16., 16.1, 16.2 October 30, 1967 From Barbara, Diane and Frank to his folks

 16.1 October 30

Dear Grandma and Grandpa (Cochrane from Diane)

I got your card today, right on time, just like you planned it. I did have a nice birthday, but will miss you when it comes to the cake tonight. You can do me a favor. Eat three bowls of ice cream for me! We didn’t bring our ice cream freezer, so no ice cream. Of course we can get it in Embu, but it’s not too cheap.

I really felt sorry for mom today. Every cake she made fell. It really disappointed her. Even if those cakes (there were about four) didn’t look too hot, they sure tasted good! This is the first time I’ve had four birthday cakes on the same birthday. How is that for doing good?

Everyone gave me a carved turtle for my birthday present. It’s about seven inches from head to end. (He doesn’t have a tail) He even opens up. The top of his shell comes off and there is a small compartment inside the turtle. I think I will keep that place just for very special things. I named the turtle Mr. Snodgrass. How’s that for a name? I like it. It seems to fit the turtle. He’s black, no not ebony but black shoe polish, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s ebony.

They also gave me a chocolate candy bar. Guess whose idea that was? (Vic’s of course) and a small bag of candy, and a set of kangas. A kanga is a piece of cloth about 45” by 61” that the women around here use for everything from a dress to a handbag. A pair of kangas are two that are identical. Mine are orange, black and white. They are real pretty.

I’ve gotten a much better impression of the Africa around me lately. I went for a walk with Mercy (pronounced Mossy). She’s the daughter of the African vice principal. We went down to the river where the school gets its water. It was so picturesque even if the water was muddy brown. We crossed the bridge (three logs) and followed the river for a ways. It was so pretty there. There’s a maize meal mill down the river, and it’s run by water power. It is really busy. I think is is used to grind coffee in the coffee season. There is a big coffee plantation up the hill from the mill. After we had watched the mill for a little while, we walked up to Mercy’s school. It is a real nice school as far as African schools go. I really enjoyed that trip. 

My correspondence course is going real well. I have two more sections in my World Lit.,  and I’ve only been going on it for two months. I’ve gotten into participles, gerunds, and infinitives. It sure is confusing. The only trouble I’ve had is that twenty pages were missing from my Algebra book. We couldn’t find a substitute in any of the books we had, so I had to send away for information.

No, I’m not taking music lessons now, but when (maybe if) I go to boarding school I’ll take lessons. I play the piano in the students’ dining hall sometimes, but it’s horribly out of tune and sounds tinny on many keys. It’s better than nothing though. I’m going to let Dad tell you about the money orders. Got to go.
Love, Diane

16. (Barb) Hi! Diane was so pleased to get your card on her birthday! Frank’s writing you on a separate sheet, so I’ll finish here. You can just send a check. We will deposit it and that is all there is to it. They don’t object to American Checks at all, quite a different attitude. We had to have a letter of credit from the Embu bank to cash a check in a branch of the same bank in Nairobi!

The teaching is going along reasonably. I have 69 girls in seven different classes, all sewing now. Nineteen in one class are making dresses. It will be a miracle if they are finished in good shape, let alone finished! WE have eight sewing machines to use.

Everyone is staying well, guess we are used to food, water, and climate.

Love, Barb

16.2

October 30

Dear Folks, (Cochrane from Frank)

I didn’t get at this last night, so will get this in the mail tomorrow. I was just too tired to write last night. We had company Saturday night and my sinuses bothered me all night Saturday, so by last night I was ready for bed by nine o’clock. It has been rather cold last week. Our low temperature has been as low as 59°F and runs around 75 to 78°F. We have been getting lots of rain too. Evidently the short rainy season is here. One day we reached 3.92 inches. We have been getting a rain every night for a week. The corn is really growing too, plus other usual things. Our beans got chewed badly by grasshoppers, but we have a few plants left. Your timing is perfect. Diane got your card today right on cue. You mentioned the pictures you had of us in Diane’s card and it reminded me that yesterday, Kiva was playing real quiet for a long time with a bunch of pillows stacked on the floor and she had the pictures of both of you down playing with them. So I got down to talk to her and she said, “I love grandma and grandpa”, and gave each picture a big kiss. We have your pictures in a metal book sort of frame and they are always sitting on the short bookcase by the desk within her reach.

Diane’s birthday went off quite well, except that Barb had to try four times to get a cake baked and even the last one fell. Probably something to do with the altitude or the gas oven or some ingredient that we haven’t figured out yet. She finally took the last one and frosted it and put candles on it so we could sing Happy Birthday to Diane.

Friday finished our first week of teaching. In some ways it was quite interesting and in other ways it was just plain drudgery. My Science classes seem to be moving along fair although it took them almost a week to get used to me and my methods. It’s hard for them to break away from the Old British method of copying everything from the board and repeating the canned answer bak. We did the Black Box experiment that I did at home every year, and they hardly knew what to do with something that was left up to their own devices.

Today I gave them a short quiz over the last week’s work. Short quizzes are unheard of. I had them grad their own papers in class and that really shook them up. I gave them partial credit for partially correct answers and they thought I was crazy for sure. At least they were exposed to some different methods.

I have an arts and crafts class that I’m not accomplishing much with. They produce drawings like first and second graders at home. They don’t seem to have any native crafts or art that they have done to develop skills. But my biggest headache is a class in how to use radio broadcasts, and it seems that after the first class there isn’t anything to say. Today I was going to go through a lesson we have on tape, but couldn’t find the tape recorder, so I spent the whole period on introduction to the lesson. I tried to do the most unusual things I could think of in order to show them that it was not necessary to stay with the extreme formal approach, then let them criticize what I had done in discussion, which gave me the opportunity to take some more jabs at their inability to break through their formal manners as far as the classroom is concerned.

I’m going to try to get a museum started here too, to help build up pride in their own culture and pride in their own craftsmanship. The principal started a collection but has not organized it, because of no building. If I can scrape up the material I will probably build them a building, if I can get some student help.

Love, Frank

The place on the coast sounds great, but don’t go over there and do nothing but paint and clean. We will spend some time painting when we get home.