Chironga Mission Station
P.B. 5, Mt. Darwin
Southern Rhodesia, Africa
2nd February, 1956
Dear Mom,
I guess I’ll try to give your eyes a rest tonight and type this. Sometimes I feel like typing and more times like not. I should do it more as I can make it work and I should get good at it.
The Cedarholms just came down for a bit so I got waylaid with this. We are having good rains now but for the greater part of January we didn’t have a drop so it got real dry and terrifically hot. They put some more grass on my roof so it is quite good now and doesn’t leak hardly a bit. So I’m real thankful for that.
School is going along quite well. Of course, there are problems. One of the boys that the Baptists sent began having fits so we had to take him back. We don’t have quite as many students as we want but we hear that more will be coming this weekend. Also one of the African teachers at Mavuradonha will be coming to help teach in the practicing school. I have been helping out there some, teaching the real little ones. Of course, I used to teach them at Msengedzi.
I have one of my former pupils from those first days here in Teacher Training. I taught him all his first three or four years of school. He has been teaching for three years now down there without training and now he has come to be trained. He is a real nice boy and one of our real own. So many of the teachers and students that we have have only been with us a short time. We also have in school here the teacher that I taught with the first year that I was back from my furlough in 1951. He has been teaching all of these years and now he is here for training. So it is interesting to me as I know so many of the students from away back.
Cliff and Donna, of course, do not know them. I like Donna and Carol Olson. They are the young, single girls on this station, but they are real nice. I like the Cedarholms real well, too. The Razlaffs are O.K. but he is a terrific person to work with. He is sort of a dictator. Perhaps I shall get used to him in time. The Cedarholms are going into town soon to await the arrival of a baby. They have a little boy and a girl. Quite cute kids. The Prescotts, who lost their little boy at Conference time, now have another baby, born this week, a little boy named Charles Marshall. They have been moved to Mavuradonha now. He will be taking over the principalship of the school in another year. Mary plans to start Homecraft. I had a big, long letter from them this week. I guess they are having their problems, too.
I got a bicycle when the men went to town with that student. I have a Sunday School class now on Sundays about six miles from here and then here on the station the buildings are so far apart that it saves so much time and energy to ride that I up and got one. I really cannot afford one but I decided that I could say that most of my Christmas money was put into that. Although I did get that iron which I wanted. It is a kerosene pressure iron, like the gas iron, only much easier to operate and seems like an electric iron to me. It really is nice and I don’t envy you and your one now. Isn’t it nice that they do have good ones like that? They don’t take much paraffin either (kerosene). I want to get a pressure lamp, though, as I told the Women’s Missionary Society from Mason that I wanted to use the money which they sent in that way.
Well, I must close and get to bed. I’ll be looking for a letter again in the next post.
Say, couldn’t you send me some yeast off and on, say twice a month put two packages in an ordinary envelope and send it for 5¢ or 8¢ or whatever it costs. I really would appreciate it. I can make ever so much better bread with it than with the kind I get out here. You must have forgotten that I like it. Even two packages once each month would almost see me through. I just thought I’d ask again.
Well this must be all for tonight. Write again soon.
Love,
Eunice
P.S. Hi Larry and everyone else who reads this.