, crowds of chanting christians that had certainly vowed to spread the virus as fast as possible, and howlers who you were never sure weren’t the real thing from Teen Wolf. They had to be, in such a landscape. Once arid, it had turned greener in just a few weeks. Rain was now weekly when drops of water used to only show up with the bottles of water from the tourists.

                      Despite Kady’s advice not to take anything, he’d still brought the book of drawings. Kady had said nothing about the book, nor the clothes, or the snacks. Charlton was sometimes literal about what people told him, but he also knew it. So he didn’t say anything when he saw Kady had her own backpack with clothes, some money and food. During the trip, he tried to reproduce the experience with the drawings and the dreams —but nothing happened. Charlton felt a little disappointed.

                      They saw the pistil long before they arrived at its foot. It was at the end of the day and the sunset was splashing its reds and purples all around it. Charlton had had time to get used to its tall presence in the landscape. Yet, seeing it at a close range from below was a strange experience. Taller than the tallest man-made tower. He wondered what he was supposed to feel in its presence. Awe? Electricity? Enlightenment? Bursts of inspiration? This should at least be a mystical moment, but all he could feel was annoyance at the crowd of people crawling around like aphids avid to suck its sap.

                      Kady looked more annoyed than surprised. She was walking past the flock as if she knew exactly where to go. Charlton followed, feeling dizzy by the sudden increase of activity and smells. He soon got nauseous at the mix of incense and fried sausages.

                      “There are so many of them,” he eventually said. “How come? It was so difficult just for the two of us to avoid police controls. Do we have to wait with them?”

                      “Nah! They’re just the usual bunch of weirdoes,” Kady said. “They’ve been here a long time. I bet some of them aren’t even aware there have been a virus. But stay close. I don’t want to lose you, it’s a maze before the maze. I just need to see someone before we go in.”

                      They walked for about another ten minutes before stopping in front of a big tent. There, a big man with a boxer’s face was repairing all kind of electronics on a table with the application of a surgeon. Phones, cameras, coffee machines… Charlton wondered how they got electricity to make it all work.

                      “Hey, Kady!” said the man. “You’re back. Did you give it to her?” His face looked anxious.

                      “Of course Max! I even got an answer,” Kady said handing him a pink envelope. Max smelled it.

                      “Her favourite perfume,” he said with a broad smile.

                      “I told you she still loves you. I also brought you something else.” Kady dropped a box on the table among the electronics. Charlton didn’t think it could be possible to witness the expression of a ten year old child on such a hard face, but what was inside the box certainly did magic.

                      “You brought chocolate?”

                      “Yep.”

                      “Did you find the chestnut one?”

                      “Yep.”

                      “My favourite,” said Max to Charlton. “Is this your friend?”

                      Max, meet Charlton. Charlton, Max. Listen, we plan on going in tomorrow, but tonight we need a place to get some rest.”

                      “I told you, you’re always welcome. Did you know she saved my life in there?”

                      “Saved your life?” asked Charlton looking hesitantly at Kady. “No, I didn’t know.”

                      #5950

                      Helle Jorid, my Whale friend.

                      I dreamt I sailed on one of those ancient ships made of wood with no engine other than the wind and man power.

                      In the dream we were very few and not all there by choice. Chased after by some kind of police force we, a motley bunch of people found ourselves on that ship by chance. I saw one man on the dock pass by and cut the big rope that held the ship still.

                      As the rope limply hanged from the mooring post, I watched the ship being guided away by the backwash from its mooring place to the ocean. At that moment someone wanted to disembark and I heard myself say : In your dreams! It’s too late we’re on the open sea now.

                      I think someone mentioned a captain Cook, but I’m not sure as I never saw the guy. Maybe it was merely a cook, but did we really need it? As I went deeper into the ship I found a wonderful meeting room with all the technological comfort of TV sets embedded in the walls and loads of electrical plugs at the end of mechanical arms coming out of these same walls. Surely there were microwave oven and tons of dehydrated food.

                      But our attention was still on the discovery of the treasures hidden in the heart of that ship. There was a circular sofa set around a nice coffee table. And we all settled comfortably there for a get together, happy we had escaped and seemed safe. None of us thought one second about where the wind and the gulf stream were taking us. I guess anywhere was better than what those men had in store for us.

                      I woke up. Alone at night. It was dark. My heart was pounding. Is that how we feel when we are in a lock down? I almost wrote placed under house arrest. What’s the difference apart the name to make us think it’s different?

                      Was the ship the symbol of our longing for freedom? It’s still the same place moving around on water. Even if the place move around, we can’t move away from it and from the flatness of the ocean. I wonder. I wonder if I stayed longer in that dream what would have happened? A storm? An interesting encounter? Like a whale. How would I know unless I write the rest of the story?

                      #5644

                      In reply to: Tart Wreck Repackage

                      “You are so bloody childish, Tara” said Star. She slammed her cup of coffee on the desk so that it slopped over the sides.  “Damn,” she said, wiping it up with her sleeve.

                      “It was my idea and you’ve just taken over. The way you always do.”

                      “Your idea? What are you? Three years old?”

                      With dignity, Tara rose. She closed her laptop, straightened it on the desk so it ran parallel to the sides, and, using a cloth made for that very purpose, dusted it. “I’m going out for some fresh air. ”

                      “Well you won’t find it round here. It’s worse than China they said on the news today. Oh, OKAY, Tara. DON’T GO. The business was your idea and I promise I won’t treat you like a secretary. Happy?”

                      Tara smiled sweetly. “That’s all I need to hear.” She rubbed her hands together. “Right, time to find Uncle Basil. Last night I had a dream…”

                      “Ooooh, do tell, Was Mr Sexy voice in it?”

                      “No, but Uncle Basil was. And he said, cold snap and falling reptiles.”

                      Star furrowed her brow. “Okay, well … we shouldn’t discount anything at this stage.”

                      “It’s bound to be a clue. Speaking of secretaries … I have a niece, Rosamund. She a bit rough around the edges but I’m sure she could answer phones and make our coffee.”

                      “Great idea, Tara! As usual. Get her to come in and do a trial.”

                      #4869

                      In reply to: Coma Cameleon

                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Tibu preferred selling second hand books to selling watches, for he could read them while waiting for customers instead of watching the minutes and hours tick by. Maybe that’s why they called them “watches”, he thought, because if you have one, you watch it. Too much, it would seem.

                        He was reading “The Perilous Treks of Lord Gustard Willoughby Fergusson” while sheltering from the pounding rain, huddled in the corner of an office building porch with a few dozen books piled onto an old blue blanket. He rarely sold any books, but passing strangers kindly brought him a coffee in a take away cup from time to time, or a sandwich or burger. The more thoughtful ones dropped some money into the upturned bowler hat that he’d found in the bin, so that he could choose tea, which he preferred, or some fruit, which he preferred to burgers. One of the regular office girls, a fresh faced young looking redhead, brought him a brand new lighter one day, after noticing him asking for a light the day before. She was a good listener, and often stood beside him silently listening to him read aloud from one of his books.

                        #4857
                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          WIB (workman in blue) opened his lunch box and unwrapped a sandwich. He sighed when he saw it was cheese and pickle again. It had been cheese and pickle all week, a sure sign that WAH (woman at home) wasn’t giving him the attention he deserved, throwing the easiest thing together day after day instead of planning a nice roast chicken dinner, with the prospect of a couple of days of savoury chicken sandwiches to take to work. She hadn’t even bothered to boil up a few hard boiled eggs for a bit of variety. He loved egg sandwiches. He wasn’t a hard man to please, he ruminated dolefully, chewing the cheese and pickle.

                          He reached for his flask to wash it down with a gulp of tea, and noticed with some surprise that she’d bought him a new flask. His old one had a few dents in the screw on cup, and this one looked all shiny and new. Anxious to wash down the cheesy lump in his throat, he unscrewed the cap and poured the flask over the cup.

                          But there was no tea in the flask, nothing poured out of it. He peered inside and shook it.

                          “That woman’s lost her marbles!”

                          It was the last straw. He stood up, shook the flask above his head, and roared incoherently.

                          “Everything alright, mate?” asked his work colleague mildly. WIB2 was contentedly munching a juicy pink ham sandwich. He even had a packet of crisps to go with it, WIB1 noticed.

                          “No tea? Fancy some of my coffee? Pass yer cup. What’s in the flask then, what’s rattling?”

                          WAB1 sat back down on the low wall and upended the flask, pulling at a bit of black stuff that was protruding from the top.

                          ““Maybe it’s full of banknotes!” WIB2 suggested.

                          “It’s a fucking doll! What the..?”

                          “Why did your old lady put a doll in your flask instead of tea, mate? Private joke or something, bit of a lark?” WIB2 elbowed WIB1 in the ribs playfully. “No?” he responded to WIB1’s scowl. “Maybe there’s something stitched inside it, then.”

                          ~~~

                          Lucinda, where is this going?”

                          “I don’t fucking know, Helper Effy.”

                          “I thought as much. Perhaps we’d better go back to the beginning.”

                          #4783

                          Gloria stared at Sharon accusingly. “You aint, ‘ave yer? Well that’s gorn and blown it. You’re too fat for us to carry. If you fall asleep we’ll ‘afta leave you ‘ere.”

                          “We can’t leave ‘er ‘ere, you daft cow,” said Mavis. “Lucky for ‘er, I got a bit of summat wot’ll ‘elp.”

                          “I’ll ‘ave you know I lost a pound last week,” retorted Sharon, taking umbrage at the reference to her weight.

                          Gloria cast a critical eye at Sharon’s thighs spilling out of the sides of the rocking chair and replied, “Yes, but you found it again in the meantime. But never mind that, whatcha got there, our Mavis?”

                          Ooh, is that something from the doctor?” asked Sharon, eyeing the little packet of blue powder that Mavis was carefully pouring into a little heap on the glass topped coffee table. Gloria tittered and glanced at Mavis, who merely rolled her eyes.

                          “It aint all for ‘er, though is it?” Gloria faked a loud yawn. “I need waking up a bit myself.”

                          “Don’t be daft,” Mavis reminded her. “But Sha’ can have double to counteract the effects of that sleeping stuff in the water supply.”

                          #4688

                          “It is a rather peculiar mystery indeed, don’t you think.” Liz leaned suggestively towards the Inspector. He had insisted to keep his trench-coat on, which for some reason she was finding incredibly alluring. It reminded her of all the fun she had in the past, playing her favourite character, Becky in tarty nun’s outfit. She made a mental note for the next costumed party.

                          “Some peanuts, Inspector?”
                          “Good gracious, no. I’m terribly allergic to nuts, but I’m partial to your delicious canapés.”

                          Luckily for him, he couldn’t see Finnley overlooking behind the velvet curtains and the paneled walls, glaring at Liz for taking the credit of her cooking.

                          After a mouthful of tarragon cod pâté with capers, Walter leaned back and a little further from Liz and said “Mmm, delicious. Well, it is indeed quite a good mystery you’ve chosen to write about. All these keys, I love the idea. It sounds out of a spy novel, but I do wonder what are the connections, you see, in most crimes I’ve solved in the past,” he cleared his throat, taking the glass of red wine Finnley had just brought “there is always a good chance the culprit is closer than you know. The skill is always to find the hidden connection.”

                          “Aaah. I’m so glad you’re saying that Walter, I was telling them the same no later than this morning!”
                          She took a random ramekin from the coffee table “some peanuts?”.

                          #4645
                          EricEric
                          Keymaster

                            It had been a day of full work for Ricardo, rather than his frequently dull work at the paper.
                            Connie and Hilda were crazily busy bouncing off bits of odd news to each other and it was a sort of playful banter that even had Sweet Sophie come out of her pre-lunch-post-lunch slumber that occasionally trailed until tea time.

                            News of the Rim had been scarce, there was no denying. Honestly, he wondered how Bossy M’am managed to still pay the bills and their wages, however meager those (or his) were. He giggled thinking about how she probably scared the debt collectors off their wits with her best impersonation of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow playing Tootsie meets Freddy Krueger.

                            Speaking of which, he couldn’t help but eavesdrop, while pretending to clean the coffee cups and the butter knives full of vegemite and scone crumbs.

                            “Dolls! Are you daft? What about all those crop circles in France instead?”
                            “Listen, you decrepit tart, I’m telling you there’s plenty to investigate about this Findmy stuff group. Secret dolls scattered around the world, masonic occult secret symbols…”
                            “Hardly matter for an insert on 4th page, dear. While on the other hand, elongated skulls, secret underground bases in Antarctica…”
                            “We talked about this! Conspiracy theories are off limits! We only want the real stuff, the odd happenings that hits your neighbour that you wouldn’t have known about without us reporting it! But dolls! that’s something, no?”
                            “Flimsy at best…”
                            “What else then?”
                            “I don’t know, seesh, what about Hundreds attending two frogs wedding in India ?”
                            “Already covered, too mainstream…”
                            “What about the Mothman of Tchernobyl?”
                            “We stopped cryptozoology, remember, after that pathetic chase after the trenchcoat ape that got us torpedoed in the other paper rags when we reported it without checking our facts?”
                            “Facts! FACTS! Don’t you get me started about FACTS!”

                            Suddenly, they both turned simultaneously at Ricardo, seemingly realizing his presence.

                            Ric’, this cuppa isn’t going to make itself, dear.” They both said like a couple of creepily synched automatons.

                            #4595
                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

                              Finnley, pssst!”

                              The maid looked tersely and visibly annoyed at the lanky unkempt guy with the crazy eye.

                              “Do not bloody psst me, Godfrey! I’m not your run-of-the-mill hostess, for Flove’s sake.”
                              “Alright, alright. Come here, and don’t make a sound!”

                              Finnley clutched at her broom, which she’d found could make a mean improved nunchaku in case Godfrey’d forgotten proper manners.

                              “Don’t sulk, dear. What I’ve found here is nothing short of a breathrough – pardon my typo, I mean of a breakthrough.”
                              “Oh Good Lord, spit it out already, and I mean it metaphorically. I haven’t got all day, you know,… places to clean, all that.”
                              “Look at that!”
                              Godfrey handed her a pile of typed papers.

                              “Well, what’s about it? It does look a bit too neat and coffee-stain free, but the style is unmistakable. Long nonsensical babble, random words and characters, illogical sentence structure and improbable settings… That’s all you have psst ed me for? Another of some old Liz garbage novels?”

                              “That’s it! Isn’t it genius?” Godfrey looked at Finnley with an air of sheer madness. “You know Liz hasn’t written in years now, nothing fresh at least. You’ve be one to endlessly complain about that. Something about needing the paper to clean the window glass.”

                              “Of course I remember.” She paused, considering the enormous improbability that had just been hinted at. “Do you mean it’s not hers?”

                              “Ahahaha, isn’t it brilliant! This is all written by a clever AI. I’ve called it Fliz 2.0 !”

                              Finnley was at a loss for words. She didn’t know what was more terrifying, the thought of another Liz, or of an endless inexhaustible stream of Liz prose…

                              Godfrey looked pleased at himself “and to think it only took Fliz 44 minutes to spit the entire 888 pages novel!”

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