P020 19370317
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PORTMANTEAU 020
Mongu,
Barotseland,
N. Rhodesia.
Wednesday, 17th March, 1937.
Darling Everybody,
Well, the portmanteaux seem to have got out of their teens before I have, the cheeky things. This will probably be quite short and I certainly won't be able to tell you all about everything we've done since we arrived as we don't seem to have stopped doing things, so I'll start with your letters, which arrived yesterday.
Mummy, for future reference in case we ever come into Mongu from Mankoya. You need never bother about addressing your letters to Mongu or Mankoya or Sesheke because this is what happens: it arrives at Sesheke, and the clerk sees that it is for clay, who is not there but is at Mongu, so he shoves it back in the bag and it comes on to Mongu on the same barge. When it gets to Mongu it discovers that the clays aren't in Mongu at all, they are at Mankoya so it jumps onto the back of the mail-man and walks out to Mankoya. Sesheke will be our address right up till the end of May anyway, and then they'll just come straight on to us if they are addressed to Sesheke after that.
Perhaps before I go any further you would like to know our plans. I haven't said anything about them for some time as we were waiting to see what the doctor here had to say about it. We leave here on Saturday and take about eight days to get home, having a nice peaceful voyage in the barge, jumping rapids and whatnots. We start packing directly we get home, so that we needn't be hurried but can just do a little gently everyday, and I won't stand on my head too much but will sit gracefully in a chair and watch the boys do it all, so it will get done all right and won't be very much bother.
The Phibbses are due to arrive roundabout the beginning of May,3rd - 7th I should think, so we will probably have to move into the pokey little guest-house or else I could go straight down and stay with the Lanz, who has a spare room and says I can always go there if necessary. When G. has given Sesheke to Phibbs with his love and kisses he will Commence Days in the African Bush (like Sixty Years Behind The Times, you know) – till he arrives at Mankoya, plus his seventy-five carriers and all our goods and shackles. He will then arrange them all neatly in our lovely house and get it all ready to receive the Progeny.
Meanwhile, Miss Griffin and Robin and I will remain
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at Sesheke for 10 days or a fortnight (partly to recover from parting from G. and the bother of packing up, and partly to save the expense of that fortnight extra in the hotel) as the doctor said it would be very unwise indeed to do that 14 days' machila-journey through the bush with only Miss Griffin and G.
We then fly from Sesheke straight to Lusaka, where we either stay at the grand hotel (where the dance was last April where I won the prize with The Murdered Men I told you about) or also with Mrs Fitzhenry, as she wrote to me the other day and said if ever I was in Lusaka I was certainly to let her know. She may not be able to put both of us up, but that would be all right.
The doctor here said definitely Lusaka, because there is an X-Ray there and he strongly advised my being ex-raid, and there is also a very good surgeon in case they have to do this operation, which is possible though not definite yet; it is a lovely brand-new hospital too. I suggested that I should come up here [Mongu] for it, as this is on the way to Mankoya, but he said he would rather not take the risk as there is only him and one nurse and they hardly ever do operations, and he says Lusaka would be much the wisest and safest, especially with the first baby.
So then, when he's arriving, at Lusaka, we either fly out to Mankoya, or else G. might be able to come and fetch us by car as it is only two days by road and they expect to have the road finished by then and we'll get a Ford V8 box-body. And there he will be at Mankoya, in a lovely house with a lovely suite of his own and Veranda to sleep in in the day, and no building to do which is convenient, and lovely climate and nice surroundings and is going to be the Most Perfect Person that ever was – US on two legs!
It all seems to fit in very beautifully, and I'm getting gladder and glad that we at last decided to stay out here and not go home. Although it would have been SO marvellous to have been at home for it, and to have had him at Pax, it would most undoubtedly have been an awful bore packing up and having that journey just at rather an unsafe time, and also I know what it would be like at home – I would have had to go rushing off shopping or going out to tea, and people would have been dropping in and coming to stay and I would have felt shy and embarrassed and it would have been so ghastly being away from G. all that long time. This is so much the best plan, all peaceful and safe and easy and happy.
Well that's about all for that, and I'll start off with your letters again. Three from Mummy, saying she has got the nurse fixed, but that she is more expensive than we anticipat-
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ed, which is very trying but can't be helped. I would have thought that if she had arranged her own salary and had agreed to come out for that and was quite happy about it, it was her business and she couldn't be made to ask more. However, as I have just got my monthly bills and they amount to 3/6d I think we will JUST be able to bear it! I get a new allowance in this month to and we are really very handsomely off, especially as we spend so very little.
You also told us that she is fixed to sail on OUR birthday on OUR ship, the Dunnottar, arriving on May 3rd. Also about the vests with scalloped edges, and you won't get TOO expensive things, please, will you, as they don't really last very long and he will grow out of them so quickly, as he is going to be absolutely Huge. £10 at least as he MUST beat his Father! Actually the doctor says he doesn't think I could possibly be clever enough to produce anything over 6 1/2 which is a mouldy little effort and will definitely be condemned to the bucket if it can't do better than that. Or else presented to Miss Lanz with our compliments.
A very sweet slim letter from Mum, "hopping about India, February 20th," so you hadn't got our Birthday wire. I do hope you got it, as the postmaster at Livingstone wrote and said you weren't at Bombay so they had forward it on to somewhere or other – Delhi I think he said but I couldn't swear to it. We send all our wires to him plus a £1 and he sends them off for us, and the other day Daddy addressed a wire to Mongu as he knew we were on our way there, and the postmaster, knowing we live it Sesheke, very sweetly sent a copy of it to us there as well in case Teddy had made a mistake. Actually we got the Mongu 12 days before the Sesheke copy, but wasn't it nice of him to think of that. Two wires we've sent to Mum went to Bombay, and both times they said to the postmaster "she's not here, take it back" and he is said "no, you've jolly well got to send it to wherever she is," all of his own bat. The trouble was we never got your itinerary or addresses at all, so we just had to send them all to Bombay, hoping there'd know where you were. It's such fun sending them back to Pax again. Mrs Wade will be able to see them all now, I was rather naughty not writing to tell her all about our news while she wasn't seeing the p.m.s. [portmanteaux?], but now she'll be able to see all the ones we sent to India.
We are so glad you had such a marvellous tour, and Rosalind seems to have loved it, it must have been a wonderful experience for her, as she had never travelled much before, had she? I'm glad Heather had a lot of polo-watching – did she perform at all? I expect we'll get a fat letter from her one of these fine days, though we don't really expect one as she must be so terribly busy, but were just hoping!
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we also got a marvellous lot of papers, and illustrated London News, Queen, Lady, Tatler, and Sporting and Dramatic from Ralph, sent from Carlisle, and a Queen and Truth from Mummy – such a lovely batch and Mrs Watmore (our hostess) is enjoying them hugely before we take them away to read in the barge going down.
Now some news. I ended the last one Senanga on Saturday6th, so now go on from there, but I don't think I'll get very far, as we are going out to tea in two shakes of a kipper's eyebrow and the mail goes at 10 tomorrow.
We left St anger at about 11, walked round by the lovely new office to where the barge was, quite a long walk and Ben (the huge mongrel dog) had fine games with Merry, and rolled him over on his back every time the little man tried to catch us up! He nearly got crocked at one moment, as Ben stood on the edge of the water, with merry in the water up to his shoulder, and Ben wouldn't let him get out! We were rather nervous as there are a lot of crocs there, but luckily Leversedge called Ben off so it was all right.
We stopped at the mission, on the opposite side of the big curve of river, and walked up the steep hill to the house, which they built themselves about six months ago, with a marvellous view out over the flooded plain, the Boma looks just like an English Park from there, with the green grass and big spreading trees stretching down to the water, and the long low house behind the garden at the top and the union Jack floating out above the trees behind it.
At the mission were two missionaries, a male and a female, French, belonging to the Paris mission like ours at Sesheke, and they had two little children, a girl of about four and a boy with vast saucer blue eyes of 13 months. She had a slight squint which was rather awkward as I didn't know which I she looked out with, but she was very nice, tall and thin and quiet-voiced and fair, and she didn't talk very much English so she talked French to me and I talked a mixture of English and French and Chiwemba to her. That's the trouble, when I try and talk French or German to our people at Sesheke, a flow of Chiwemba pours forth! It would be all right if it was Sikololo, as they all speak it fluently, but they don't understand a word of Chiwemba so ain't much good!
She hardly ever sees another woman, and never sage said she had particularly bagged him to bring us up to see them, as I think she rather enjoyed it. She finds the natives they get very "sauvages" compared with the ones she has been used to nearer Mongu, and says it is quite hopeless trying to teach the women anything unless you catch them as children. She says that in the native schools on the Line [towns on the railway] and at Mongu they have Wayfarers and Sunbeams, and love it as children, but
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at the age of about fourteen or fifteen they go completely to pieces and don't grow any older, so a girl of nineteen or twenty has the mentality of an ordinary child of twelve.
Then we went off, and had lunch on the bank further on and played draughts in the sand with sticks and leaves, and then we left the river altogether and set off across the plain to the right of the river, straight across country to Mongu. The water is about 10 feet deep, with grass and reads growing up through it full of tiny flies. We camped the night on a little island about a mile across, where there was a village and a few mediators and a wide stretch of their grass rather like an ordinary English field. The flies were frightful, as they all conglomerate on the island where there are cattle, but as we arrived fairly late and left very early they didn't worry us much.
On Monday were going all day across the plain, through beds of papyrus, what the Egyptians made paper out of in the olden days – I suppose that's why it's called paper. We camped on the mainland that night, and found a herd of mpashi (red ants) near the tent so they dug a trench round the tent and they couldn't get at us, but the paddlers apparently had a nasty time with them. They are miniature animals, but they have a most unpleasant nip, and when you find yourself with half a dozen on you in all parts of you, all of them nipping away, it isn't too funny. They march along in vast armies, eating everything in their path and crawling over and through everything that gets in their way, so if they happen to get into the tent you just have to clear out and wait for them to go through, so it was just as well they didn't come into the tent.
Tuesday, 9th March, we had some sharp showers of rain during the morning, and we didn't get out for lunch but 89 boiled eggs and around of tongue in the barge! All day we could see in the distance to our right to the ridge of land running along at the edge of the plain, and ahead of us we could see where it went out into a sort of promontory on the end of which stands the vast city of Mongu. At about 5 o'clock we arrived at an evil-smelling landing place by a native village, and left everything as it was everybody else to manage while we and Merry walked up to the D.C.'s house. It was a very steep earth path, and at the top we got onto very neat brick path is, too-person wide, and to the right we could just see the Provincial Commissioner's house in the trees, and his office quite close to the path, and on the left was the D.C.'s office and a fine view over more playing beyond the promontory to another ridge in the distance.
We passed to hard tennis courts (made of an mentionable material beaten down solid!) And arrived at our home. Our
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host and hostess are Mr and Mrs Watmough, and they are SO nice and have been terribly sweet to us and so hospitable and kind. He was D.C. at Mpika when G. was junior official there for eight months in 1933, just before he flew home on leave, and he says he learned more from what then he learnt before or since about administering the country, and that he was a tremendous help to him. He such a cheery creature and keeps us in fits of laughter – small and dark and talkative and such fun. He and G. having a marvellous time as they haven't seen each other since then and have very much the same opinions about things in general and the superiority of North-East [Province] over Barotse in particular! They are both very keen on touring, which is in danger of dying out altogether, a great pity and very unwise.
Mrs is very nice, quieter than he is, and we have great talks (which rather hold-up letter-and diary-writing!) And she has given me thousands of hints about gardening, cooking and Robining, and it was she actually who suggested Lusaka and the X-ray. She lost her only child through not being able to go to a good hospital, and nearly died herself over it, as they couldn't afford to send her to a good one and their P.C. refused to move them to a station on the line, poor dears, it's so sad for them. That was about six months before G. knew them. So she is very strongly in favour of getting the best possible attention, especially with the first one.
Just after that tragedy, she was given a minute Fox-terrier, two days old, called Mick, and he was so gay and delicious when first we arrived, and then about two days ago he died; they are both terribly upset as he was very precious for that reason, and they had had him five years, but they have been simply wonderful and haven't shown it at all. They miss him terribly, and she does particularly, as he was always there, following her about as she did her housekeeping, and was such a companion to her when Mr was at the office. We think he died of biliary, which is the Barotse equivalent of distemper at home, and which every dog in Barotse gets at one time or another. The only thing to do is to give an injection of Trypan Blue AT ONCE, or if you haven't got that, Inc will do, but we didn't know it was biliary as he was just shivery and miserable and wouldn't eat anything and wouldn't move and we thought it was a chill from swimming in cold water and then not being tried. He was ill like that for three days, the second day was ever so much better, and we never thought he would die although Mrs had a feeling he was going to; we gave him egg-logs and quinine medicine, but it was no good and he died at 6 o'clock on Tuesday the 16th and is buried in the garden.
Post just going, lots and lots and lots of love,
from
US.
