24., 24.1, 25.,25.1,25.2,26. Christmas 1967 Correspondence from Barbara, Frank, Diane to folks in Idaho

 24. December 12

Dear Mom and Dad (Line, from Barb on the Christmas card)

The first lap you might say of our vacation is over. We went to Nairobi December 3 to attend the TEEA Conference. I guess the conference part for the men was more or less a gripe session, but did give everyone a chance to get things off their chest, settled and straightened! We stayed at the Spread Eagle Hotel, the four up-country families. The wives and kids spent most of the three days at or in the swimming pool. It rained one day and night, but was still pleasant. Tuesday night there was a dinner in a Nairobi restaurant with steak for the grownups. Diane and Vicki made a little money babysitting. We left Wednesday and tried to get all the Nairobi business done.  We almost fell over when we paid the hotel bill. 735 shillings! TEEA paid $20 plus mileage per day which came to some 580 shillings. It was fun, but pretty expensive!

Thursday we left Frank at his Science Institute and came on home. That was the first time I had driven in Nairobi and it was really an experience. I can’t even think of any traffic anywhere as bad! But I didn’t even have a close squeak. Wednesday we had stayed with some of our group at Kenyatta College. Friday night Frank rode home with Mr. Spreiji, as there were no classes Saturday or Sunday.

We spent the time fixing up the car to sleep in with curtains and such, and Sunday took Frank back to the Institute. That night the kids and I slept in the car, then shopped and came back home Monday. We will go pick him up when he is finished on Friday, and then we will start traveling!

This is our Christmas card. How do you like it? Too much paint, I’m sure. Even though it has soaked through, maybe you can still read this.

You asked about beaches. There are lots of nice ones around Mombasa. Everyone goes there for their holidays the year round. As a result you have to make reservations, even to camp, months in advance. One of the TEEA people had their arrangements made before we left New York.  Guess it is really worth the effort. There is a reef where you can find the most exotic shells. Miss Williams, English woman who teaches here, has been in Kenya for ten years and goes to Mombasa every chance she gets. She has loads of shells she’s picked up, one spider shell 18” long. So that’s our aim for next year.

Tanzania is Tanganyika and Zanzibar united, the new republic so-to-speak. All three countries, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, are fiercely independent of each other and everyone else! They each have their own money. I tried to spend a Tanzanian shilling in Nairobi and they wouldn’t take it. I hadn’t even noticed it didn’t have Jomo Kenyatta’s picture on it. And each government makes it hard to leave the country to visit the others. Kenya especially makes it hard to get back in. You have to have a re-entry permit before they will give you permission to leave, plus you must have a letter saying you will bring your wife back with you. Isn’t that a funny one! Love, Barb, Frank and Kids.

24.1 December 15

Dear Grandmother (Adams, from Barb, on the Christmas card)

We have finished one term of teaching and have from November 30 to January 15 for vacation! So far we’ve just been to Nairobi, as Frank has a Science Institute there. He finishes tomorrow and then maybe we can travel a bit. We have the car (bus) fixed up to sleep in and plan to camp. The weather is wonderful. All the kids are putting on tans. Not too hot, 80° is the highest here. It’s a mountain climate and always has cool nights.

I am making pumpkin pies today. The pumpkin here is extra good, but they stay green-colored even when ripe. And I’ve fixed cabbage every way I can think of. They grow them by the tons and they are so cheap, it’s a shame not to use them.

We had a Thanksgiving with several Americans who live near Embu. The host lives in Embu and goes home next summer. They had a turkey grown in North Carolina. It was wonderful and tender! Hope you have a nice Christmas and a good new year. Love from all of us. Barb, Frank and Kids

25. December 13

(Barb to Frank’s folks (Cochrane)) Tomorrow we go to pick up Frank and then hope to do a bit of traveling. Wonder if Dad’s fall did any harm. Evidently not, or you would have mentioned it.

Thank you for the spending money. It’s three hundred fifty shillings, sounds like a mountain, hugh? 

We have fixed up the car with curtains and places for everyone to sleep. Last Sunday when we took Frank back to Nairobi the kids and I stayed all night. We parked in the yard of our group at Kenyatta College and slept in the bus. It is a little crowded, but tolerable as long as it is dry outside. We have a gas lantern and a little gas stove. We are using the brown box in place of one seat for a table, bed and storage.

Diane told you about the decorating. That seemed to make them all feel a little more in the spirit of things. We drew names among ourselves and will do some shopping when we go for Frank.

Diane designed our Christmas card this year. I thought it came out pretty good. We have all picked up some tan these last weeks. We got most of it at the hotel swimming pool. The kids really enjoyed the swimming.

I have driven in Nairobi now. That is really an experience. The motor traffic is worse than Boise, with three times as much foot traffic and twice as many bicycles as cars. Those crazy round-a-bouts at the intersections are the limit! I was real pleased I got through the city and back here without even a scare. I guess our car is big enough they think twice before challenging it. The police here at Embu ask for a lift now and then. Doesn’t that seem strange? Then they leave with a snappy salute and “Thank you Madam”. Makes you feel real important!

Love to you both, Barb, Frank and Kids

25.1

Season’s Greetings! (Cochrane, from Diane on Christmas card)

Thank you ever so much for the Christmas and Birthday money. Now I can get my guitar. I’ll learn to play before I get back too (I hope). 

We are going to have a feast on the Christmas dinner money. It will really fix Christmas up nice.

We decorated the living room today with paper snowflakes and folded birds and some branches of juniper. Dad will have fits when he sees it, but it was a lot of fun and will serve the purpose. Thanks for the Christmas dinner and my guitar. Have a very Happy Christmas and a mizuri sona New Year!

 Love, Diane

25.2

December 21 or 22 (Line, postcard from Barb)

Left Embu Tuesday morning with Hice (TEEA people) who came over from Uganda. Headed for the coast and spent two nights in Tsavo National Park on the way. Saw lots of antelope, one wart hog, two rhino, eight hippo, lots of zebras, and so many elephants we lost track! Had to wait while three moved away from the road. Picked up a thorn in a tire and three giraffes watched while we changed tires. Heard elephants in the night, a water buck came through camp during breakfast, and an ostrich later in the day. Countryside is much like Rupert desert, no people, thorn trees instead of juniper and sage, grass is taller. Some spots like the edge of Craters of the Moon. Arrived at Melindi some eighty miles north of Mombasa 5:00 yesterday.Kids got right in the ocean, it’s too warm to believe! Camping about a half a block from the edge of the water. Crab for supper! 

Love from all of us, Barb

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26. December 28

Dear Folks, (Cochrane, from Frank)

I’m a little late on this letter. It seems that we just didn’t take time while we were on the trip to do much writing except for the cards that we got at Tsavo. Barb wrote those cards, so I’m not sure what she wrote. Hope I don’t repeat too much.

A young couple in our program showed up unexpectedly the Friday I finished the course in Nairobi. In fact they had spent the night here and we spent the night in Nairobi. We happened to run into them in the Supermarket the next day, so all came back up here to prepare to go on. I’m afraid it was somewhat of a mistake to try to travel with them, particularly when we were camping. They have a small baby that cried all the time his mother was around, and the mother about drove me nuts, just took over as if everything belonged to her. And she wasn’t clean. She grabbed our dishpan one day and gave her baby a bath in it without saying a word, and before anyone could stop her gracefully. She didn’t do her part of the chores, which was probably fortunate for us. One day she leaned over and got her straggly hair in Kiva’s plate. Kiva told her about it, but it didn’t make any difference. The guy was real nice and if it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have done anything. All of this besides the big crowd camping Christmas Eve discouraged us, so we drove home Christmas Day. We did have some enjoyable time though, and we learned that we were much happier by ourselves.

Tsavo Park was real nice. It could have been Owyhee county, if you can imagine thorn trees as juniper as far as the terrain is concerned. It was a real thrill to see our first herd of wild elephants. We had some trouble spotting them at first. You wouldn’t think anything that large could be missed, but you could drive within a hundred yards of them and not see them until you got accustomed to looking for a big hulk of reddish, ear flopping, living matter. They are red because they spray themselves with muddy water. We must have seen sixty or seventy of them during the entire time. We quit counting after a while. During our first night of camping we were awakened several times by their trumpeting. It was a little disconcerting when we would think about how much protection a lean-to would give against elephants. We drove way down into the park one day, stopping at a fancy lodge about mid-morning to have a tire fixed. We got a thorn in it and they are six-ply tires! We drove down to the large pool that was fed from what looked like a lava tube, and there we say hippo and lots of monkeys. From there we went to the Poacher’s Lookout and managed to see one rhino through the binoculars.

We went on to the coast the next day to Melindi about seventy miles north of Mombasa. The road was bad, and we had to cross one estuary by ferry which took a lot of time. The beach and the Indian Ocean are beautiful. The water temperature was 70° or more and enough sun that it is easy to get burned. In fact we all got enough the first day that we had to keep covered the rest of the time. We did our swimming mornings and evenings after that. We had some good fish and crab too. Crabs here have enormous pinchers on them, much bigger than those of the West Coast but they taste the same … Good!

We took one day while we were there to visit a place called Gait, which  was an ancient Arab settlement, dating back to the thirteenth century. It is all in ruins but has been partially excavated. It was very interesting. It is situated in dense undergrowth and was sweltering hot. These Arabs were quite ingenious. They had rudimentary plumbing systems, toilets, bath tubs, and wash basins in their bathrooms. It is strange that some of those conveniences did not rub off on the Africans around them, but it didn’t. We stopped in Mombasa on the way home for Christmas Day with the intention of visiting Fort Jesus, which is an Arab Fort of about the same vintage as Gait. It was closed, so we’ll catch it next time we go there.

We are planning to leave again about New Year’s Day to go west to Uganda. 

We certainly appreciate the money. That helped make the trip possible. Thanks very much. I don’t know about the package we sent. The pieces you got are parts of spears. They are supposed to be joined in the center with a wooden piece. We didn’t insure because the price from this end was prohibitive, which I guess indicates a lot of loss. Should have known better. I guess we’ll just consider them gone and try again later. Love, Frank.