The word we used for breaks from boarding school was holiday. Days at home for me really were Holy Days, set apart for joy, hugs, love and home!! Hugs when mom and dad came, and hugs at home. I even remember tying to hug the carpet, our gray rocking chair, our cozy house. We almost always had our favorite meal of spaghetti the first night home, and I would eat more than my dad.
There was spiritual nourishment too. Here we are in
the gray rocking chair. Mom and dad would work hard for years with Kenyan teams to build age-appropriate Sunday school material, but on those early years, Sunday school wasn’t available at the local church yet, so mom taught us. She was such a good teacher. In one photo I have a puppet on my hand so I could act out the story. She used to read us other books as well. Because of her influence, I have always loved books. Books and stories are associated with warmth, safety, and comfort.
The diseases that had selectively killed the early missionaries were still around. Wazungu (people from other continents than Africa) were considered frail by the local people. The resistance to local disease just wasn’t there. Malaria didn’t kill as often since better medicines had been developed. Dysentery was still a killer, but that could be avoided by boiling and filtering drinking water and avoiding eating dirt. “If it’s not peeled or cooked don’t eat it.” Little kids aren’t always good at keeping dirt out of their mouths. Once when my sister had gotten very ill with dysentery in the night, mom and dad decided to take her to hospital. I half woke in my father’s arms being carried across station, stars overhead, his strong arms under me. Instead of waking me, he carried me to a kind older couple’s home. When I woke properly the next day, I was fawned over and fed a lovely breakfast. The older couple told me in a gentle reassuring way what had happened and that my little sister would be fine, so I was never frightened. That memory of being carried in my father’s arms in the night, warm and safe, is one I would often go back to when frightened a boarding school. Even now, it gives special resonance to the phrase in Deuteronomy 33:27, “The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you.”
At Mumbuni, the mission houses were built in a loose circle near the Mumbu tree. When we first came to Mumbuni, there wasn’t yet sufficient housing for the missionaries who would come to teach at Scott Theological College. Dad designed a house for us and oversaw the building of it. I have so many good memories of that cinderblock house. Simple and very functional, it had two bedrooms and storage space upstairs and four rooms downstairs. For hot water, Dad designed a brick structure that looked a bit like an outdoor pizza oven. In a barrel, above a metal firebox, and insulated by the brick “oven” our hot water was heated and kept warm. If the fire was too hot and boiled the water in the barrel, it vented dramatically out a high pipe. The mission station had a generator that would be on from dusk until 10 pm. The station men used to take turns walking back to turn it off. I remember walking with dad through the dark holding his hand safe in the night to the intimidatingly loud generator shed. Then dad rigged an automatic off switch with a big alarm clock and no one had to go back to turn off the generator any more.
Me, mom, and my sister by our house while it was being built. The shadow next to my sister is from the mango tree where we played. It's in the second picture.
One of the families on station had two older boys and Jennifer, a girl my age. The next year another family arrived with two girls our age, Debby and Becky, and two younger brothers. There were other families who came and went, so there were often more than a dozen kids of various ages. Unlike boarding school, while at home I didn’t have any trouble fitting in. Next to our house was a lovely mango tree. The big dark green leaves made a rounded dome around the shaded uncluttered branches. For several holidays, a group of us kids each had a “home” branch. Acting out many scenarios, we found old keys to “open” our doors and made ourselves “drivers’ licences” like the trifold British Kenyan licences our parents carried. I often used to climb to “my” branch to read. it was a safe and beautiful place to me.
A riskier game was tree tag. I remember rushing to twist around a vertical shoot from a horizontal branch and falling ten feet or so flat onto my back, unhurt but with the breath knocked out of me. Most falls were like that, but not all. We were playing in an avocado tree, and too many kids went onto one branch to visit as part of a game. The branch came down and Jennifer’s arm was broken just above the elbow.
I was fascinated by Debby and Becky’s dad, Uncle Jack. He seemed to me to be a hero. He had flown in the military, lost both of his legs above the knee in a plane crash, become a Jesus follower, married Aunt Gerry, and then gone to graduate school so he could teach theology. He walked with a cane. He was kind and strict. He did give me quite a shock once. Before they came, I was used to jumping the thorn hedge, running across the lawn and through the flower garden to the veranda of any house. Not long after Phillips had come, I did just that. As I climbed over the low cement wall around their veranda, the curved end of Uncle Jack’s cane hooked me around the neck. I was terrified. I didn’t know yet how kind he really was. It didn’t forget his rules about grass and gardens!
All the kids old enough to ride bikes soon had them. None of us had heard of mountain bike single track, but essentially, we did that - no gears, no suspension, but so fun! Standing on the pedals, all in a mob, we would go as fast as we could, trying to keep up with the bigger boys. We would hurtle downhill on the track full of roots under the Mumbu tree. When the track joined a spot with deep sand on the road onto station, we would throw our bikes sideways and see who could make the longest skid mark. Such fun! I remember great comfort in going to dad for help in bike fixing. Most crashes were scraped hands and knees. But some were more memorable. The kids too small to ride would beg to be carried on someone’s bike. Once one of the older boys was carrying Peter, Debby and Becky’s three-year-old brother and Peter’s foot went into the spokes. Not good! I wonder if he still has scars.
Around the paths between houses, there were short hedges with long black thorns, little round leaves and blood red flowers. They were named for the crown of thorns on Christ’s head at the crucifixion. Those hedge plants were not very friendly. They were brutal to fall into from a bicycle!! Good lessons for persistent resilience! I remember sitting with bent knees, vowing to myself I wound not cry as mom picked black thorns out of my knees and shins.
The dust at Mumbuni was a lovely strawberry blond color, The quiet dirt roads between the houses were endless sandboxes for us. We often played with “dinky toy”, matchbox cars, making towns in the dust. Each of us had only one car at a time, and mine was always a maroon Mercedes with tiny doors that opened. Roads were made by pushing two fingers through the dust to make the two tracks a dirt road. We decorated our dust houses with twig “trees” and lined the “roads” with frangipani or oleander flower. Our road network often stretched many meters until it was erased by real car tire tracks or rain. After our evening baths, there was a usually a sand bar of reddish dust in the bottom of the tub. Clean and in our “jammies” we would listen as Dad led us in evening devotions. Then we would bow our heads and pray, safe with God and family. My bed was against a wall that was usually still warm from the sun. The sound of cicadas and the faint twittering of bats, and sometimes African drums in the night didn’t bother me. Cuddled under my blankets, I would scoot back against the warm cinderblock wall in total contentment.