P085 19401221
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Please be aware that these are transcribed by software,
so there WILL be mistakes.
Please tell us which page of which Portmanteau.
The saga related below is from a letter that Betty wrote to her parents-in-law, but it is based on the entries in her day-to-day diary, which are here.
[19 sides] Isoka,
033 N. Rhodesia.
PORTMANTEAU 85. 21st December, 1940.
Dear People all,
How frightfully stingy I have been all these months with my Portmanteaux, haven’t I, but really now I’ve got so much to say that I’ll just have to do a huge one, instead of going on with those scruffy little scrawls I’ve been making-do with all this time.
The last one I wrote was on July 18, and I seem to have been continually on the move since then, having only just finished a real move at that time. The day after I finished that P., G. and I shot off on a little tour all by ourselves to the south of the district for a week. It took such a short time as there is hardly anything south of the Boma; there is a large bulge of Wemba villages within 10 miles of us to the south, and as there are no Wemba anywhere else in this district they have transferred that Bulge into Chinsali district, so have taken a huge bite out of our bottom left-hand corner.
The day we got home three lorry loads of N.R. native drivers came by on their way up to drive lorries in Kenya, and one of them had a broken arm from having driven out over the edge of the road and met a tree, so we drove him in our car to Lubwe hospital (60 miles) and he Groaned all the way, because he Groaned whenever there was a bump and there was hardly NOT a bump all the way! We were also expecting at any moment to meet the first South African Convoy of 52 lorries, but luckily they camped at Chinsali so we had a free road.
We had visitors nearly every day, one day it was no fewer than five at once, until we went on tour again in desperation. This time we went out to the right, down into the Luangwa Valley, and there is a drop of 2,000 feet in the 30 miles between here and the rivver; as we clambered around the edge of the hills we got glimpses of the most magnificent views right across the valley with the mountains on the opposite side just looming up faintly. I think it must be a continuation of the Great Rift Valley, as we are here right at the head of the Luangwa, and it is only a miserable little trickle never more than a foot deep and only 50 yards or so wide, and yet it has this terrific Valley, about 50 miles across.
During that tour came the Frightful Humiliation of my Great Guinea Fowl Hunt, when I gave up shooting once and for all. We met flocks of Guinea fowl (alias Stinkers) nearly every day, sometimes on the path as we were bicycling along, snatch my .22 and have pot shots at them as they ran through the grass; sometimes in the evening we’d hear them calling from the stream and we’d go out and try and get them to sit in the trees, which they flatly refused to do and ran away instead, the cads. Well, one day we had a day in camp as G. went on and did outlying villages and slept at the same camp that night, so I thought I’d have a Field Day; Musonda, that expert hunter, escorted me, and Christian came too in her hammock, and we had a dozen or so carriers to round up the birds and to carry home the Booty. I took G.’s shotgun which I had
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never used before, as I hoped I might have better success with it then with my .22 (I hadn’t shot a feather yet this tour). We heard guinea fowl and we found them, little families of them, all over the place so that the bush seemed full of them and wherever we went we found guinea fowl, all of them laughing their sickening little blue heads off, and I had seven shots in all – and the only thing that fell down was ME! Every time I had a shot, the gun knocked me down!
I have lent my .22 indefinitely to a Buffalo Hunter.
We came home from that tour because of the visit of the high court to try a murder case here; they stayed here four days and we did so enjoy having them, a really nice crowd and the judge was particularly nice – Mr. Robinson, whose wife (divorced, unfortunately) met Heather at her F.A.N.Y. Headquarters in London, the one who packed some things for me at Mankoya when we were moving from there to Mongu in 1939. He’s such a dear, kind creature, and he kept me preening the whole time by the things he said about the garden, the house, our things, etc. The murderer was let off Scot-free, as there wasn’t enough evidence, and he was so astonished that it was pretty obvious he had done the murder! G. was Counsel for the defence, poor fellow, a very difficult job as most of the district were convinced he was guilty, and it seemed very odd that their own D.C. should be doing his utmost to get him off punishment. He advised the man to leave the district as soon as he could or there would be another murder, with him as the disinterested party!
The cook was in extra good form while the party was here, which was a very good thing, and the Judge was very nice about that too. The first evening we had Savoury after the ice cream, and people weren’t expecting it so I said “Don’t put your napkins up we haven’t finished yet” and he said “Ha, I saw the extra fork, I haven’t put MINE up!” Wasn’t it sweet.
We went on tour again four days after they left, and in that time had four lots of visitors! Three lots going north to Kenya, and the other, the D.C. from our next door district, Lundazi, across the Luangwa Valley. His name was Parr, and we had heard reports about him and had decided to get Christian off with him, but we recoiled slightly when one opinion said that he had only one arm, another that he had two arms but only one eye, but felt much happier when yet another told us that he was tall, dark, and good-looking and one of the nicest men he knew! So we were interested, to say the least of it, when he arrived one day to stay with us. He was about 5ft 6 high; dark, but not very good-looking, but he was perfectly Sweet and we all loved him and wanted to keep him. He was rather quiet and very small when other people were there, and so that we hardly noticed him, but by ourselves his true light shone forth and he was MOST charming and entertaining. He wanted to do something to distract his mind from the War (as being alone on an out-station he has rather too much time to worry about it) so he has completely re-painted his house, with a Pink Bathroom and so on, and he also keeps bees, so we very much wanted to go across and visit him – but he’s been moved since then, and so the pink bathroom will remain unseen.
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The next tour lasted just over four weeks, right across the Luangwa Valley, up the terrific cliffs on the far side, right out to the Nyasaland border, and G. actually went hunting in Nyasaland one day; then back over a pass right under the brow of sheer rock face which is the southern end of the Mafinga Mountains, down such a cliff that when we got to the bottom we stood in a row and our knees wobbled like six little jellies! We went round the corner of the Mafinga almost to the head of the Luangwa River, then right across the head of the valley round the top end of the hills on the home side and home along the road. About three days before we got home we were camped on a tributary of the Luangwa, and directly we left camp we climbed a bit of a hill then trundled down the other side and came to the next village, and when we asked about its water supply we discovered that the stream they draw water from runs into the Kalungu, a tributary of the Chambeshi, which runs into the Congo and so into the Atlantic; while the stream we had just left, half an hour before, runs into the Luangwa then into the Zambezi which goes into the Indian Ocean. And actually the stream here which runs through my garden, goes into the Atlantic, but the one five miles away along the road goes into the Indian Ocean. I suppose watersheds are always like that, but I didn’t realise they would be quite so close together and yet to go to different sides of Africa.
Just before we turned for home, when we had been out just under a fortnight, we got a letter from Mum saying she would like Christian back, to help keep an eye on Dad. As Colony Commissioner she was rather bound to attend Committee Meetings, Rallies, etc., and to travel round a good deal, but lately she had never dared make plans as so often on the day she was due to go, Dad would not be too well and she’d have to telegraph and cancel her engagements. It wasn’t that she needed a nurse, but just somebody there to keep him company, to put on his shoes for him (as bending tired him so) and get his medicines and makes his Ovaltine and coax him to eat his food and put him to bed and see that he didn’t go for a walk and so on, so Christian would be just the person for the job.
But how to get her there? That was the question. She could not fly, as the planes don’t carry civilians now. She could not go by train and ship as that would mean driving 500 miles southward to Broken Hill, the nearest railway, and then WEEKS of travelling and bother; she could not hop a lift on a convoy as that isn’t allowed; or on a passing car, as they are all full to the lid; or with our friend Col. Trevitt, who passes up and down very often, as he does such terrific distances and never stops for food on the journey and will quite happily do 400 miles in the day, as a SHORT run; also, Christian is only comfortable behind the wheel, because of her bad back, so whoever she went with would have to let her drive. Well, finally we came to the conclusion that the absolutely only way to get her there was to drive there in our car – and me to go too to bring the car back. A wonderful excuse for me to go to the parents again!
So the day after we got home from our tour we flew round packing all C’s thigs. Paying wages, gingering up the car, writing last minute letters, and so on, and it’s amazing how when you know you only have a day to do everything in, it all seems to do it itself, and you are suddenly left in the middle of the room thinking
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“Now whatever is there to do now ?” And the next day, isn’t it equally amazing how when you think you’ve thought of absolutely everything, the “last-minute” things take longer than all of that put together! We left the house amid shouts and wavings of all the inhabitants, and got as far as the Office, where we said good-bye to our Husband and got the Immigration Officer to stamp our passports, and the District Commissioner to give us a Letter “To Whom It May Concern”, and the Native Commissioner to give the boys ditto, and the Licencing Officer to give us a Car Licence, and when We couldn’t think of anything more for him to do, we left the Quartermaster dishing out tea to the Convoy.
Half an hour later we were back again, and asked the Bank Manager to let me have his cheque book as I’d forgotten it.
However, we eventually got away, and had a huge picnic lunch during which the convoy passes us, but luckily it was only a little one, ten cars and an ambulance of a Southern Rhodesia Medical Unit, so we only took 25 minutes and three miles to pass them, standing on the hooter all the time. The road was not too good, but we took a short cut on a new by-road which has hardly been used, which cut off twenty miles and was as good as the main road as far as bumps went, but was a bit overgrown, and there were two bad culverts which would be impassable after a bit of rain, so I didn't come back that way. We got to Mwenzo Mission in the middle of the afternoon and stayed that night with the Doctor and his wife, who had stayed with us the week the Judge was here. We did 66 miles only, but thought it a good thing to start gently and gradually work up to the long distances.
On Wednesday, 23rd October, we went as far as Chimala, a little hotel all by itself in a lovely woody hilly place by a river, 60 miles beyond Mbeya. We crossed the frontier into Tanganyika six miles beyond Mwenzo, and do you know it really IS a frontier. All the country between here and Mwenzo is thick trees, small scrubby ones, and practically completely flat all the way with a stiff hill towards the end. You go up and down, up and down, and then suddenly you go up to the top of a big rise, and there in front is the most magnificent view of hills and valleys in Tanganyika, and behind is the flat plain as far as you can see in Northern Rhodesia. And you pop over the rise and that's the end of Rhodesia.
Then we went down a long winding hill and within twenty
miles it was as though we were in Kenya. We came to a little stream with bananas growing alongside it, and huge tree ferns and lovely big trees, creeper-covered, and the people who were drawing water stared blankly when we spoke to them in Chiwemba, but their faces lit up when we spoke in Swahili. They were wearing the loose white sheets that people wear in Kenya (our people either wear the remains of a shirt and shorts, or else nothing but a loin cloth) and all round the soil was red and there was a coffee plantation and wattle avenues. We went through scrubby little Indian villages, with Indian buses passing on the road; the villages of the natives are not at all like ours, all neatly in a group, but you’d see scattered over a hillside a dozen or more large huts, and that is what they call a village though sometimes
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the huts are a mile or so apart, And there were long stretches of plain with very few trees, which you don't see anywhere here, at least on the stretch I know between Mpika and here, which, as somebody described it, "is like going along an avenue and never coming to the house."
Forty miles short of Mbeya we came to a very twisty, edge-less hill down, with a terrific drop on one side and cliff-face on the other; we could see the floor miles below us, and right across on the other side a lovely range of hills, the opposite escarpment, and we could see the little ribbon of road stretched across the floor and it was so like being in a plane that I could remember just where Mbeya was from having approached it from the
air several times. We called on the Wilkinses, the D.C. there, whom I had had tea with, with Gill, in 1939, and they gave us lunch and were awfully nice, and as we drove up to the door and she came out to see who on earth it was, I said "Good morning Mrs. W.” and she said "Good morning, Mrs. Clay" without the slightest hesitation which I thought was pretty good, when she'd only seen me once before, 18 months ago, for a very short time, - and a good deal Fatter than I was this time!
After Mbeya we went diagonally across the floor again, and over another twisty, grassy, downland sort of range of mountains, with folds every mile or so where a stream cuts its path, its spring buried under the feet of huge trees, festooned in creepers and liana. Over the top we went with plains stretching as far as
we could see northwards; then down the other side, with more hills crinkly and woody, looking like an elephant's Behind.
At Chimala there was an invasion, as besides our little convoy there was a big convoy of south-bound, leave-bound troops, all wanting a big dinner. We didn't gather much about where they had been, they were very busy being Hush-hush so we didn't really feel like asking them anything, but we did gather that one
had got the M.C. in the evacuation of Somaliland. 132 miles today.
There were also natives with the convoy going south, and the boys had slept in the camp with them and they told them that they had been in Somaliland and "had fired a lot of times and the Italians ran away, but they were told to come back."
The next day we got out of the hills fairly soon, and after that the whole day's journey was over open, tree-dotted downs, and we were able to skim along as fast as we liked as the road was very corrugated but not too bumpy, so the faster we went the less we felt the corrugations. We passed a hotel, suddenly in the middle
of nowhere for no apparent reason, but as we came upon a convoy "resting" there we did not wait to see what it was like! I went and had lunch there on my return journey, and it was a very pleasant little place.
At Iringa we went to the D.C. for petrol permit, and he came along to the hotel for tea, and a friend of his came and had dinner with us too. The friend was a lady called Mrs. Dew, and within five minutes of meeting her we knew everything there was to know about "My cousin, Lord Hailsham ... My cousing Freddie was killed at Dunkirk, so unfortunate - Freddie Cambridge, you know... and little Johnnie Erne, so sad, my poor cousin ... My
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father hated my first husband, and so do I - but my second was a dear - and of course I adore my present one. But my sister has done it four times, and of course so has my cousin, the Duke of Westminster ..." She was a daughter of his younger brother, and named her eldest son Rufus after her cat! He was very badly wounded at Dunkirk, poor fellow, but is apparently getting on all right, but the Grosvenor family seemed to suffer very heavily. She is absolutely mad on horses, hunting and dogs; and has been out here for 20 years and were the first English settlers in Tanganyika after the war, and now they are selling up the farms as her husband has a war job in Nairobi. She very kindly asked me to stay with her on my way down, and she was extremely good to me, and even went so far as to give me a DOG!! She was telling me about her labradors, which "Dear Lorna - Countess Howe of course" gave her and that she had got some puppies and then said "I suppose you wouldn't wheel one away, would you? I can't get rid of them and I CAN'T take three puppies to Kenya with me as well as Pluto (an Immense Alsatian) and the Cats." So I did, and he's QUITE Excquisite and I adore him.
Well, to get back to Iringa for the first time. After dinner we were sitting having coffee, when our little convoy walked in for coffee too, and one of them shocked me to the foundations by saying "Hallo, Betty, I haven't seen you for five years" and it was none other than John Powell, a distant cousin who had lived at Marendelas in S.R., who had come to see us when we were in Salisbury in 1935, with you, Peter. He was looking a good deal older, and rather moth-eaten! and I always thought he had red hair, but he swore he never had! He was most pleasant, and thereafter we foregathered at all the places we stopped at and he came to dinner with us at our various hotels. He had with
him a quiet little dark man with a foreign accent and a click-heels bow, whom we christened the Free Frenchman because it seemed romantic and he was the first Free Frenchman we had met. But of course he wasn't, but he was a Persecuted Country instead, he was a Pole - though he'd been practising in Southern Rhodesia for three years before Germany walked in, so he's not really a genuine Pole, not like he would have been if he'd been a Free Frenchman, if you see what I mean.
BUT, the half has not yet been revealed. The coincidence is not yet at its height. I introduced John Powell to Mrs. Dew, and she said 'I haven't seen you since you were That High!" and WOULD you believe it, they had been next-door neighbours when he was a small boy and she had just come-out, in the New Forest! I know the house where he lived, because it is right next door to Foxlease, at Lyndhurst, and we went to see his parents after we'd met him out here.
We asked the D.C. about the Germans here, and he said this was a very big centre of them and there are a tremendous number of German farmers roundabout, and they used to treat the natives like kings and pay terrific wages, and smarm all over them and do the most drastic propaganda to make them like the idea of returning to German rule and to try and put them against us so that they'd rebel as soon as the war started, and four days before War was declared they had the nerve to hold a huge Hitler Meeting in this very hotel! Of course nobody could do anything to stop them, then, but they are all inside now except a few women.
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The next day, Friday 25th, we did 162 miles (it was 183 yesterday) across the most extraordinary country. About 30 miles after Iririga we went down a nine miles' descent, twisting and wriggling round rocky blind corners, and we saw a family of hyraxes! At the bottom the country was completely different mile upon mile of completely flat, dry, hot, inhospitable, endless plain, with nothing but leafless thorn trees and leafless baobab trees, and every now and then a series of little bridges over ancient stream-beds which evidently hadn't seen a drop of water for years; it's all very well for. Kenya people to deplore the "erosion" in their country, but by gum it's Verdant compared with this - hardly a blade of grass did we see, and I could easily imagine that this was what the Desert looked like a hundred years ago. There was one river-in the whole 162 miles, a great, wide, brown, sluggish affair called the Ruaha, which we had crossed just below the steep cliff up to Iringa township, and crossed again 60 miles away. Apart from that, there was one very wide river-bed. where there were a few Indian huts and a native Market, and they got their water by digging deep holes, and there were several empty .stream-beds where there were people with goats and cattle, so there must be more in the holes than it looks.
At the end of the plain we negotiated more hills, then another long stretch of plain, more hills, then over the top and we could see lots of little hills, but obvious among them was the sharp, peaky little one with huge boulders on the top, just like a bit of the Matopos, which I recognised as the one beside the aerodrome at Dodoma.
We went along to the D.C. for a petrol permit, then to the the Africa Hotel, which sounds pretty important. We met the Proprietress in the hall and asked for rooms, and she led us out of the back door to a row of little cells which we thought were
huts for the boys. And these were our rooms. It wasn't too bad when you got inside, just a small square whitewashed cell with
the appropriate cracked mirror. We asked for some Tea, it then being 3.30 and blazing hot and we hadn't had any lunch and had drunk our thermos at about 10; Oh no, says the lady, My boys are all out for the afternoon and there's no firewood and no hot
water. So we rushed back to the D.C. to beg tea off him. The instant he set eyes on Christian, he said "Oh hallo, fancy seeing YOU here" and he had sat next to her at every meal, every day, for the whole voyage out from England and had never stopped talking for one second! Luckily he did NOT ask us to tea, and we preferred the Africa Hotel!
We played Bezique till John Powell and the Free Frenchman came for dinner and baths. They had gleaned more than we had from the men we met at Chimala Hotel, and they were S. Rhodesians. The one with the M.C. got it for taking an Italian machine-gun post with several hundred men, when he only had forty, and under terrific fire. Another had walked for 85 miles in three days, with no food or water, and he had been a Scout so was able to signal in morse from the shore with a torch and a British cutter came and saved him. When I first heard them talking casually about Somaliland at Chimala, I got quite a sick feeling, and it seemed incredible that these boys should have been through such a time - they were the very first men I'd seen who have actually been in
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action in this war. Doesn't that seem frightful to you at home, who are "in action" every day and every night of your lives, and what wearing action too. We get the most fascinating letters from you, Mummy, saying in a nonchalant way "There are German bombers overhead now - they've just dropped a bomb quite near - our fighters are up there too and they seem to be fighting right over the house..." and you calmly go on sitting in your drawing-room writing letters! It seems quite incredible to us to be able to take things so calmly, but I suppose you just get used to it, as they say one can get used to anything! But judging by the agonising moments I had the other day when a Huge Aeroplane came over at terrific speed and very low, before I saw the red-white-and blue, the ghastly sinking feeling, the muttered "My hat, what DOES A. do now?' it takes some getting used to! But of course you are having plenty of practice! But we really are Bursting with admiration for you all and you've just no idea and will never know how we Long and LONG to share it with you. You'll always be one-up on us, for having been through the mill without us, and it is absolutely Sickening being stuck out here is peace and happiness and blessed quiet, while you are having to put up with another winter of cold nights at a first-aid point, and having your work cut out not to lose your temper twice and three times a day when those Nazi planes have the Audacity to fly over your house. I suppose we ought to be thankful that we ARE out of it, like you are, but it doesn't seem to work that way.
However, we are still at Dodoma. It is the longest day from there to Arusha, 265 miles with nowhere to stay in between, so we got away nice and early - and very glad we did as we had the good luck to see, close outside Dodoma, a wild dog trot across the road; they are fairly rare, and very rarely seen as they are nomads and keep to the wilder parts of the bush and are very seldom seen near humans; we also saw a jackal, several flocks of STINKERS, the brutes, and an impala ram looking quite exquisite in the early sunlight. Towards the end of the journey we began getting to the rolling, treeless plains of the Kilimanjaro area, and quite suddenly we were in game country, although it is not a reserve. We were within sight of a huge lake (Manyara) and the first thing we saw were two Buffalo (the first I have ever seen) within a hundred yards of the road, then directly after them a little herd of Tommies (Thompson's Gazelle, the commonest and tamest buck in Kenya, but never seen south of this region) and then, two Giraffe, who behaved Quite Beautifully for us and just stood with their sweet faces looking down over the tops of their trees at us, and not caring a hoot about the car and the people.
And I WISH you could. have SEEN the boys' faces and HEARD what they had to say (Chishimba is a voluble gentleman at any time, and has the most gorgeous squeaky laugh and a deep gobble-gobble voice when he gets excited) and as soon as they saw the giraffe there was a chorus of "Yaba, yaba, yangu tata mayo!' which means "Goodness gracious, Oh my father and mother!" and they just simply didn't believe it existed. They rocked with laughter and they giggled and they shouted, and the Twiga just stood and looked at them, then turned and lolloped off as though
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they were a slow-motion picture. We also saw some ostriches, and the boys couldn't believe that they were really birds - and they nearly broke their hearts at not being allowed to shoot the scores of wildebeest and hartebeest and Tommies that we saw. We also passed a dead hyena in the road - very dead!
We found the road extremely good, and for the first
hundred or so miles we were doing a steady 40 miles an hour, which was the best average we had all the journey. At the end of that 100, we came to a military camp, and just after that we came upon a little south-bound convoy of leave-troops, having breakfast, ana their mechanic fixed our exhaust pipe for us, which was hanging by a thread. The boys found several Wemba among the native drivers and the officer told us that they had been quite excellent driving under fire, driving extremely well and never wavering, which was very pleasing.
After crossing more thorn-scrub and baobab plains, we came to some very sharp-cornered hills, and over the other side we went along through lovely green woods of enormous trees, with grassy slopes down to a luscious little valley with stream running through it, and banana and tobacco plantations and little scattered huts all along the valley. We had our picnic lunch there, up above the stream, and in that time saw any number of birds, orioles, kakelaars, Paradise Flycatchers, and so on, all loving this cool green bit of Africa.
We'd been told that from the edge of this hill we could see Kilimanjaro, over 100 miles away, so we scanned the horizon, and lo and behold, a dark mass rising out of the plain and disappearing into low cloud, and all the afternoon we were headed towards it, past two big lakes, round little hills, across smooth turfy down-land without a tree in sight, with that enormous mountain getting bigger and bigger as we came towards it, but still keeping bashfully among its clouds at the top. We thought it most odd, as I knew Moshi was right at the foot of Kilimajaro, but I didn't realise Arusha was too, but I supposed it was just "round the corner" from Moshi, and that it IS possible to go 60 miles round the foot of Kilimanjaro and not come back to the same place!
Quite shortly before we came to the outskirts of Arusha, we came to the beginning of the great Masai Reserve, and met those cheerful, grinning, lazy people who used to be such great warriors and are now the laziest of all tribes and keep cattle - of which they drink the blood and the milk and leave the rest! which horrified our boys, who are great meat-lovers. But what horrified them still more was the fearful immodesty of these people! The men wear nothing but a blanket, knotted over one shoulder and fastened nowhere else; countless bangles, and as many feathers as he can cram into his head-band or hair; or else his hair all plastered with red mud, and plaited in two long plaits right down his back, and huge ear-rings. They have the most beautiful red skins, presumably rubbed with the red earth, and they are very fine upstanding, well-made, slim creatures, and we thought it most attractive to get a glimpse of a long red leg beneath a swinging fold of blanket. But Musonda was shocked to the core, and when we came upon a herd of cows in the road, and the owner came towards
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us with leaps and bounds, the wind blowing his blanket in every direction but the right one, he covered his eyes with his hands in mute dismay.
We reached Arusha in time for a late tea, and we had been banking on putting up at the Clifford Knights', who had stayed with us with two children on their way to the Cape a month ago, so we went to the hotel to ask where we could find them and the answer was "In Nairobi - he's joined up and they left last week" awful blow. So we stayed at the hotel, which was rather a good one, with a large dining hall with huge panels all round the walls of paintings of all the mountains, lakes, craters etc in East Africa, and one whole end of the room was a magnificent panorama map of this bit of Tanganyika, with Kilimanjaro in the foreground, looking south across the lakes we passed today to the highlands round Dodoma.
I set myself up for the day soon after arrival, by having a mild row with a strange boy who came and demanded a tip for ironing Christian's frock, which he hadn't done! If there's anything that makes me really QUIVER with rage, it is being asked for a tip, so I was able to let myself go - particularly when I gently suggested that the boy should come along with me and ask the manager if he thought he should have a. tip, and the boy refused to come.
And now we come to the last day of the journey - at least not quite the last day as we still had the 100 miles to Nyeri, but we always felt, the whole way up, that once we got to Nairobi we were there. Christian drove the whole way, which was pretty good, and stood up to the journey quite marvellously We used to get in round about four in the afternoon, sometimes earlier sometimes later, and we'd have tea directly we got in and she'd lie down for a bit and have a smoke, and I'd get my packing undone and hers if I was allowed to, and within half an hour she'd perked up like a two-year-old. I was most surprised, as sometimes after a difficult day on tour, she'd be "out" for the rest of the day, just being carried in her hammock with a few places where she had to get out and climb; whereas here, sitting up hour after hour, concentrating on the road, negotiating sometimes the most awful bumps and corrugations and hairpin bends and stony corners and narrow bridges, and so on, getting up early and driving for six or seven hours each day - after half an hour's good relaxing she'd get up as bright as a new Pin. She drives extremely well, and the car went beautifully for her - until this last day, which seemed doomed to be unlucky.
And that is enough for today. It's Christmas Eve now and none of our guests have turned up yet and I very much doubt if a single one of them will, though we are expecting a minimum of one and a maximum of six, and won't know till they are here! We've got three little Puddings, and a huge three-layer cake, and some Crackers, but it looks as if the children's presents will be the main feature of the day.
Goodbye, darlings, and Very much love and our most loving wishes for Xmas and Peace in the New Year -
US.
