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  • #7279
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      The Bigamist

      Ernest Tomlinson 1881-1915

       

      Ernest Tomlinson was my great grandfathers Charles Tomlinson‘s younger brother. Their parents were Charles Tomlinson the elder 1847-1907 and Emma Grattidge 1853-1911.

      In 1896, aged 14, Ernest attempted to drown himself in the pond at Penn after his father took his watch off him for arguing with his brothers. Ernest tells the police “It’s all through my brothers putting on me”.  The policeman told him he was a very silly and wicked boy and to see the curate at Penn and to try and be a better boy in future. He was discharged.

      Bridgnorth Journal and South Shropshire Advertiser. – Saturday 11 July 1896:

      1896 suicide attempt

       

      In 1903 Ernest married Ethel Maude Howe in Wolverhampton.  Four years later in 1907 Ethel was granted a separation on the grounds of cruelty.

      In Islington in London in 1913, Ernest bigamously married Mabel Elizabeth Smith.  Mabel left Ernest for treating her very badly. She went to Wolverhampton and found out about his first wife still being alive.

      London Evening Standard – Monday 25 May 1914:

      Bigamy 18 months

       

       

      In May 1914 Ernest was tried at the Old Bailey and the jury found him guilty of bigamy. In his defense, Ernest said that he had received a letter from his mother saying that she was ill, and a further letter saying that she had died. He said he wrongly assumed that they were referring to his wife, and that he was free to marry.  It was his mother who had died.  He was sentenced to 18 months hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs prison.

      Woolwich Gazette – Tuesday 28 April 1914:

      a wrong assumption

       

      1914 sentence old bailey

       

      Ethel Maude Tomlinson was granted a decree nisi in 1915.

      Birmingham Daily Gazette – Wednesday 02 June 1915:

      decree nisi 1915

       

      Ernest died in September 1915 in hospital in Wolverhampton.

      #6342
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Brownings of Tetbury

        Tetbury 1839

         

        Isaac Browning (1784-1848) married Mary Lock (1787-1870) in Tetbury in 1806. Both of them were born in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Isaac was a stone mason. Between 1807 and 1832 they baptised fourteen children in Tetbury, and on 8 Nov 1829 Isaac and Mary baptised five daughters all on the same day.

        I considered that they may have been quintuplets, with only the last born surviving, which would have answered my question about the name of the house La Quinta in Broadway, the home of Eliza Browning and Thomas Stokes son Fred. However, the other four daughters were found in various records and they were not all born the same year. (So I still don’t know why the house in Broadway had such an unusual name).

        Their son George was born and baptised in 1827, but Louisa born 1821, Susan born 1822, Hesther born 1823 and Mary born 1826, were not baptised until 1829 along with Charlotte born in 1828. (These birth dates are guesswork based on the age on later censuses.) Perhaps George was baptised promptly because he was sickly and not expected to survive. Isaac and Mary had a son George born in 1814 who died in 1823. Presumably the five girls were healthy and could wait to be done as a job lot on the same day later.

        Eliza Browning (1814-1886), my great great great grandmother, had a baby six years before she married Thomas Stokes. Her name was Ellen Harding Browning, which suggests that her fathers name was Harding. On the 1841 census seven year old Ellen was living with her grandfather Isaac Browning in Tetbury. Ellen Harding Browning married William Dee in Tetbury in 1857, and they moved to Western Australia.

        Ellen Harding Browning Dee: (photo found on ancestry website)

        Ellen Harding Browning

        OBITUARY. MRS. ELLEN DEE.
        A very old and respected resident of Dongarra, in the person of Mrs. Ellen Dee, passed peacefully away on Sept. 27, at the advanced age of 74 years.

        The deceased had been ailing for some time, but was about and actively employed until Wednesday, Sept. 20, whenn she was heard groaning by some neighbours, who immediately entered her place and found her lying beside the fireplace. Tho deceased had been to bed over night, and had evidently been in the act of lighting thc fire, when she had a seizure. For some hours she was conscious, but had lost the power of speech, and later on became unconscious, in which state she remained until her death.

        The deceased was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1833, was married to William Dee in Tetbury Church 23 years later. Within a month she left England with her husband for Western Australian in the ship City oí Bristol. She resided in Fremantle for six months, then in Greenough for a short time, and afterwards (for 42 years) in Dongarra. She was, therefore, a colonist of about 51 years. She had a family of four girls and three boys, and five of her children survive her, also 35 grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren. She was very highly respected, and her sudden collapse came as a great shock to many.

         

        Eliza married Thomas Stokes (1816-1885) in September 1840 in Hempstead, Gloucestershire. On the 1841 census, Eliza and her mother Mary Browning (nee Lock) were staying with Thomas Lock and family in Cirencester. Strangely, Thomas Stokes has not been found thus far on the 1841 census, and Thomas and Eliza’s first child William James Stokes birth was registered in Witham, in Essex, on the 6th of September 1841.

        I don’t know why William James was born in Witham, or where Thomas was at the time of the census in 1841. One possibility is that as Thomas Stokes did a considerable amount of work with circus waggons, circus shooting galleries and so on as a journeyman carpenter initially and then later wheelwright, perhaps he was working with a traveling circus at the time.

        But back to the Brownings ~ more on William James Stokes to follow.

        One of Isaac and Mary’s fourteen children died in infancy:  Ann was baptised and died in 1811. Two of their children died at nine years old: the first George, and Mary who died in 1835.  Matilda was 21 years old when she died in 1844.

        Jane Browning (1808-)  married Thomas Buckingham in 1830 in Tetbury. In August 1838 Thomas was charged with feloniously stealing a black gelding.

        Susan Browning (1822-1879) married William Cleaver in November 1844 in Tetbury. Oddly thereafter they use the name Bowman on the census. On the 1851 census Mary Browning (Susan’s mother), widow, has grandson George Bowman born in 1844 living with her. The confusion with the Bowman and Cleaver names was clarified upon finding the criminal registers:

        30 January 1834. Offender: William Cleaver alias Bowman, Richard Bunting alias Barnfield and Jeremiah Cox, labourers of Tetbury. Crime: Stealing part of a dead fence from a rick barton in Tetbury, the property of Robert Tanner, farmer.

         

        And again in 1836:

        29 March 1836 Bowman, William alias Cleaver, of Tetbury, labourer age 18; 5’2.5” tall, brown hair, grey eyes, round visage with fresh complexion; several moles on left cheek, mole on right breast. Charged on the oath of Ann Washbourn & others that on the morning of the 31 March at Tetbury feloniously stolen a lead spout affixed to the dwelling of the said Ann Washbourn, her property. Found guilty 31 March 1836; Sentenced to 6 months.

        On the 1851 census Susan Bowman was a servant living in at a large drapery shop in Cheltenham. She was listed as 29 years old, married and born in Tetbury, so although it was unusual for a married woman not to be living with her husband, (or her son for that matter, who was living with his grandmother Mary Browning), perhaps her husband William Bowman alias Cleaver was in trouble again. By 1861 they are both living together in Tetbury: William was a plasterer, and they had three year old Isaac and Thomas, one year old. In 1871 William was still a plasterer in Tetbury, living with wife Susan, and sons Isaac and Thomas. Interestingly, a William Cleaver is living next door but one!

        Susan was 56 when she died in Tetbury in 1879.

         

        Three of the Browning daughters went to London.

        Louisa Browning (1821-1873) married Robert Claxton, coachman, in 1848 in Bryanston Square, Westminster, London. Ester Browning was a witness.

        Ester Browning (1823-1893)(or Hester) married Charles Hudson Sealey, cabinet maker, in Bethnal Green, London, in 1854. Charles was born in Tetbury. Charlotte Browning was a witness.

        Charlotte Browning (1828-1867?) was admitted to St Marylebone workhouse in London for “parturition”, or childbirth, in 1860. She was 33 years old.  A birth was registered for a Charlotte Browning, no mothers maiden name listed, in 1860 in Marylebone. A death was registered in Camden, buried in Marylebone, for a Charlotte Browning in 1867 but no age was recorded.  As the age and parents were usually recorded for a childs death, I assume this was Charlotte the mother.

        I found Charlotte on the 1851 census by chance while researching her mother Mary Lock’s siblings.  Hesther Lock married Lewin Chandler, and they were living in Stepney, London.  Charlotte is listed as a neice. Although Browning is mistranscribed as Broomey, the original page says Browning. Another mistranscription on this record is Hesthers birthplace which is transcribed as Yorkshire. The original image shows Gloucestershire.

         

        Isaac and Mary’s first son was John Browning (1807-1860). John married Hannah Coates in 1834. John’s brother Charles Browning (1819-1853) married Eliza Coates in 1842. Perhaps they were sisters. On the 1861 census Hannah Browning, John’s wife, was a visitor in the Harding household in a village called Coates near Tetbury. Thomas Harding born in 1801 was the head of the household. Perhaps he was the father of Ellen Harding Browning.

        George Browning (1828-1870) married Louisa Gainey in Tetbury, and died in Tetbury at the age of 42.  Their son Richard Lock Browning, a 32 year old mason, was sentenced to one month hard labour for game tresspass in Tetbury in 1884.

        Isaac Browning (1832-1857) was the youngest son of Isaac and Mary. He was just 25 years old when he died in Tetbury.

        #6340
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Wheelwrights of Broadway

          Thomas Stokes 1816-1885

          Frederick Stokes 1845-1917

          Stokes Wheelwrights

          Stokes Wheelwrights. Fred on left of wheel, Thomas his father on right.

          Thomas Stokes

          Thomas Stokes was born in Bicester, Oxfordshire in 1816. He married Eliza Browning (born in 1814 in Tetbury, Gloucestershire) in Gloucester in 1840 Q3. Their first son William was baptised in Chipping Hill, Witham, Essex, on 3 Oct 1841. This seems a little unusual, and I can’t find Thomas and Eliza on the 1841 census. However both the 1851 and 1861 census state that William was indeed born in Essex.

          In 1851 Thomas and Eliza were living in Bledington, Gloucestershire, and Thomas was a journeyman carpenter.

          Note that a journeyman does not mean someone who moved around a lot. A journeyman was a tradesman who had served his trade apprenticeship and mastered his craft, not bound to serve a master, but originally hired by the day. The name derives from the French for day – jour.

          Also on the 1851 census: their daughter Susan, born in Churchill Oxfordshire in 1844; son Frederick born in Bledington Gloucestershire in 1846; daughter Louisa born in Foxcote Oxfordshire in 1849; and 2 month old daughter Harriet born in Bledington in 1851.

          On the 1861 census Thomas and Eliza were living in Evesham, Worcestershire, and daughter Susan was no longer living at home, but William, Fred, Louisa and Harriet were, as well as daughter Emily born in Churchill Oxfordshire in 1856. Thomas was a wheelwright.

          On the 1871 census Thomas and Eliza were still living in Evesham, and Thomas was a wheelwright employing three apprentices. Son Fred, also a wheelwright, and his wife Ann Rebecca live with them.

          Mr Stokes, wheelwright, was found guilty of reprehensible conduct in concealing the fact that small-pox existed in his house, according to a mention in The Oxfordshire Weekly News on Wednesday 19 February 1873:

          Stokes smallpox 1873

           

           

          From Paul Weaver’s ancestry website:

          “It was Thomas Stokes who built the first “Famous Vale of Evesham Light Gardening Dray for a Half-Legged Horse to Trot” (the quotation is from his account book), the forerunner of many that became so familiar a sight in the towns and villages from the 1860s onwards. He built many more for the use of the Vale gardeners.

          Thomas also had long-standing business dealings with the people of the circus and fairgrounds, and had a contract to effect necessary repairs and renewals to their waggons whenever they visited the district. He built living waggons for many of the show people’s families as well as shooting galleries and other equipment peculiar to the trade of his wandering customers, and among the names figuring in his books are some still familiar today, such as Wilsons and Chipperfields.

          He is also credited with inventing the wooden “Mushroom” which was used by housewives for many years to darn socks. He built and repaired all kinds of vehicles for the gentry as well as for the circus and fairground travellers.

          Later he lived with his wife at Merstow Green, Evesham, in a house adjoining the Almonry.”

           

          An excerpt from the book Evesham Inns and Signs by T.J.S. Baylis:

          Thomas Stokes dray

          The Old Red Horse, Evesham:

          Old Red Horse

           

          Thomas died in 1885 aged 68 of paralysis, bronchitis and debility.  His wife Eliza a year later in 1886.

           

          Frederick Stokes

          In Worcester in 1870 Fred married Ann Rebecca Day, who was born in Evesham in 1845.

          Ann Rebecca Day:

          Rebecca Day

           

          In 1871 Fred was still living with his parents in Evesham, with his wife Ann Rebecca as well as their three month old daughter Annie Elizabeth. Fred and Ann (referred to as Rebecca) moved to La Quinta on Main Street, Broadway.

           

          Rebecca Stokes in the doorway of La Quinta on Main Street Broadway, with her grandchildren Ralph and Dolly Edwards:

          La Quinta

           

          Fred was a wheelwright employing one man on the 1881 census. In 1891 they were still in Broadway, Fred’s occupation was wheelwright and coach painter, as well as his fifteen year old son Frederick.

          In the Evesham Journal on Saturday 10 December 1892 it was reported that  “Two cases of scarlet fever, the children of Mr. Stokes, wheelwright, Broadway, were certified by Mr. C. W. Morris to be isolated.”

           

          Still in Broadway in 1901 and Fred’s son Albert was also a wheelwright.  By 1911 Fred and Rebecca had only one son living at home in Broadway, Reginald, who was a coach painter. Fred was still a wheelwright aged 65.

          Fred’s signature on the 1911 census:

          1911 La Quinta

          Rebecca died in 1912 and Fred in 1917.

          Fred Stokes:

          Fred Stokes

           

          In the book Evesham to Bredon From Old Photographs By Fred Archer:

          Stokes 1

          Stokes 2

          #6333
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            The Grattidge Family

             

            The first Grattidge to appear in our tree was Emma Grattidge (1853-1911) who married Charles Tomlinson (1847-1907) in 1872.

            Charles Tomlinson (1873-1929) was their son and he married my great grandmother Nellie Fisher. Their daughter Margaret (later Peggy Edwards) was my grandmother on my fathers side.

            Emma Grattidge was born in Wolverhampton, the daughter and youngest child of William Grattidge (1820-1887) born in Foston, Derbyshire, and Mary Stubbs, born in Burton on Trent, daughter of Solomon Stubbs, a land carrier. William and Mary married at St Modwens church, Burton on Trent, in 1839. It’s unclear why they moved to Wolverhampton. On the 1841 census William was employed as an agent, and their first son William was nine months old. Thereafter, William was a licensed victuallar or innkeeper.

            William Grattidge was born in Foston, Derbyshire in 1820. His parents were Thomas Grattidge, farmer (1779-1843) and Ann Gerrard (1789-1822) from Ellastone. Thomas and Ann married in 1813 in Ellastone. They had five children before Ann died at the age of 25:

            Bessy was born in 1815, Thomas in 1818, William in 1820, and Daniel Augustus and Frederick were twins born in 1822. They were all born in Foston. (records say Foston, Foston and Scropton, or Scropton)

            On the 1841 census Thomas had nine people additional to family living at the farm in Foston, presumably agricultural labourers and help.

            After Ann died, Thomas had three children with Kezia Gibbs (30 years his junior) before marrying her in 1836, then had a further four with her before dying in 1843. Then Kezia married Thomas’s nephew Frederick Augustus Grattidge (born in 1816 in Stafford) in London in 1847 and had two more!

             

            The siblings of William Grattidge (my 3x great grandfather):

             

            Frederick Grattidge (1822-1872) was a schoolmaster and never married. He died at the age of 49 in Tamworth at his twin brother Daniels address.

            Daniel Augustus Grattidge (1822-1903) was a grocer at Gungate in Tamworth.

            Thomas Grattidge (1818-1871) married in Derby, and then emigrated to Illinois, USA.

            Bessy Grattidge  (1815-1840) married John Buxton, farmer, in Ellastone in January 1838. They had three children before Bessy died in December 1840 at the age of 25: Henry in 1838, John in 1839, and Bessy Buxton in 1840. Bessy was baptised in January 1841. Presumably the birth of Bessy caused the death of Bessy the mother.

            Bessy Buxton’s gravestone:

            “Sacred to the memory of Bessy Buxton, the affectionate wife of John Buxton of Stanton She departed this life December 20th 1840, aged 25 years. “Husband, Farewell my life is Past, I loved you while life did last. Think on my children for my sake, And ever of them with I take.”

            20 Dec 1840, Ellastone, Staffordshire

            Bessy Buxton

             

            In the 1843 will of Thomas Grattidge, farmer of Foston, he leaves fifth shares of his estate, including freehold real estate at Findern,  to his wife Kezia, and sons William, Daniel, Frederick and Thomas. He mentions that the children of his late daughter Bessy, wife of John Buxton, will be taken care of by their father.  He leaves the farm to Keziah in confidence that she will maintain, support and educate his children with her.

            An excerpt from the will:

            I give and bequeath unto my dear wife Keziah Grattidge all my household goods and furniture, wearing apparel and plate and plated articles, linen, books, china, glass, and other household effects whatsoever, and also all my implements of husbandry, horses, cattle, hay, corn, crops and live and dead stock whatsoever, and also all the ready money that may be about my person or in my dwelling house at the time of my decease, …I also give my said wife the tenant right and possession of the farm in my occupation….

            A page from the 1843 will of Thomas Grattidge:

            1843 Thomas Grattidge

             

            William Grattidges half siblings (the offspring of Thomas Grattidge and Kezia Gibbs):

             

            Albert Grattidge (1842-1914) was a railway engine driver in Derby. In 1884 he was driving the train when an unfortunate accident occured outside Ambergate. Three children were blackberrying and crossed the rails in front of the train, and one little girl died.

            Albert Grattidge:

            Albert Grattidge

             

            George Grattidge (1826-1876) was baptised Gibbs as this was before Thomas married Kezia. He was a police inspector in Derby.

            George Grattidge:

            George Grattidge

             

            Edwin Grattidge (1837-1852) died at just 15 years old.

            Ann Grattidge (1835-) married Charles Fletcher, stone mason, and lived in Derby.

            Louisa Victoria Grattidge (1840-1869) was sadly another Grattidge woman who died young. Louisa married Emmanuel Brunt Cheesborough in 1860 in Derby. In 1861 Louisa and Emmanuel were living with her mother Kezia in Derby, with their two children Frederick and Ann Louisa. Emmanuel’s occupation was sawyer. (Kezia Gibbs second husband Frederick Augustus Grattidge was a timber merchant in Derby)

            At the time of her death in 1869, Emmanuel was the landlord of the White Hart public house at Bridgegate in Derby.

            The Derby Mercury of 17th November 1869:

            “On Wednesday morning Mr Coroner Vallack held an inquest in the Grand
            Jury-room, Town-hall, on the body of Louisa Victoria Cheeseborough, aged
            33, the wife of the landlord of the White Hart, Bridge-gate, who committed
            suicide by poisoning at an early hour on Sunday morning. The following
            evidence was taken:

            Mr Frederick Borough, surgeon, practising in Derby, deposed that he was
            called in to see the deceased about four o’clock on Sunday morning last. He
            accordingly examined the deceased and found the body quite warm, but dead.
            He afterwards made enquiries of the husband, who said that he was afraid
            that his wife had taken poison, also giving him at the same time the
            remains of some blue material in a cup. The aunt of the deceased’s husband
            told him that she had seen Mrs Cheeseborough put down a cup in the
            club-room, as though she had just taken it from her mouth. The witness took
            the liquid home with him, and informed them that an inquest would
            necessarily have to be held on Monday. He had made a post mortem
            examination of the body, and found that in the stomach there was a great
            deal of congestion. There were remains of food in the stomach and, having
            put the contents into a bottle, he took the stomach away. He also examined
            the heart and found it very pale and flabby. All the other organs were
            comparatively healthy; the liver was friable.

            Hannah Stone, aunt of the deceased’s husband, said she acted as a servant
            in the house. On Saturday evening, while they were going to bed and whilst
            witness was undressing, the deceased came into the room, went up to the
            bedside, awoke her daughter, and whispered to her. but what she said the
            witness did not know. The child jumped out of bed, but the deceased closed
            the door and went away. The child followed her mother, and she also
            followed them to the deceased’s bed-room, but the door being closed, they
            then went to the club-room door and opening it they saw the deceased
            standing with a candle in one hand. The daughter stayed with her in the
            room whilst the witness went downstairs to fetch a candle for herself, and
            as she was returning up again she saw the deceased put a teacup on the
            table. The little girl began to scream, saying “Oh aunt, my mother is
            going, but don’t let her go”. The deceased then walked into her bed-room,
            and they went and stood at the door whilst the deceased undressed herself.
            The daughter and the witness then returned to their bed-room. Presently
            they went to see if the deceased was in bed, but she was sitting on the
            floor her arms on the bedside. Her husband was sitting in a chair fast
            asleep. The witness pulled her on the bed as well as she could.
            Ann Louisa Cheesborough, a little girl, said that the deceased was her
            mother. On Saturday evening last, about twenty minutes before eleven
            o’clock, she went to bed, leaving her mother and aunt downstairs. Her aunt
            came to bed as usual. By and bye, her mother came into her room – before
            the aunt had retired to rest – and awoke her. She told the witness, in a
            low voice, ‘that she should have all that she had got, adding that she
            should also leave her her watch, as she was going to die’. She did not tell
            her aunt what her mother had said, but followed her directly into the
            club-room, where she saw her drink something from a cup, which she
            afterwards placed on the table. Her mother then went into her own room and
            shut the door. She screamed and called her father, who was downstairs. He
            came up and went into her room. The witness then went to bed and fell
            asleep. She did not hear any noise or quarrelling in the house after going
            to bed.

            Police-constable Webster was on duty in Bridge-gate on Saturday evening
            last, about twenty minutes to one o’clock. He knew the White Hart
            public-house in Bridge-gate, and as he was approaching that place, he heard
            a woman scream as though at the back side of the house. The witness went to
            the door and heard the deceased keep saying ‘Will you be quiet and go to
            bed’. The reply was most disgusting, and the language which the
            police-constable said was uttered by the husband of the deceased, was
            immoral in the extreme. He heard the poor woman keep pressing her husband
            to go to bed quietly, and eventually he saw him through the keyhole of the
            door pass and go upstairs. his wife having gone up a minute or so before.
            Inspector Fearn deposed that on Sunday morning last, after he had heard of
            the deceased’s death from supposed poisoning, he went to Cheeseborough’s
            public house, and found in the club-room two nearly empty packets of
            Battie’s Lincoln Vermin Killer – each labelled poison.

            Several of the Jury here intimated that they had seen some marks on the
            deceased’s neck, as of blows, and expressing a desire that the surgeon
            should return, and re-examine the body. This was accordingly done, after
            which the following evidence was taken:

            Mr Borough said that he had examined the body of the deceased and observed
            a mark on the left side of the neck, which he considered had come on since
            death. He thought it was the commencement of decomposition.
            This was the evidence, after which the jury returned a verdict “that the
            deceased took poison whilst of unsound mind” and requested the Coroner to
            censure the deceased’s husband.

            The Coroner told Cheeseborough that he was a disgusting brute and that the
            jury only regretted that the law could not reach his brutal conduct.
            However he had had a narrow escape. It was their belief that his poor
            wife, who was driven to her own destruction by his brutal treatment, would
            have been a living woman that day except for his cowardly conduct towards
            her.

            The inquiry, which had lasted a considerable time, then closed.”

             

            In this article it says:

            “it was the “fourth or fifth remarkable and tragical event – some of which were of the worst description – that has taken place within the last twelve years at the White Hart and in the very room in which the unfortunate Louisa Cheesborough drew her last breath.”

            Sheffield Independent – Friday 12 November 1869:

            Louisa Cheesborough

            #6268
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              From Tanganyika with Love

              continued part 9

              With thanks to Mike Rushby.

              Lyamungu 3rd January 1945

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Lyamungu 14 May 1945

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Lyamungu 19th September 1945

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

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

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

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

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

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

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

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

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Jacksdale England 24th June 1946

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Jacksdale England 28th August 1946

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Jacksdale England 20th September 1946

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Dar es Salaam 22nd October 1946

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              Mbeya 1st November 1946

              Dearest Family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              Eleanor.

              #6263
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                From Tanganyika with Love

                continued  ~ part 4

                With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                Mchewe Estate. 31st January 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Life is very quiet just now. Our neighbours have left and I miss them all especially
                Joni who was always a great bearer of news. We also grew fond of his Swedish
                brother-in-law Max, whose loud ‘Hodi’ always brought a glad ‘Karibu’ from us. His wife,
                Marion, I saw less often. She is not strong and seldom went visiting but has always
                been friendly and kind and ready to share her books with me.

                Ann’s birthday is looming ahead and I am getting dreadfully anxious that her
                parcels do not arrive in time. I am delighted that you were able to get a good head for
                her doll, dad, but horrified to hear that it was so expensive. You would love your
                ‘Charming Ann’. She is a most responsible little soul and seems to have outgrown her
                mischievous ways. A pity in a way, I don’t want her to grow too serious. You should see
                how thoroughly Ann baths and towels herself. She is anxious to do Georgie and Kate
                as well.

                I did not mean to teach Ann to write until after her fifth birthday but she has taught
                herself by copying the large print in newspaper headlines. She would draw a letter and
                ask me the name and now I find that at four Ann knows the whole alphabet. The front
                cement steps is her favourite writing spot. She uses bits of white clay we use here for
                whitewashing.

                Coffee prices are still very low and a lot of planters here and at Mbosi are in a
                mess as they can no longer raise mortgages on their farms or get advances from the
                Bank against their crops. We hear many are leaving their farms to try their luck on the
                Diggings.

                George is getting fed up too. The snails are back on the shamba and doing
                frightful damage. Talk of the plagues of Egypt! Once more they are being collected in
                piles and bashed into pulp. The stench on the shamba is frightful! The greybeards in the
                village tell George that the local Chief has put a curse on the farm because he is angry
                that the Government granted George a small extension to the farm two years ago! As
                the Chief was consulted at the time and was agreeable this talk of a curse is nonsense
                but goes to show how the uneducated African put all disasters down to witchcraft.

                With much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 9th February 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Ann’s birthday yesterday was not quite the gay occasion we had hoped. The
                seventh was mail day so we sent a runner for the mail, hoping against hope that your
                parcel containing the dolls head had arrived. The runner left for Mbeya at dawn but, as it
                was a very wet day, he did not return with the mail bag until after dark by which time Ann
                was fast asleep. My heart sank when I saw the parcel which contained the dolls new
                head. It was squashed quite flat. I shed a few tears over that shattered head, broken
                quite beyond repair, and George felt as bad about it as I did. The other parcel arrived in
                good shape and Ann loves her little sewing set, especially the thimble, and the nursery
                rhymes are a great success.

                Ann woke early yesterday and began to open her parcels. She said “But
                Mummy, didn’t Barbara’s new head come?” So I had to show her the fragments.
                Instead of shedding the flood of tears I expected, Ann just lifted the glass eyes in her
                hand and said in a tight little voice “Oh poor Barbara.” George saved the situation. as
                usual, by saying in a normal voice,”Come on Ann, get up and lets play your new
                records.” So we had music and sweets before breakfast. Later I removed Barbara’s
                faded old blond wig and gummed on the glossy new brown one and Ann seems quite
                satisfied.

                Last night, after the children were tucked up in bed, we discussed our financial
                situation. The coffee trees that have survived the plagues of borer beetle, mealie bugs
                and snails look strong and fine, but George says it will be years before we make a living
                out of the farm. He says he will simply have to make some money and he is leaving for
                the Lupa on Saturday to have a look around on the Diggings. If he does decide to peg
                a claim and work it he will put up a wattle and daub hut and the children and I will join him
                there. But until such time as he strikes gold I shall have to remain here on the farm and
                ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.

                Now don’t go and waste pity on me. Women all over the country are having to
                stay at home whilst their husbands search for a livelihood. I am better off than most
                because I have a comfortable little home and loyal servants and we still have enough
                capitol to keep the wolf from the door. Anyway this is the rainy season and hardly the
                best time to drag three small children around the sodden countryside on prospecting
                safaris.

                So I’ll stay here at home and hold thumbs that George makes a lucky strike.

                Heaps of love to all,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 27th February 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Well, George has gone but here we are quite safe and cosy. Kate is asleep and
                Ann and Georgie are sprawled on the couch taking it in turns to enumerate the things
                God has made. Every now and again Ann bothers me with an awkward question. “Did
                God make spiders? Well what for? Did he make weeds? Isn’t He silly, mummy? She is
                becoming a very practical person. She sews surprisingly well for a four year old and has
                twice made cakes in the past week, very sweet and liberally coloured with cochineal and
                much appreciated by Georgie.

                I have been without George for a fortnight and have adapted myself to my new
                life. The children are great company during the day and I have arranged my evenings so
                that they do not seem long. I am determined that when George comes home he will find
                a transformed wife. I read an article entitled ‘Are you the girl he married?’ in a magazine
                last week and took a good look in the mirror and decided that I certainly was not! Hair dry,
                skin dry, and I fear, a faint shadow on the upper lip. So now I have blown the whole of
                your Christmas Money Order on an order to a chemist in Dar es Salaam for hair tonic,
                face cream and hair remover and am anxiously awaiting the parcel.

                In the meantime, after tucking the children into bed at night, I skip on the verandah
                and do the series of exercises recommended in the magazine article. After this exertion I
                have a leisurely bath followed by a light supper and then read or write letters to pass
                the time until Kate’s ten o’clock feed. I have arranged for Janey to sleep in the house.
                She comes in at 9.30 pm and makes up her bed on the living room floor by the fire.

                The days are by no means uneventful. The day before yesterday the biggest
                troop of monkeys I have ever seen came fooling around in the trees and on the grass
                only a few yards from the house. These monkeys were the common grey monkeys
                with black faces. They came in all sizes and were most entertaining to watch. Ann and
                Georgie had a great time copying their antics and pulling faces at the monkeys through
                the bedroom windows which I hastily closed.

                Thomas, our headman, came running up and told me that this troop of monkeys
                had just raided his maize shamba and asked me to shoot some of them. I would not of
                course do this. I still cannot bear to kill any animal, but I fired a couple of shots in the air
                and the monkeys just melted away. It was fantastic, one moment they were there and
                the next they were not. Ann and Georgie thought I had been very unkind to frighten the
                poor monkeys but honestly, when I saw what they had done to my flower garden, I
                almost wished I had hardened my heart and shot one or two.

                The children are all well but Ann gave me a nasty fright last week. I left Ann and
                Georgie at breakfast whilst I fed Fanny, our bull terrier on the back verandah. Suddenly I
                heard a crash and rushed inside to find Ann’s chair lying on its back and Ann beside it on
                the floor perfectly still and with a paper white face. I shouted for Janey to bring water and
                laid Ann flat on the couch and bathed her head and hands. Soon she sat up with a wan
                smile and said “I nearly knocked my head off that time, didn’t I.” She must have been
                standing on the chair and leaning against the back. Our brick floors are so terribly hard that
                she might have been seriously hurt.

                However she was none the worse for the fall, but Heavens, what an anxiety kids
                are.

                Lots of love,
                Eleanor

                Mchewe Estate. 12th March 1936

                Dearest Family,

                It was marvellous of you to send another money order to replace the one I spent
                on cosmetics. With this one I intend to order boots for both children as a protection from
                snake bite, though from my experience this past week the threat seems to be to the
                head rather than the feet. I was sitting on the couch giving Kate her morning milk from a
                cup when a long thin snake fell through the reed ceiling and landed with a thud just behind
                the couch. I shouted “Nyoka, Nyoka!” (Snake,Snake!) and the houseboy rushed in with
                a stick and killed the snake. I then held the cup to Kate’s mouth again but I suppose in
                my agitation I tipped it too much because the baby choked badly. She gasped for
                breath. I quickly gave her a sharp smack on the back and a stream of milk gushed
                through her mouth and nostrils and over me. Janey took Kate from me and carried her
                out into the fresh air on the verandah and as I anxiously followed her through the door,
                another long snake fell from the top of the wall just missing me by an inch or so. Luckily
                the houseboy still had the stick handy and dispatched this snake also.

                The snakes were a pair of ‘boomslangs’, not nice at all, and all day long I have
                had shamba boys coming along to touch hands and say “Poli Memsahib” – “Sorry
                madam”, meaning of course ‘Sorry you had a fright.’

                Apart from that one hectic morning this has been a quiet week. Before George
                left for the Lupa he paid off most of the farm hands as we can now only afford a few
                labourers for the essential work such as keeping the weeds down in the coffee shamba.
                There is now no one to keep the grass on the farm roads cut so we cannot use the pram
                when we go on our afternoon walks. Instead Janey carries Kate in a sling on her back.
                Janey is a very clean slim woman, and her clothes are always spotless, so Kate keeps
                cool and comfortable. Ann and Georgie always wear thick overalls on our walks as a
                protection against thorns and possible snakes. We usually make our way to the
                Mchewe River where Ann and Georgie paddle in the clear cold water and collect shiny
                stones.

                The cosmetics parcel duly arrived by post from Dar es Salaam so now I fill the
                evenings between supper and bed time attending to my face! The much advertised
                cream is pink and thick and feels revolting. I smooth it on before bedtime and keep it on
                all night. Just imagine if George could see me! The advertisements promise me a skin
                like a rose in six weeks. What a surprise there is in store for George!

                You will have been wondering what has happened to George. Well on the Lupa
                he heard rumours of a new gold strike somewhere in the Sumbawanga District. A couple
                of hundred miles from here I think, though I am not sure where it is and have no one to
                ask. You look it up on the map and tell me. John Molteno is also interested in this and
                anxious to have it confirmed so he and George have come to an agreement. John
                Molteno provided the porters for the journey together with prospecting tools and
                supplies but as he cannot leave his claims, or his gold buying business, George is to go
                on foot to the area of the rumoured gold strike and, if the strike looks promising will peg
                claims in both their names.

                The rainy season is now at its height and the whole countryside is under water. All
                roads leading to the area are closed to traffic and, as there are few Europeans who
                would attempt the journey on foot, George proposes to get a head start on them by
                making this uncomfortable safari. I have just had my first letter from George since he left
                on this prospecting trip. It took ages to reach me because it was sent by runner to
                Abercorn in Northern Rhodesia, then on by lorry to Mpika where it was put on a plane
                for Mbeya. George writes the most charming letters which console me a little upon our
                all too frequent separations.

                His letter was cheerful and optimistic, though reading between the lines I should
                say he had a grim time. He has reached Sumbawanga after ‘a hell of a trip’, to find that
                the rumoured strike was at Mpanda and he had a few more days of foot safari ahead.
                He had found the trip from the Lupa even wetter than he had expected. The party had
                three days of wading through swamps sometimes waist deep in water. Of his sixteen
                porters, four deserted an the second day out and five others have had malaria and so
                been unable to carry their loads. He himself is ‘thin but very fit’, and he sounds full of
                beans and writes gaily of the marvellous holiday we will have if he has any decent luck! I
                simply must get that mink and diamonds complexion.

                The frustrating thing is that I cannot write back as I have no idea where George is
                now.

                With heaps of love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 24th March 1936

                Dearest Family,
                How kind you are. Another parcel from home. Although we are very short
                of labourers I sent a special runner to fetch it as Ann simply couldn’t bear the suspense
                of waiting to see Brenda, “My new little girl with plaits.” Thank goodness Brenda is
                unbreakable. I could not have born another tragedy. She really is an exquisite little doll
                and has hardly been out of Ann’s arms since arrival. She showed Brenda proudly to all
                the staff. The kitchen boy’s face was a study. His eyes fairly came out on sticks when he
                saw the dolls eyes not only opening and shutting, but moving from side to side in that
                incredibly lifelike way. Georgie loves his little model cars which he carries around all day
                and puts under his pillow at night.

                As for me, I am enchanted by my very smart new frock. Janey was so lavish with
                her compliments when I tried the frock on, that in a burst of generosity I gave her that
                rather tartish satin and lace trousseau nighty, and she was positively enthralled. She
                wore it that very night when she appeared as usual to doss down by the fire.
                By the way it was Janey’s turn to have a fright this week. She was in the
                bathroom washing the children’s clothes in an outsize hand basin when it happened. As
                she took Georgie’s overalls from the laundry basket a large centipede ran up her bare
                arm. Luckily she managed to knock the centipede off into the hot water in the hand basin.
                It was a brute, about six inches long of viciousness with a nasty sting. The locals say that
                the bite is much worse than a scorpions so Janey had a lucky escape.

                Kate cut her first two teeth yesterday and will, I hope, sleep better now. I don’t
                feel that pink skin food is getting a fair trial with all those broken nights. There is certainly
                no sign yet of ‘The skin he loves to touch”. Kate, I may say, is rosy and blooming. She
                can pull herself upright providing she has something solid to hold on to. She is so plump
                I have horrible visions of future bow legs so I push her down, but she always bobs up
                again.

                Both Ann and Georgie are mad on books. Their favourites are ‘Barbar and
                Celeste” and, of all things, ‘Struvel Peter’ . They listen with absolute relish to the sad tale
                of Harriet who played with matches.

                I have kept a laugh for the end. I am hoping that it will not be long before George
                comes home and thought it was time to take the next step towards glamour, so last
                Wednesday after lunch I settled the children on their beds and prepared to remove the ,
                to me, obvious down on my upper lip. (George always loyally says that he can’t see
                any.) Well I got out the tube of stuff and carefully followed the directions. I smoothed a
                coating on my upper lip. All this was watched with great interest by the children, including
                the baby, who stood up in her cot for a better view. Having no watch, I had propped
                the bedroom door open so that I could time the operation by the cuckoo clock in the
                living room. All the children’s surprised comments fell on deaf ears. I would neither talk
                nor smile for fear of cracking the hair remover which had set hard. The set time was up
                and I was just about to rinse the remover off when Kate slipped, knocking her head on
                the corner of the cot. I rushed to the rescue and precious seconds ticked off whilst I
                pacified her.

                So, my dears, when I rinsed my lip, not only the plaster and the hair came away
                but the skin as well and now I really did have a Ronald Coleman moustache – a crimson
                one. I bathed it, I creamed it, powdered it but all to no avail. Within half an hour my lip
                had swollen until I looked like one of those Duckbilled West African women. Ann’s
                comments, “Oh Mummy, you do look funny. Georgie, doesn’t Mummy look funny?”
                didn’t help to soothe me and the last straw was that just then there was the sound of a car drawing up outside – the first car I had heard for months. Anyway, thank heaven, it
                was not George, but the representative of a firm which sells agricultural machinery and
                farm implements, looking for orders. He had come from Dar es Salaam and had not
                heard that all the planters from this district had left their farms. Hospitality demanded that I
                should appear and offer tea. I did not mind this man because he was a complete
                stranger and fat, middle aged and comfortable. So I gave him tea, though I didn’t
                attempt to drink any myself, and told him the whole sad tale.

                Fortunately much of the swelling had gone next day and only a brown dryness
                remained. I find myself actually hoping that George is delayed a bit longer. Of one thing
                I am sure. If ever I grow a moustache again, it stays!

                Heaps of love from a sadder but wiser,
                Eleanor

                Mchewe Estate. 3rd April 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Sound the trumpets, beat the drums. George is home again. The safari, I am sad
                to say, was a complete washout in more ways than one. Anyway it was lovely to be
                together again and we don’t yet talk about the future. The home coming was not at all as
                I had planned it. I expected George to return in our old A.C. car which gives ample
                warning of its arrival. I had meant to wear my new frock and make myself as glamourous
                as possible, with our beautiful babe on one arm and our other jewels by my side.
                This however is what actually happened. Last Saturday morning at about 2 am , I
                thought I heard someone whispering my name. I sat up in bed, still half asleep, and
                there was George at the window. He was thin and unshaven and the tiredest looking
                man I have ever seen. The car had bogged down twenty miles back along the old Lupa
                Track, but as George had had no food at all that day, he decided to walk home in the
                bright moonlight.

                This is where I should have served up a tasty hot meal but alas, there was only
                the heal of a loaf and no milk because, before going to bed I had given the remaining
                milk to the dog. However George seemed too hungry to care what he ate. He made a
                meal off a tin of bully, a box of crustless cheese and the bread washed down with cup
                after cup of black tea. Though George was tired we talked for hours and it was dawn
                before we settled down to sleep.

                During those hours of talk George described his nightmarish journey. He started
                up the flooded Rukwa Valley and there were days of wading through swamp and mud
                and several swollen rivers to cross. George is a strong swimmer and the porters who
                were recruited in that area, could also swim. There remained the problem of the stores
                and of Kianda the houseboy who cannot swim. For these they made rough pole rafts
                which they pulled across the rivers with ropes. Kianda told me later that he hopes never
                to make such a journey again. He swears that the raft was submerged most of the time
                and that he was dragged through the rivers underwater! You should see the state of
                George’s clothes which were packed in a supposedly water tight uniform trunk. The
                whole lot are mud stained and mouldy.

                To make matters more trying for George he was obliged to live mostly on
                porters rations, rice and groundnut oil which he detests. As all the district roads were
                closed the little Indian Sores in the remote villages he passed had been unable to
                replenish their stocks of European groceries. George would have been thinner had it not
                been for two Roman Catholic missions enroute where he had good meals and dry
                nights. The Fathers are always wonderfully hospitable to wayfarers irrespective of
                whether or not they are Roman Catholics. George of course is not a Catholic. One finds
                the Roman Catholic missions right out in the ‘Blue’ and often on spots unhealthy to
                Europeans. Most of the Fathers are German or Dutch but they all speak a little English
                and in any case one can always fall back on Ki-Swahili.

                George reached his destination all right but it soon became apparent that reports
                of the richness of the strike had been greatly exaggerated. George had decided that
                prospects were brighter on the Lupa than on the new strike so he returned to the Lupa
                by the way he had come and, having returned the borrowed equipment decided to
                make his way home by the shortest route, the old and now rarely used road which
                passes by the bottom of our farm.

                The old A.C. had been left for safe keeping at the Roman Catholic Galala
                Mission 40 miles away, on George’s outward journey, and in this old car George, and
                the houseboy Kianda , started for home. The road was indescribably awful. There were long stretches that were simply one big puddle, in others all the soil had been washed
                away leaving the road like a rocky river bed. There were also patches where the tall
                grass had sprung up head high in the middle of the road,
                The going was slow because often the car bogged down because George had
                no wheel chains and he and Kianda had the wearisome business of digging her out. It
                was just growing dark when the old A.C. settled down determinedly in the mud for the
                last time. They could not budge her and they were still twenty miles from home. George
                decided to walk home in the moonlight to fetch help leaving Kianda in charge of the car
                and its contents and with George’s shot gun to use if necessary in self defence. Kianda
                was reluctant to stay but also not prepared to go for help whilst George remained with
                the car as lions are plentiful in that area. So George set out unarmed in the moonlight.
                Once he stopped to avoid a pride of lion coming down the road but he circled safely
                around them and came home without any further alarms.

                Kianda said he had a dreadful night in the car, “With lions roaming around the car
                like cattle.” Anyway the lions did not take any notice of the car or of Kianda, and the next
                day George walked back with all our farm boys and dug and pushed the car out of the
                mud. He brought car and Kianda back without further trouble but the labourers on their
                way home were treed by the lions.

                The wet season is definitely the time to stay home.

                Lots and lots of love,
                Eleanor

                Mchewe Estate. 30th April 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Young George’s third birthday passed off very well yesterday. It started early in
                the morning when he brought his pillow slip of presents to our bed. Kate was already
                there and Ann soon joined us. Young George liked all the presents you sent, especially
                the trumpet. It has hardly left his lips since and he is getting quite smart about the finger
                action.

                We had quite a party. Ann and I decorated the table with Christmas tree tinsel
                and hung a bunch of balloons above it. Ann also decorated young George’s chair with
                roses and phlox from the garden. I had made and iced a fruit cake but Ann begged to
                make a plain pink cake. She made it entirely by herself though I stood by to see that
                she measured the ingredients correctly. When the cake was baked I mixed some soft
                icing in a jug and she poured it carefully over the cake smoothing the gaps with her
                fingers!

                During the party we had the gramophone playing and we pulled crackers and
                wore paper hats and altogether had a good time. I forgot for a while that George is
                leaving again for the Lupa tomorrow for an indefinite time. He was marvellous at making
                young George’s party a gay one. You will have noticed the change from Georgie to
                young George. Our son declares that he now wants to be called George, “Like Dad”.
                He an Ann are a devoted couple and I am glad that there is only a fourteen
                months difference in their ages. They play together extremely well and are very
                independent which is just as well for little Kate now demands a lot of my attention. My
                garden is a real cottage garden and looks very gay and colourful. There are hollyhocks
                and Snapdragons, marigolds and phlox and of course the roses and carnations which, as
                you know, are my favourites. The coffee shamba does not look so good because the
                small labour force, which is all we can afford, cannot cope with all the weeds. You have
                no idea how things grow during the wet season in the tropics.

                Nothing alarming ever seems to happen when George is home, so I’m afraid this
                letter is rather dull. I wanted you to know though, that largely due to all your gifts of toys
                and sweets, Georgie’s 3rd birthday party went with a bang.

                Your very affectionate,
                Eleanor

                Mchewe Estate. 17th September 1936

                Dearest Family,

                I am sorry to hear that Mummy worries about me so much. “Poor Eleanor”,
                indeed! I have a quite exceptional husband, three lovely children, a dear little home and
                we are all well.It is true that I am in rather a rut but what else can we do? George comes
                home whenever he can and what excitement there is when he does come. He cannot
                give me any warning because he has to take advantage of chance lifts from the Diggings
                to Mbeya, but now that he is prospecting nearer home he usually comes walking over
                the hills. About 50 miles of rough going. Really and truly I am all right. Although our diet is
                monotonous we have plenty to eat. Eggs and milk are cheap and fruit plentiful and I
                have a good cook so can devote all my time to the children. I think it is because they are
                my constant companions that Ann and Georgie are so grown up for their years.
                I have no ayah at present because Janey has been suffering form rheumatism
                and has gone home for one of her periodic rests. I manage very well without her except
                in the matter of the afternoon walks. The outward journey is all right. George had all the
                grass cut on his last visit so I am able to push the pram whilst Ann, George and Fanny
                the dog run ahead. It is the uphill return trip that is so trying. Our walk back is always the
                same, down the hill to the river where the children love to play and then along the car
                road to the vegetable garden. I never did venture further since the day I saw a leopard
                jump on a calf. I did not tell you at the time as I thought you might worry. The cattle were
                grazing on a small knoll just off our land but near enough for me to have a clear view.
                Suddenly the cattle scattered in all directions and we heard the shouts of the herd boys
                and saw – or rather had the fleeting impression- of a large animal jumping on a calf. I
                heard the herd boy shout “Chui, Chui!” (leopard) and believe me, we turned in our
                tracks and made for home. To hasten things I picked up two sticks and told the children
                that they were horses and they should ride them home which they did with
                commendable speed.

                Ann no longer rides Joseph. He became increasingly bad tempered and a
                nuisance besides. He took to rolling all over my flower beds though I had never seen
                him roll anywhere else. Then one day he kicked Ann in the chest, not very hard but
                enough to send her flying. Now George has given him to the native who sells milk to us
                and he seems quite happy grazing with the cattle.

                With love to you all,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 2nd October 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Since I last wrote George has been home and we had a lovely time as usual.
                Whilst he was here the District Commissioner and his wife called. Mr Pollock told
                George that there is to be a big bush clearing scheme in some part of the Mbeya
                District to drive out Tsetse Fly. The game in the area will have to be exterminated and
                there will probably be a job for George shooting out the buffalo. The pay would be
                good but George says it is a beastly job. Although he is a professional hunter, he hates
                slaughter.

                Mrs P’s real reason for visiting the farm was to invite me to stay at her home in
                Mbeya whilst she and her husband are away in Tukuyu. Her English nanny and her small
                daughter will remain in Mbeya and she thought it might be a pleasant change for us and
                a rest for me as of course Nanny will do the housekeeping. I accepted the invitation and I
                think I will go on from there to Tukuyu and visit my friend Lillian Eustace for a fortnight.
                She has given us an open invitation to visit her at any time.

                I had a letter from Dr Eckhardt last week, telling me that at a meeting of all the
                German Settlers from Mbeya, Tukuyu and Mbosi it had been decided to raise funds to
                build a school at Mbeya. They want the British Settlers to co-operate in this and would
                be glad of a subscription from us. I replied to say that I was unable to afford a
                subscription at present but would probably be applying for a teaching job.
                The Eckhardts are the leaders of the German community here and are ardent
                Nazis. For this reason they are unpopular with the British community but he is the only
                doctor here and I must say they have been very decent to us. Both of them admire
                George. George has still not had any luck on the Lupa and until he makes a really
                promising strike it is unlikely that the children and I will join him. There is no fresh milk there
                and vegetables and fruit are imported from Mbeya and Iringa and are very expensive.
                George says “You wouldn’t be happy on the diggings anyway with a lot of whores and
                their bastards!”

                Time ticks away very pleasantly here. Young George and Kate are blooming
                and I keep well. Only Ann does not look well. She is growing too fast and is listless and
                pale. If I do go to Mbeya next week I shall take her to the doctor to be overhauled.
                We do not go for our afternoon walks now that George has returned to the Lupa.
                That leopard has been around again and has killed Tubbage that cowardly Alsatian. We
                gave him to the village headman some months ago. There is no danger to us from the
                leopard but I am terrified it might get Fanny, who is an excellent little watchdog and
                dearly loved by all of us. Yesterday I sent a note to the Boma asking for a trap gun and
                today the farm boys are building a trap with logs.

                I had a mishap this morning in the garden. I blundered into a nest of hornets and
                got two stings in the left arm above the elbow. Very painful at the time and the place is
                still red and swollen.

                Much love to you all,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 10th October 1936

                Dearest Family,

                Well here we are at Mbeya, comfortably installed in the District Commissioner’s
                house. It is one of two oldest houses in Mbeya and is a charming gabled place with tiled
                roof. The garden is perfectly beautiful. I am enjoying the change very much. Nanny
                Baxter is very entertaining. She has a vast fund of highly entertaining tales of the goings
                on amongst the British Aristocracy, gleaned it seems over the nursery teacup in many a
                Stately Home. Ann and Georgie are enjoying the company of other children.
                People are very kind about inviting us out to tea and I gladly accept these
                invitations but I have turned down invitations to dinner and one to a dance at the hotel. It
                is no fun to go out at night without George. There are several grass widows at the pub
                whose husbands are at the diggings. They have no inhibitions about parties.
                I did have one night and day here with George, he got the chance of a lift and
                knowing that we were staying here he thought the chance too good to miss. He was
                also anxious to hear the Doctor’s verdict on Ann. I took Ann to hospital on my second
                day here. Dr Eckhardt said there was nothing specifically wrong but that Ann is a highly
                sensitive type with whom the tropics does not agree. He advised that Ann should
                spend a year in a more temperate climate and that the sooner she goes the better. I felt
                very discouraged to hear this and was most relieved when George turned up
                unexpectedly that evening. He phoo-hood Dr Eckhardt’s recommendation and next
                morning called in Dr Aitkin, the Government Doctor from Chunya and who happened to
                be in Mbeya.

                Unfortunately Dr Aitkin not only confirmed Dr Eckhardt’s opinion but said that he
                thought Ann should stay out of the tropics until she had passed adolescence. I just don’t
                know what to do about Ann. She is a darling child, very sensitive and gentle and a
                lovely companion to me. Also she and young George are inseparable and I just cannot
                picture one without the other. I know that you would be glad to have Ann but how could
                we bear to part with her?

                Your worried but affectionate,
                Eleanor.

                Tukuyu. 23rd October 1936

                Dearest Family,

                As you see we have moved to Tukuyu and we are having a lovely time with
                Lillian Eustace. She gave us such a warm welcome and has put herself out to give us
                every comfort. She is a most capable housekeeper and I find her such a comfortable
                companion because we have the same outlook in life. Both of us are strictly one man
                women and that is rare here. She has a two year old son, Billy, who is enchanted with
                our rolly polly Kate and there are other children on the station with whom Ann and
                Georgie can play. Lillian engaged a temporary ayah for me so I am having a good rest.
                All the children look well and Ann in particular seems to have benefited by the
                change to a cooler climate. She has a good colour and looks so well that people all
                exclaim when I tell them, that two doctors have advised us to send Ann out of the
                country. Perhaps after all, this holiday in Tukuyu will set her up.

                We had a trying journey from Mbeya to Tukuyu in the Post Lorry. The three
                children and I were squeezed together on the front seat between the African driver on
                one side and a vast German on the other. Both men smoked incessantly – the driver
                cigarettes, and the German cheroots. The cab was clouded with a blue haze. Not only
                that! I suddenly felt a smarting sensation on my right thigh. The driver’s cigarette had
                burnt a hole right through that new checked linen frock you sent me last month.
                I had Kate on my lap all the way but Ann and Georgie had to stand against the
                windscreen all the way. The fat German offered to take Ann on his lap but she gave him
                a very cold “No thank you.” Nor did I blame her. I would have greatly enjoyed the drive
                under less crowded conditions. The scenery is gorgeous. One drives through very high
                country crossing lovely clear streams and at one point through rain forest. As it was I
                counted the miles and how thankful I was to see the end of the journey.
                In the days when Tanganyika belonged to the Germans, Tukuyu was the
                administrative centre for the whole of the Southern Highlands Province. The old German
                Fort is still in use as Government offices and there are many fine trees which were
                planted by the Germans. There is a large prosperous native population in this area.
                They go in chiefly for coffee and for bananas which form the basis of their diet.
                There are five British married couples here and Lillian and I go out to tea most
                mornings. In the afternoon there is tennis or golf. The gardens here are beautiful because
                there is rain or at least drizzle all the year round. There are even hedge roses bordering
                some of the district roads. When one walks across the emerald green golf course or
                through the Boma gardens, it is hard to realise that this gentle place is Tropical Africa.
                ‘Such a green and pleasant land’, but I think I prefer our corner of Tanganyika.

                Much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe. 12th November 1936

                Dearest Family,

                We had a lovely holiday but it is so nice to be home again, especially as Laza,
                the local Nimrod, shot that leopard whilst we were away (with his muzzleloader gun). He
                was justly proud of himself, and I gave him a tip so that he could buy some native beer
                for a celebration. I have never seen one of theses parties but can hear the drums and
                sounds of merrymaking, especially on moonlight nights.

                Our house looks so fresh and uncluttered. Whilst I was away, the boys
                whitewashed the house and my houseboy had washed all the curtains, bedspreads,
                and loose covers and watered the garden. If only George were here it would be
                heaven.

                Ann looked so bonny at Tukuyu that I took her to the Government Doctor there
                hoping that he would find her perfectly healthy, but alas he endorsed the finding of the
                other two doctors so, when an opportunity offers, I think I shall have to send Ann down
                to you for a long holiday from the Tropics. Mother-in-law has offered to fetch her next
                year but England seems so far away. With you she will at least be on the same
                continent.

                I left the children for the first time ever, except for my stay in hospital when Kate
                was born, to go on an outing to Lake Masoko in the Tukuyu district, with four friends.
                Masoko is a beautiful, almost circular crater lake and very very deep. A detachment of
                the King’s African Rifles are stationed there and occupy the old German barracks
                overlooking the lake.

                We drove to Masoko by car and spent the afternoon there as guests of two
                British Army Officers. We had a good tea and the others went bathing in the lake but i
                could not as I did not have a costume. The Lake was as beautiful as I had been lead to
                imagine and our hosts were pleasant but I began to grow anxious as the afternoon
                advanced and my friends showed no signs of leaving. I was in agonies when they
                accepted an invitation to stay for a sundowner. We had this in the old German beer
                garden overlooking the Lake. It was beautiful but what did I care. I had promised the
                children that I would be home to give them their supper and put them to bed. When I
                did at length return to Lillian’s house I found the situation as I had expected. Ann, with her
                imagination had come to the conclusion that I never would return. She had sobbed
                herself into a state of exhaustion. Kate was screaming in sympathy and George 2 was
                very truculent. He wouldn’t even speak to me. Poor Lillian had had a trying time.
                We did not return to Mbeya by the Mail Lorry. Bill and Lillian drove us across to
                Mbeya in their new Ford V8 car. The children chattered happily in the back of the car
                eating chocolate and bananas all the way. I might have known what would happen! Ann
                was dreadfully and messily car sick.

                I engaged the Mbeya Hotel taxi to drive us out to the farm the same afternoon
                and I expect it will be a long time before we leave the farm again.

                Lots and lots of love to all,
                Eleanor.

                Chunya 27th November 1936

                Dearest Family,

                You will be surprised to hear that we are all together now on the Lupa goldfields.
                I have still not recovered from my own astonishment at being here. Until last Saturday
                night I never dreamed of this move. At about ten o’clock I was crouched in the inglenook
                blowing on the embers to make a fire so that I could heat some milk for Kate who is
                cutting teeth and was very restless. Suddenly I heard a car outside. I knew it must be
                George and rushed outside storm lamp in hand. Sure enough, there was George
                standing by a strange car, and beaming all over his face. “Something for you my love,”
                he said placing a little bundle in my hand. It was a knotted handkerchief and inside was a
                fine gold nugget.

                George had that fire going in no time, Kate was given the milk and half an aspirin
                and settles down to sleep, whilst George and I sat around for an hour chatting over our
                tea. He told me that he had borrowed the car from John Molteno and had come to fetch
                me and the children to join him on the diggings for a while. It seems that John, who has a
                camp at Itewe, a couple of miles outside the township of Chunya, the new
                Administrative Centre of the diggings, was off to the Cape to visit his family for a few
                months. John had asked George to run his claims in his absence and had given us the
                loan of his camp and his car.

                George had found the nugget on his own claim but he is not too elated because
                he says that one good month on the diggings is often followed by several months of
                dead loss. However, I feel hopeful, we have had such a run of bad luck that surely it is
                time for the tide to change. George spent Sunday going over the farm with Thomas, the
                headman, and giving him instructions about future work whilst I packed clothes and
                kitchen equipment. I have brought our ex-kitchenboy Kesho Kutwa with me as cook and
                also Janey, who heard that we were off to the Lupa and came to offer her services once
                more as ayah. Janey’s ex-husband Abel is now cook to one of the more successful
                diggers and I think she is hoping to team up with him again.

                The trip over the Mbeya-Chunya pass was new to me and I enjoyed it very
                much indeed. The road winds over the mountains along a very high escarpment and
                one looks down on the vast Usangu flats stretching far away to the horizon. At the
                highest point the road rises to about 7000 feet, and this was too much for Ann who was
                leaning against the back of my seat. She was very thoroughly sick, all over my hair.
                This camp of John Molteno’s is very comfortable. It consists of two wattle and
                daub buildings built end to end in a clearing in the miombo bush. The main building
                consists of a large living room, a store and an office, and the other of one large bedroom
                and a small one separated by an area for bathing. Both buildings are thatched. There are
                no doors, and there are no windows, but these are not necessary because one wall of
                each building is built up only a couple of feet leaving a six foot space for light and air. As
                this is the dry season the weather is pleasant. The air is fresh and dry but not nearly so
                hot as I expected.

                Water is a problem and must be carried long distances in kerosene tins.
                vegetables and fresh butter are brought in a van from Iringa and Mbeya Districts about
                once a fortnight. I have not yet visited Chunya but I believe it is as good a shopping
                centre as Mbeya so we will be able to buy all the non perishable food stuffs we need.
                What I do miss is the fresh milk. The children are accustomed to drinking at least a pint of
                milk each per day but they do not care for the tinned variety.

                Ann and young George love being here. The camp is surrounded by old
                prospecting trenches and they spend hours each day searching for gold in the heaps of gravel. Sometimes they find quartz pitted with little spots of glitter and they bring them
                to me in great excitement. Alas it is only Mica. We have two neighbours. The one is a
                bearded Frenchman and the other an Australian. I have not yet met any women.
                George looks very sunburnt and extremely fit and the children also look well.
                George and I have decided that we will keep Ann with us until my Mother-in-law comes
                out next year. George says that in spite of what the doctors have said, he thinks that the
                shock to Ann of being separated from her family will do her more harm than good. She
                and young George are inseparable and George thinks it would be best if both
                George and Ann return to England with my Mother-in-law for a couple of years. I try not
                to think at all about the breaking up of the family.

                Much love to all,
                Eleanor.

                 

                #6262
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  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

                    #4149
                    F LoveF Love
                    Participant

                      “What do you think of the new lodger?” asked Sue that night over dinner. It was Monday so dinner was fish pie. Monday, Wednesday and Friday it was fish pie and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday it was meat loaf. Sue believed Sunday should be a day of rest so Sunday dinner was fried left overs.

                      John paused mid bite and considered the question.

                      “She seems alright, I guess. Doesn’t seem to have much in the way of interests … always locked in her room with the computer. I mean, she could at least join us for dinner. I was hoping for someone a bit more interesting this time … you know, a bit of interesting conversation.”

                      “Eat up, Jane. What were you thinking of, Dear?” asked Sue anxiously.

                      John grunted. “Oh you know … travel …. and what not. I dunno. What’s on the telly tonight then, Luv? Anything good?”

                      “Nothing much,” said Sue. “I might just have an early night. And anyway what sort of a name is Clove? It’s a bit unusual.”

                      “It’s a bit bloody odd, alright,” said John. “A bit odd to name your kid after a spice. It takes all sorts, eh. I think there is snooker on the telly later. I might stay up and watch that.”

                      “Oh, that’s great, Luv. I might sit up with you and do a bit of crochet then. The twins are out late tonight at bingo — they probably won’t be home till after 9pm.”

                      “9pm. That’s late,” grunted John.

                      #3747
                      EricEric
                      Keymaster

                        “Speaking of witch…” Percy said, “I’m getting late for my Wednesday voodoo lesson. A sample of blood from a dragon tree would have come in handy. Less messy than chicken.
                        “Oh, don’t patronize me now Liz, you know your bacon has nothing vegetarian about it, no matter what your Americano friends believe…”

                        #3589
                        matermater
                        Participant

                          Mater:

                          I showed Finly to her room. I have put her in room 10 — opposite Mr What’s-his-name, the guest — which is the nicest guest room in the house and one of the few which Fred got round to doing up before he left.

                          On the spur of the moment I asked her if she believed in ghosts. She looked at me intently and said “There’s a lot we don’t understand. I can’t say I believe or disbelieve.” And that was it. I didn’t press it further. She is a serious girl but her references were excellent and I think she will be a hard worker. Not one to take nonsense from anyone.

                          I asked her if she would like the day off tomorrow to settle in and suggested she could start her duties on Wednesday.

                          “I can see I have my work cut out here,” she said. “The sooner I get started the better.”

                          And dear God we need some help around here, I thought.

                          The other day I caught Dido throwing gin all over herself and laughing. I am concerned I will need to call mental health services soon. I didn’t say anything at the time — I don’t think she saw me. I have been annoyed with her in the past for her lackadaisical attitude towards caring for the kids, but when I saw the poor demented thing throwing gin at herself, well, for the first time I felt really sorry for her.

                          #891
                          AvatarJib
                          Participant

                            His teeth had been nudging him for a few days, or maybe a few weeks actually. Last Wednesday, Yurick and him had a chat with their friends Michaela and Elias, and Yann told them about his questioning.
                            Now, he was wondering about what was the meaning of all that in his new understanding of his reality. He was having the impression that he was in a complex video game and that at the beginning he hadn’t been told about all the fun stuffs he could do in it. Many aspects of this video game were unraveling and still he was feeling cold feet about jumping ahead.
                            Yann was noticing that his teeth were nudging himself mainly when he was doing certain things, like judging himself, finding himself unworthy, trying to force himself in certain directions, or to force his body. It was like his body was an amazing communication device from him to himself. It was continuously giving him information, not only about his environment like temperature, smells, lights and images, but also about what would have been hidden like weather patterns, mass excitement or balance, mass tension or release…
                            Elias had told him and Yurick that their energy was constantly open to each other, in a continuous merging and exchanging process. They were quite aware of that now, and at the beginning of their relation it would have been overwhelming, but now it was really fulfilling in many ways. Even when they were not in physical proximity, they would be together and feel each other. But they were also more centered upon themselves and they were not as influenced by the mood of the other as they had been ;)) they had reached a more balanced relationship and were beginning to intensify the movement.
                            Yann had also begun to be aware of a humming tone, inaudible, but very present. It was humming under the veil of this reality and he had been told it was one of his language of communication. This was very intriguing and it was overlapping his interest in his body and his teeth, he was wondering about the effects of this humming tone on them.

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