P087 19410403
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Please note these are transcribed by software,so there WILL be mistakes.
Please tell us which page of which Portmanteua.
Betty was 26 at the time, with two children aged 6 and 4. Her husband was away "on tour" for about three weeks. Apart from "some bearded missionaries who never wash" at the Mission a few miles away, the nearest European was some 30 miles away.
Isoka,
N. Rhodesia.
PORTMANTEAU 87. 3rd April, 1941.
Darling Everybody,
A very long gap, I'm afraid since my last P. and it's such an age that I really don't think it's worth carrying out my threat of "To be continued in our next" as regards my journey down from Nairobi.
[ Her diary account of her journey TO Kenya can be found here ]
There are one or two incidents in it though that might be of interest. One was that when we were 144 miles this side of Arusha we climbed up a pretty big twisty hill and went along a ridge on the top from which there was a magnificent view - so magnificent that it included Meru, behind Arusha, and bhind Meru a little white upside-down pudding basin, who was over two hundred miles away. [Mount Kenya] It was the most wonderful sight and I felt SO thrilled, and he stood there looking quite ethereal in the deep blue sky without a cloud anywhere near him.
At Iringa I stayed with Mrs. Dew, and she was rather worried about her dogs as she was giving up her farm to move to Nairobi and had a little of three Labrador puppies which she did not know what to do with, and she asked me if I would help her out by taking one! so I took the dog, three months old and perfectly Adorable, and he slept with his head on my lap throughout the journey. He is a grandson of Bramshhw Bob, and also has a very well-bred father though I don't remember the name, and we have called him Arrow. It is such fun having a Black and a White young dog, and they are very fond of each other and have lovely games, and couldn't be more different in every way: one, tough and square and hard of mouth and as boisterous as they make 'em, the other tall and willowy and most gentle and sweet-natured.
I started teaching Chishimba to drive the car on the long journey down, and first he swerved about all over the road and seemed to have no co-ordination of foot, hand, eye and brain what-so-ever and seemed to forget that his foot was on the accelerator till he got into a panic of speed and heaved at the hand-brake! When we got nearly home we passed bur emergency Aerodrome, so I thought, Ha, an excellent place for him to drive backwards, so we started shooting about the aerodrome in all directions, stopping the engine every few yards and going the wrong way of course, but in the end he seemed to get the idea quite well. Well, while we were sitting there starting up the engine again, I heard another engine, and there I saw an aeroplane. We watched interestedly for a few minutes, then even more interestedly when it was seen to be descending at us. Lorks, I thought, it's a bally old Italiar coming to dive-bomb us, but no, I was wrong, it was coming down
to land! We whizzed to the edge as quick as we could, just in time to make room for the first aeroplane for over a year to land! He WOULD choose just those ten minutes we were on it. A second one followed the first, and they drew up alongside my car as though we were in Castle Street, and we had some tea and sugar and Musonda produced from nowhere a bottle of milk and we had about 4 cups and they all quaffed tea, about 12 of them, while the mechanics put in a new plug in the place of the one that had fallen out, conveniently just as they sighted the aerodrome.
So we got home safely and lived happily ever after.
We've been having quite a few adventures recently with the
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car. G. and I are twin-souls where a car's insides are concerned, if anybody starts to talk about it our mind goes a complete blank and everything they say goes in at one ear and doesn't even bother to find its way out of the other, it just dissolves inside; we know nothing whatsoever about it and we couldn't care less. This is an admirable state of affairs where there are garages every few hundred yards to think for us, but here, the nearest garage 150 miles away, it has been on occasion awkward. We are lucky here in being able to get convoy mechanics to look at the brute,
[This was during WW2, and there were frequent military convoys of 50 - 100 trucks carring troops and supplies to the war front in Abbasinia and North Africa]
but they seem to be rather like doctors in having completely opposing opinions as to treatment, so when one says "She's running Far to slowly" the next person to dive inside comes out saying "Of course she's running Far too fast" and twiddles the little things back to where they were before. I consider we have had very many more troubles than one ought to have with a brand-new expensive car, now only just a year old, but G. thinks it is very largely the fact that we never look inside as a precautionary measure so things that we could prevent if we knew about them are now left till they get bad.
But that doesn't excuse the petrol tank for getting holed three times in the first six months, and twice since it has been leaking. Nor does it excuse two inner tubes for getting several irremediable punctures within a year. Nor does it excuse the car being provided with such a rotten lot of tools that the jack Broke the first time it was used, the pump so weak it will hardly fill the tyre, no tyre levers. I think the engine is very good, and we have never had Mooky Ploogs which we can be thankful for, but so often we don't get the full good out of a very good engine by something else going wrong: the commonest being a bolt which goes from the accelerator to the thing getting loose, so you don't get any acceleration till the accelerator is halfway down, and of course the bolt is practically un-get-at-able without removing the whole car. Another time the gear levers all jammed, and another time something called a Gasket went, and the other day some Points Blew out and had to be filed. At the moment our main trouble is the Silencer, which is non-existent as we bust it on a rock, but whenever we go through half-an-inch of water standing in the road, the water gets sucked up the silencer and stops the engine and there we stick, standing on the self-starter till it starts again by pushing out the water.
The first time we actually got stuck was when the Watmores asked us to go and spend the night with them in camp by a river on the road into Kasama, where they were surveying the possibility of building an embankment across a wide stretch of low country which is impassable at this time of year. So we found anyway: This silencer business started the moment the car saw the first puddle, before we got to the first river at all. We got across the pontoon all right, and for the first few miles of the 15 to the other river it was fairly dry. Then we began to get to puddles, which grew longer and deeper and swifter-flowing as we went on, and we got stuck twice more and then finally Nothing would make the self-starter work. We worked out that we only had half a mile to go, so This is where we walk, we said. We loaded ourselves up with the rifle, torch, macks,and my inevitable Knitting, and set
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out, in pitch darkness and knee-deep in water. We had walked two miles when we saw the gorgeous lights of Mr. Watmore's car as he came out to find us. They managed to get us out the next day all right with Mr. Watmore's workmen, and with three sticks on the way home we managed to get home all right.
The next adventure was when I took G. out to the Kalungu (forty miles north) to start on his tour, and we got no fewer than two punctures, took three-quarters of an hour to get the jack up, and another half to get the wheel changed, and within five minutes that one went flat too. By dint of violent pumping every two miles and driving flat out in between, we managed to get within 8 miles of the Kalungu when the little jigger popped inside the rim and the thing was flat as a button and we could pump no more, so we waited, sent a boy on for help, and Walker came along and mended the puncture for us (we had no solution) got the tyres off and on with his tyre levers, pumped it up with his engine-pump in half a minute, janked and unjacked in the same length of time, and the whole thing was done in no time. I set off for home at dusk, but within ten miles it was hissing again, so we did the wild pumping game till again the trigger went in, and there we settled down for the night, 11 miles from home, so near and yet so far.
I was beginning to get cold, and very hungry, and not a bit sleepy, and then I began to imagine myself getting asthma and no pills, and I had No Hanky for my early-morning sneezes! and that settled it, it was worth a new tyre to sleep in my own house! We drove three miles on the rim to the nearest village where we got people to pack the dead tyre with grass, so that at least it would not make that agonising noise all the way home, and they'd got it half-full, when lo and behold, a LIGHT! It was a P.W.D. lorry and the driver insisted on taking me back to Isoka, and brought me out again to the car the next morning; we got in at 10.30 p.m., and how did I sleep? The next morning he took me out again, and mended the other puncture for me, which just got us home and had started to die when we arrived.
The next (and latest) was I consider the most dramatic of all. A small girl was brought in five days' walk having been terribly mauled by a crocodile, and Louise said the only hope was to get her to a hospital where they could operate at once and get rid of the MAGGOTS and all the rotted places, so we bundled her into the car after the medical orderly had done his best to clean it up, and started off at six in the evening to drive through pelting rain to Chinsali. I had learnt half my lesson this time,
I took with me two sweaters (used) asthma pills (not used!) and six hankies! but the other half, food, I forgot. It was terrible driving, the car was not running at all well (the accelerator bolt) I had to use the lights and the windscreen wiper off the poor wretched overworked wireless-working battery, the road was extremly slippery and the further we went the harder it rained.
I got across the very slippery running-boards over the Luvu River with my heart in my mouth, and was Thankful next day that I had not been able to see the water, as it is about 16 foot deep, very fast flowing, and within four feet of the bridge and very wide! Three miles the other side I stopped dead with my front wheels in water - which was flowing over a bridge! I
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waded through to see how deep it was, and could hardly keep a straight course it was running so fast, and at the end of the running-board my leg went down a hole and didn't reach the bottom! It was nearly knee deep right across the bridge, so I knew that the car wouldn't get through it with the silencer open, so we decided that rather than get stuck in the middle of the river it would be better to go back three miles to the dispensary and sleep the night there and hope the river would go down by the morning.
So I backed up to where the road was a bit more open and cleared and cambered and flatter, and there I proceeded to turn. And of course, got stuck, right across the road, and could go neither forward nor back. We filled up the camber with branches and leaves, and round all the wheels, and eventually after terrific efforts, managed to get the car out, forwards, over the bank and into the road again, but facing the wrong way. How we managed it I don't know, as the wheels were spinning in the slime and she was at a most exteaordinary angle, but she did it and that was the main thing.
We then reversed three miles in pitch darkness and pouring rain! I looked at several places to turn, but they were all sogged with mud and it just wasn't worth risking. The lights were no help at all when we were going backwards, and the torch was far too flickery, so I eventually just had to get my eye in and catch the faint gleam of the water running down the tracks of the road, and judge by the feel of the camber when we were too close to the edge. Of course we boiled as we were going backwards! so had to stop every ½ mile to cool down, and to straighten my neck and uncross my eyes, but eventually we got there at about ten. The medical orderly found us houses, and I slept on an iron bed with a felt mattress and a straw pillow, using my nightie as a pillow-case! and a prison blanket! I slept, anyhow.
The next day the road was considerably dryer, but when we got to our stream, it still looked like a young Victoria Falls, so the boy went on to get the road gang working near to pull us through, and when they came I said, now you needn't push till the car stops, I'll try and drive through but will stick in the middle and then you push like blazes. Stepped on the accelerator, took a wild dash, and got through without a hand being lifted to help! Rather maddening to realise we could have got through it last night! but actually we might not have as it was.a bit lower.
So you see the excitements we have are something on their own. Louise White has gone, and we ARE so pleased to have us to ourselves again, and I consider that I manage the children better than she did in many ways. She was extraordinarily good with them at first and really seemed able to stop them crying, but latterly she had no such power, and Robin just cried and cried all day long almost, sometimes over something, but usually with sheer temper because he'd been told not to do something, or to do something or to put something down. He still does, of course, but now he is with me I see that he can't get at things he's not supposed to have, and I try to see that the things he is told to do are either what he wants to do anyhow or just such a matter of own.
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routine that he does it without realising he's been told to, for the instant he thinks he's being Made to do a thing, he jibs. He's that sort of boy. And I'm glad! I'd hate him to be a dear little obedient, GOOD little boy. Boys were never meant to be good, and I should be awfully contemptuous of him if he did everything he was told without a word! But I don't always feel like this, not when the "word" is very much in evidence!
I try to keep his day as full as possible so that he hasn't time to be bored like Gill used to be. I try to take them out on the rocks, and different bits of rocks, and different ptches of sand, so that they have new excitements to explore; I have had new sandpits made for them (two, so that there's no fighting!) a little way away from the house so that they have to get there and come back quite a little journey. I break up their days with morning milk and then a rest and so on, so that one thing doesn't go on for more than an hour and they haven't time to get bored with it. I am making Robin rest in the mornings as well es in the afternoons, and it is making NO END of a difference, I thought before that he wasn't getting enough rest, and 6. a.m. or earlier till 1 pm. is far too long for a small person to be on the go without a pause. He is quite happy about it (usually!) and is very ready to go to sleep at 10.30 as a rule, but if he doesn't he has something to play with and just rests himself, and then sleeps in the afternoon instead. So I am feeling most Virtuous, Clever, and Motherly.
Gill is no trouble at all, as she does most things for herself, such as dressing, getting up, putting herself to rest ( and I don't even have to go and see that she does go to rest) and very very rarely cries unless for a very good reason, such as hurting herself or Bolly's head caning off.
There I really MUST stop or the mail will go without me
Very much love everybody
US
