DearMe: lost and found in Europe and Africa

Behind our house in Kikwit: the Kwilu River;  in the foreground the pointed pool umbrellas; and the groundsman. On this day ...  March 17, 1968 .  Dear Annie*, I was floating in our pool when your letter came.  I paddled over to the ladder and pulled myself up and yanked my towel off the sun umbrella, where it was drying lickety-split in the equitorial sun, and rubbed down. I was thinking, maybe a letter from you will help me.  These latter afternoons have been heavy on the spirit.  I teach till one p.m.  I’m happy in front of the kids.  But it’s a tug-of-war with the lead weight of the lethargy of the centuries at the other end. One example of the weight: most believe that the world is flat.  At one thirty our domestique , Baudouin, serves us the three-course European dinner.  The weather is now at its hottest, 85 degrees F.  That is not counting the humidity.  I want to retreat to myself then and do some writing.   ...

    On This Day The high school in Kikwit where I taught, 1967-68. Downtown Kikwit. The Belgians are gone.  Adieu. March 10, 1967: Dear kin,  I just learned where I'm assigned this fall--I shall go and teach in Kikwit, Congo, about two hundred miles east of  the capital, Kinshasa.  In 1964 the missionaries were evacuated and massacres killed numerous locals.  This is a city of about 14 thousand souls. Wayne and Susie Yoder are there, teachers in the same Mennonite program I am in.  The school is Mennonite Brethren and Congo Inland Mission.    I asked my Akron boss, Vern Preheim, for news from Lancaster County.    He said five bishops had sent an ultimatum to some committee about something—a coming split-off group called The Mennonite Messianoic Mission  (MMM). ...  These are probably the kind of things that convince Uncle Paul that he’s not so bad off after all in the bosom of the pope.    There is a Church-...