Letters From Africa

  43. Sunday, May 4, 1968 Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barb) I am getting started late, so I’ll write instead of type as the noise keeps everyone awake. This house really echoes. It must be the concrete floors and walls. Frank is finished with the institute, so it’s sort of like Christmas Vacation again. Everyone is gone and it’s very quiet, extra quiet because there is no generator noise. How we do enjoy the twenty-four hour electricity. Ice in the water to drink, hotcakes on the electric grill, made one chocolate today, and we’ve had orange, lemon, and pineapple, no vanilla yet.  We have had rain every night this week, one night 2.75 inches. The road down the hill to our house was a real mess, as it is shaded part of the way, and doesn’t dry very fast. Saturday Frank hauled a load of gravel which helps a lot. This morning we went right up with no trouble. Saturday I went to Embu to the market, and there were more people there than I’ve ever seen. It was lots of fun to visit ...

  41. April 25, 1968 Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barb) After my last letter you must think I’m really rattle-brained. I sure felt that way. Guess it was the speed with which things happened there for a while. Especially after feeling like things had dragged down almost to a halt. We are back home now. We came home last night in the middle of a pouring rainstorm. It lasted from the city limits of Mombasa to this morning around five Fortunately for us it had been raining only about two hours when we got to the last seven miles from Embu to home. We had put the chains on in Embu, or we never would have made it. As it was, we ended up stuck in the front yard! During our absence, they dug up the old electrical wiring and it made a nice trench right across the yard and carport, and when Frank turned in, he hit it at an angle and there we stayed! They had filled up the trench, but after that much rain, ti was nothing but gook. We unloaded only the necessary things and spread plastic over...

  40. Friday after Easter, (April 19, 1968) Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barb) Sorry for being so long to write. All of a sudden  things speeded up!  Two weeks ago, Tuesday, I went to Nairobi to get supplies for the trip we hoped to take to the coast over Easter weekend. At that time, it looked as though we might have school on Monday after Easter, even though it is a National Holiday here. I got all the food we needed and got home about supper time the next day. This was also the time I took Milt and Kiva to the doctor in Nairobi. (It’s a little hard to sort things out this morning!) They both had laryngitis (Hoarse voice and croupy cough), and had had it for three days. It started the morning I went down for Diane, and I couldn’t find any private doctors in Embu. The Asian lady doctor we’d gone to off and on had taken down her sign! We got to the doctor in Nairobi and got the proper medicine, found the Sentman’s were gone, so stayed the night in their house in order to ...

  39. March 31 Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barb) Looks like it’s time for an April Fools letter. No, all that follows is really true! We finished our income taxes tonight, and as always, it’s a big relief. We had brought all our things along to make out the form, as when we left, we didn’t know just what would happen concerning the taxes. We have applied for an extension on filing the federal taxes, so we won’t file any federal tax until we get back.  There is a two month grace period because we are out of the country anyway. Idaho only grants a 180 day extension which won’t help, so we filed as an out-of-state resident. We will get about $40 returned so felt it was worth the trouble. As always some things have been misplaced, but it wasn’t drastic. Just the same, I always sigh with relief when the envelope is put in the mailman’s hands! Frank is feeling really good tonight. The farm has a little 14 HP diesel crawler tractor, German made, that has been sitting around for the ...

  38. March 25 Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barb) We took off for Nairobi from here around noon on Friday in order to get some business done that couldn’t be done Saturday morning. Seems like almost all the offices close up on Saturday. We stayed with Mr. Bevan. He seemed glad to have us or at least made us think so. We had fish for supper and his house man asked me to help him get the meal. I think he was making good use of me, although at the time, I thought it was because I had brought part of the groceries, and he was in doubt of how he would fix things the way I wanted them! Anyway, I got even the next night. We stayed in town shopping late and when we got back, the meal was ready to eat. Roast fresh pork, no less! The first we’ve had since we came to Africa! It was delicious! Sunday was the man’s day off so we did without him! It is still hard to get used to having “help” like that around all the time! Saturday we did a lot of shopping and tried to hunt up some art galleries...

  37. March 19 Dear Mom and Dad, (Line from Barbara) Last week we got to make another little trip. Pat McFadden, who is working here with the Curriculum Development Department in Nairobi, had some material and a lecture to give at Egoji (which is north toward Meru from here, and also is where the Rhienhiemers live. (They were down last weekend with a bunch of students for a game day.)  Pat took Frank along to help present the material and she took us, the family, along for the ride. She had the school Land Rover to take her wherever she goes officially, and as this was an official journey, we all went in the Land Rover.It was the roughest trip we have ever made! It is dirt road all the way, sometimes graded and really in fair shape for a dirt road, but with enough bump holes and wash boards that it is a rough trip! It took us three hours to get to Egoji and the last twenty miles were extra bad, as it was a side road, up hill and down, with corners so sharp you had to crawl aro...