Portmanteau No. 003 19361101

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8 pages, in two sections.

[Betty was 19 1/2, and had been married 7 weeks when she wrote this, from what was to be their home for the next six months]

   Sesheke
   N.R.
   1st November, 1936.
Everybody darling.

Oh, it's SO lovely being in our own home, and it'll be even more marvellous when we've got the house straight with all the presents. I know there won't be room for them all, but still, well see what we can do.

We are sitting on the verandah sundowning and it's quite dark, so goodness knows what this letter will look like in the morning. It's marvellously calm and peaceful, and there's not a sound except for the clicking of the crickets and the strains of the Brahms Symphony issuing from the gramophone. There, My Husband has very sweetly lit the one and only lamp, so I can see now. It's pretty good, don't you think?

Now, where did I get to last week? Oh, yes, Phibbs and me riding down to the Mission to call on all his girl-friends there with their helmets and dark spectacles - at least most missionaries are like that, aren't they.

We haven't thought of any names for the horses yet - have you any suggestions? Mine was the little 3 year old, and he loved cantering, and was awfully good at avoiding the terrible holes dug by the spring hares in the sandy ground.

So we cantered down the sandy path, and all the grass is quite brown because of the heat, although it's supposed to be Springtime now; every time we met anybody they knelt down on the ground and clapped their hands and we said "Mulumele" which means greeting. The women wear lovely swingy long full skirts, and the richer they are the larger number of skirts they wear - all at once, all the time. So insanitary.

The Mission consists of a Church (Protestant), a school, a Native Hospital of about forty huts, and a "European" Hospital of one room, where all the missionaries in Barotse go to have their Babies, and that's the only thing it's ever been used for, and it looked VERY unused!

There are four people there:

Mr. and Mrs. Monteverdi. He looks like a pub-keeper and they come from: the Pyrenees, and she is small and not bad-looking in a pubby way, and disapproves strongly of natives having two wives. We on the other hand disapprove strongly of the immorality that goes on if they turn Christian and are therefore only allowed one wife.

Miss Lanz is the nurse, who has been here three months and has come while the usual one - Miss Perrier - is away on leave. She is Swiss and young and has a sense of humour and a little dog called Peggy. She has to treat quite a lot of lepers, and just now she has had a man there who got his leg badly mauled by a lion. The lion carted off his donkey, so he ran after it and tried to pull the donkey away from it. "He could see the lion didn't like it" (a la Stanley Holloway) - and he certainly wouldn't have risked his life like that if the lion had taken his wife or his mother-in-law instead of his donkey!

Lily Hippo - alias Miss Koisson is the teacher of the poor unfortunate children at the Mission. She has a face like a hippo with enormous bulgy eyes and no-chin-but-a-double-one, if you see what I mean, and she scrapes her hair round to the back and fixes it with a large tortoiseshell comb to the top, and she is fat and squat and shapeless and wears white ribbed woollen stockings.

There are three other people in the neighbourhood:

Mr. Read, the fierce thin-lipped kind who always has a grudge against somebody, usually the Government, and especially on the subject of Cattle. I'm afraid I don't quite know yet WHY he disagrees so strongly about Cattle, but I expect G will be able to tell you if I give him a look-in in this letter. Anyway, Cattle is Mr Read's bete noire, and his other interest in life is Food, but he's not fat. He keeps a sort of store somewhere, and when the people at the other store leave (which they are going to do soon) he is going to run his store at a loss, so as to give nobody a chance of competing with him. Anything to "do the other man down" is his motto.

Miss Breach, a dear little wizened old body, with such a kind wrinkled face and very round innocent blue eyes, and ginger-coloured dead-straight hair. She's such a funny mixture of a young and gawky school-girl and a little old hag that you can't really tell how old she is. She is running the other store at the moment, as her sister and brother-in-law, Mr and Mrs. Bennett, have gone away with their two children, and have left her in charge. She has been there, alone, for two years now, and she is leaving at the end of this year to go and join them. She has bagged the only bit of high ground by the river to make her garden on, and I know that as soon as she goes Mr. Read will snap it up before we can put our spoke in. All the rest of the ground is just sand, and when the river floods which it does during the next six months, it covers the whole place except just that one patch of high ground.

The third neighbour is Mr. Finkelstein, the only poor Jew in history because he has SUCH a kind heart. He has no money at all, so they built him a little house near the river, and he just lives there and doesn't do anything, and every now and then he sends a present of a paw-paw or something up to the D.O. or asks him down for a sundowner. A dear old bird.

- 3 -

Now I think I'll tell you a bit about the garden. At the moment it consists of four beds of snapdragons, of which one has a flower. Great excitement! Our six little Frangipani, who are eighteen inches high and have about two leaves each and are doing very nicely thank you. Several bins of petunias, who flower very well, but I don't care for them very much - they are too spindly. We have planted a bowl of carnation seeds, and one of these fine days we are going to put in a lot of Golden Shower seeds to grow up the side of the house, as it is very bare and needs a nice creeper. We have two lovely flamboyant trees, and one or two rather lazy jackaranders, but otherwise the place is singularly devoid of colour. There is no grass - what ought to be The Lawn is just a patch of sand! But you wait till the rains come, and then everything will be marvellously green and the flowers will pop up with great enthusiasm.

The Boys are marvelous. Musonda, the cook, speaks a little English, which is a great help, and he is a dear and does everything he can to make things easy for the poor new Mama who doesn't know a thing. Chishimba is table-boy, and has a very deep voice and is very difficult to understand; it was awful bad luck, he went home during the time they were at Mankoya to get married, and when he had married her she refused to come to Mankoya with him. So he went back to G, and during this leave he tried to persuade her, and again she refused to leave her home. So now he has married a little girl, the daughter of a Chief, who is too young at the moment to leave her home.

Shimeo is house-boy and Peter is general bottle-washer, and is a brother of Musonda.

There are three wives - Musonda's younger one, with her child who was born at Mankoya, and who is called Bupe (prounounced Boopy - SUCH a lovely name for a dog!). In Chiwemba Bupe means "a gift", but in Sikololo it means "porridge"! Shimeo and Peter have a wife each, but neither of Chishimba's are here.

I'm learning Chiwemba very busily, and quite a lot of the words are much like Swahili, and it is funny how I keep on remembering words of Swahili that I had forgotten I ever knew. The boys giggle whenever I say anything in Chiwemba, so I hardly dare use it!

I let Musonda keep the key of the store as he always has, and he knows much more about it than I do. I ordered much too much stuff, and my Nasty Husband allowed me to and didn't help a bit, because he said it would be good for me to learn by experience how much not to order in future! DEAR Husband, he IS so nice. We've only had one disagreement so far, and that was whether we should have Virginian Cigarettes in the house, because I don't smoke any and he smokes Turkish but 95% of other people smoke Virginian, and he said why should he buy Virginian when he hates them,; and he is NEVER offered Turkish in other people's houses so why should he offer them Virginian in his own house? So we bought Virginian!

It's now 2nd November, and the post goes the day after tomorrow. We went down to the Mission for tea yesterday, and all The Quality was there and we talked about the weather and lions and crocodiles. A goat was eaten by a croc on the bank the night before last, and Mr. Monteverdi shot one last week. I haven't seen one yet, nor any Hippos.

We walked down to the river the other evening to see if we could get any duck, as they are flighting just now. We didn't see any, but we saw lots of ibis, a fish-eagle, and a diver-bird, and lots of fish jumping. There are some very good bream in the river, who give you a mouldy time as far as playing them goes, but they are very good to eat. Tiger-fish are abundant to, and they give you a lovely fight, so I think I must take a rod down one evening when he's shooting, and see what I can get.

Phibbs goes this week sometime, and he's feeding with us now that all our stores have come. The wireless has come too, and we're going to have great fun and games this evening unpacking it and fixing it up. He seems to think he knows a bit about it, so we ought to be able to make it work between us, Jane's lovely dinner service has come too, and not a thing broken. We couldn't think why there were only eleven of each at first, and then we realised that one of each was taken out to be on show at the Bazaar, so I suppose they will becoming out with the rest of the goods.

I wish I didn't love My Husband so much, because he's gone off to the Office and I won't be able to see him for another two hours. Isn't that trying. I'm being so lazy, and it's such fun knowing we've got all the time there is to do everything in. I've still got to unpack a steel trunk and a suitcase, but I really can't be bothered to do it now, and anyway it's much too hot. We had two good showers of rain last week, which were completely dried up by the next day, and now it's hotting up for another.

Now I'll answer your letters, your lovely, very welcome letters that arrived on Sunday. It IS so lovely hearing from you all, and we loved your enormous newsy letters, Mummy. How nice of Colonel Gretton to give G a cheque - SUCH a good present, and I an getting SO tired of hearing of all the other presents that have arrived for us! The endless hors-d'oeuvres dishes and silver candlesticks - are you sure there are no more thermos jugs? I do hope you won't send any more out, as there is no room to put them, and we honestly don't need them. We are going to put a lot of the stuff in the Bank at Livingstone I think, as I know there are such thousands of duplicates, and if we are going to be moved round every year or two - probably to Mankoya in six months - they will be an awful nuisance. So please keep any others we get, as we still might find we need some exchanges.

There's one thing we DO need, and that is, six really LARGE, boat-like coffee-cups for breakfast coffee, like you have at Weston. Our breakfast service is white with bits of green on it as far as I can remember, but if you like you could get us plain white.

I an so glad you sent the veil to be mended, as it was just about a corpse of a veil by the time I had finished walking about on it, and I would have hated it to go back to Aunt Margaret like that, but I just didn't think of it before we left. Thank you ever so much, Mummy. Yes, I am wearing my mosquito boots very religiously every evening, and so is G and his are too tight at the moment because they are new.

Mum, the linen has arrived, and we found that they had sent the eighteen good pillow cases as ordered, and also A Whole Dozen huckaback ones or whatever rough pillow cases are made of. We can use them on tour quite easily, but he already had six all-right ones, and they weren't ordered. I don't know if you've paid for them, or if you ordered them after you had given me the list, but there they are, and I just thought I'd tell you. Everything else is there, except the wash-leather for silver, which isn’t at all necessary so it's all right, but I thought I'd tell you in case you've paid for it.

And PLEASE you won't send us out any more presents, will you. There's not going to be room for them already, and we have Two hors-d'oeuvres dishes already, and I DON'T want a handsome walking stick nor two silver vases as we have six already. Anyway we don't have hors-d'oeuvres! I will try and pluck up the energy to write and thank them for them very soon, but it's SO hot just now.

Dad, how perfectly MARVELLOUS you catching that fine salmon! I AM glad and you must have been so thrilled. Was he fun to play, and how long did he take, and have you eaten him yourself and was he nice and have you caught any more and how long did you have in Scotland and what did you do there and is it very cold and was Mum's Conference a success and did she miss her secretary and has Rusty stopped making messes in the house and is Heather hunting yet, and what has Green done with Gipsy's tail and are you going to breed from her and has Aunt Ger died yet and are you really going to India and have Mummy and Daddy been over lately and have they found a new house yet?

Do you know, I've suddenly realised that I haven't told you a thing about the stuff arriving. I was thinking I'd told you last week, but of course it hadn't arrived last week.

Well, about four days ago - I'm afraid I don't know the dates or days at all, I've completely lost count - I was having my Afternoon Meditation (with Nottings on because it was so Hot) when G came in and woke me up and said Sixty loads have arrived" so I said "Can I go to sleep again?" and did so promptly. Then about an hour later I got up, and there outside the back door were all these rows of little wooden boxes, and round the edge the big things, like tin trunks, wireless, tin bath, sewing machine, and all the suitcases. The boys had also arrived, so we at once got them on to undoing the wooden crates, and G got the things out and handed them to Peter who handed them to Shimeo who handed them to Chishimba who handed them to Musonda who handed them to me who put them on a shelf.

There were tins and tins of peas, asparagus, Heinz Baked Beans (two dozen!) Heinz Tomato Soup, Heinz Mayonnaise, Milk Chocolate, Tongue, Ham, Fruit Salad, Talcum Powder, Matches, Tea, Coffee, etc, etc, and two sacks of sugar and two sacks of flour and a sack of salt and a baby sack of icing sugar and Rice. Three Crates of Booze there were - Whiskey and some lovely fruit juice called Mazoe Crush. One has to drink a lot of fruit juice, as until our garden grows we can't get any fresh fruit or vegetables and we'd get Gangrene or Scurvy or something equally vulgar if we didn't have any green stuff at all.

The store-room is just about choc-a-block full, and of course I didn't know how much stuff he'd need for his cooking, and OF COURSE they'd forgotten the cooking-fat - the most vital and important and invaluable and much-used thing in this country. So he keeps the key, and lets me in sometimes for a treat. Musonda, I mean, not G.

J got it all unpacked in about an hour and a half, as we couldn't leave it out all night in case it rained, but of course it didn't.

It's now November 3rd, according to G.

We couldn't undo the Wireless yesterday, because they had The Quality to tea at the Office - consisting of Imwiko and .the Mokwai, who has leprosy in her fingers so isn't allowed to shake hands, and drank out of our cups and put her hands in our cigarette box and sat in our chair. She wears fifteen skirts, and has just married her husband under Christian laws, so is now trying to get a divorce! She is Imwiko's father's sister's daughter's daughter, so he calls her his Daughter.

Their relationships are very funny. Your mother's brother daughter and your father's sister's daughter are called your sisters, but your mother's sister's daughter and your father's brother's daughter are called your cousins. Do you get my meaning? They have thousands of half-brothers and sisters too, as their parents have so many wives. Fancy having three or four mothers-in-law!!

I have tried to unpack most of our stuff, but the trouble is there is not very much furniture, and what there is is either the home of rats and mice - who have such VERY dirty habits in the house, and who are rather difficult to house-train – or else they have legs or handles missing. The whole place is in very bad repair, and it is on the estimates for next year that they should build a new house for the D.C. and keep this old one for the junior D.O. The ceiling of the bedroom is made of small square steel tiles, and between those and the roof there is apparently a mass of white ants. The sides of the ceiling show that something must be wrong, as they are almost separate from the walls! So we won't be a bit surprised if one of these fine days we wake up dead, with a mass of steel ceiling on our heads. The floor of the bedroom is made of concrete - or do I mean cement? - and there are great cracks across it and chunks of it are loose or missing.

Mr. Leversedge - who came over to Weston with his very nice little wife, Lisbeth, do you remember? and he was on the Dunnottar coming out, but had to leave her and the two tiny children behind - came through here the other day on his way up to Senanga, where he is to be for probably six months - like us here. He had been in his barge coming up the river for about four or five days from Katamboora (I don't know if that's the right spelling, but G will probably tell me it's wrong when he comes home from the Office because it does not look very right, does it) which is the landing stage forty miles out from Livingstone. He has sixteen days more on the river before he gets to Senanga, when it takes a few hours flying?

(Interval while I get sixpence for Musonda to buy two fresh fish. We killed a Beast, Ngombe or Cow the other day, and we've been eating it for every meal since, so it's high time we had something new.)

I have such fun ordering the dinner, because it is more or less the same every day. I go to the store and Musonda comes too, and I look round the shelf and say, "Well, I think we'll have some Peas to-day, and what about a little Fruit Salad? And I think some Mock-turtle soup for dinner, and what about some Peas and Kraut, and a nice Raspberry Jelly for pudding. And you might mince up the Ngombe with some white sauce."

And he says '"E Mokwai" which means Yes, and I give him the tins and off he goes, and he cooks awfully well, and always seems to know what I mean. We had Heinz Baked last night, and G ate too much and got indigestion, but it was worth it because they were so lovely.

(Another pause, as Musonda brought the Fresh Fish to show me, and he'd bought Four for sixpence! They are wopping great bream, and he's very good at using up what we don't eat at one meal, in a way that doesn't look as if we're "having it cold for tea" like we used to when we were small and didn't eat our rice pudding for lunch.)

Oh how silly of me, I meant to tell you what we did when Leversedge came through, and I went off and starting talking about Food. Well, we were expecting him the day before, but he turned up just when we were finishing lunch.

We saw his tent pitched down by the river, and sent a boy down to fetch him, because he's such a weird bird he might quite easily not come up.

Then we turned the verandas into a Barber's shop, and G cut nearly all Leversedge's hair off! and I chopped off G's side whiskers and the fur down the back of his neck, and we trimmed up old Phibbs's lovely long artistic blonde beauty quite a lot, and we horse-clipped the back of my neck, and by the time we'd finished we looked like a bunch of French Poodles.

There, G's just coming back from the Office now, so I must go and kiss him before lunch.

We had nice fresh fried bream and dried apricots and custard blancmange for lunch, and now G's going off to the Office again and I'm going to have my afternoon siesta, and when I get up we'll have tea, and then we'll see how the frangipani are getting on and watch them being watered, and then we'll go for a walk, up the aerodrome, or down to the river to see if we can see any duck or crocs, and we'll watch the sunset and feel very romantic, and then we'll walk back in the dusk to Our Own Home, and we'll have a sundowner, and Phibbs will come along, and then we'll have dinner, and then we'll sit on the verandah and hope that he'll go soon cos we're so sleepy.

And as the post goes at Crack of Dawn tomorrow, I don't think I'll have time to write any more this week. So goodbye, darlings, and be good, and if you can't be good be careful, and don't get chilblains or The Dumps.

Lots and lots of love
from