Saturday, April 18, 2009

Congo (56) Luebo, Congo 12/20/1921 [DCS]

Luebo, Belgian Congo, December 20, 1921

My dearest homefolks:

More nice letters this morning--two letters and a card from you all and a letter from Carroll. He certainly writes an interesting letter, makes me ashamed I have not written to them more often, but I do hate to write. I realize I'm going to lose all my friends and lots of my kin folks if I don't write more often. Why there is Aunt Nennie who I suppose is with you now. She has been so lovely to me, made me such pretty things before I got married, and I don't believe I've written her directly since I've been here, but I hope she understands that I meant those letters I wrote to Terrell for her! Aunt Nennie you have no idea how thankful we all are to you for coming to stay with Mother, she needs you so badly. It just seems awful to both B.M. and myself to think of her trying to teach again, but as she thinks it's her duty, it's so good to know there is someone with her to help her both physically and mentally and there is no one that could do that like you. If you see the least signs of her getting tired and nervous, please persuade her to stop teaching, and if you can't persuade her, call out the police forces.

You must be ashamed of the new school building, as you never say anything about it. I don't even know where it is located or how it is to be used.

Where are Miss Dora and her husband living? I ought to write to her, but want to write to Stella first so she won't feel bad. I'm sorry Stella's letter got lost, but it couldn't be helped. Where I failed was in not writing her more often. B.M. wants me to write a letter a day for awhile, but this is my vacation month. The people have just gone home from the mission meeting. My people left yesterday morning. My! but it's a relief, they had been here going on three weeks. You see there was also a child about eight, although he was, I believe, one of the best children I ever saw. Still he worried me sometimes, and most of all about our monkeys. You know when monkeys are teased, they get to be mean, and we never allow anyone to tease them, not even our own boys are allowed to play with them. They bit the child twice and monkey bites sometimes prove dangerous. While they have never bitten us, still they don't like children much and I was always uneasy. Another thing that will keep me from writing every day is that I am going to take up Baluba again and want to spend quite a bit of time on it. I hope if possible to take up a little French also. They are going to require us more and more to learn French, I understand. There are also a number of books I want to read. I was thinking last night that I would like to have some of those books for keeping up with what you read. Don't know whether you know what I'm talking about or not, but I had one in the Terrell school.

I believe you put the subject of our showing our letters in a stronger light than necessary. I never cared for you showing my letters to Aunt Hon and Aunt Nennie, but Aunt Lutie and Uncle Kent are very particular, and you know how you yourself used to make me be so careful when I wrote to them, and I am not careful when I write to you, if I were you'd never get as long letters as you do. I'll have to acknowledge that if Aunt Lutie and Uncle Kent had depended on hearing directly from me, they would not have heard very often. Please don't say I've lost confidence in you, for I haven't.

What was it about Dedye, that she lost her child? You told me you thought she had, that the Dr. came to see her and you never heard any more about the baby. That's all I remember. Which Dedye did you mean?

As to newspaper news, B.M. gets the "Literary Digest", and that's where he gets most of his news. I am taking "The Ladies Horne Journal." I was taking the "American" but have not subscribed to it again. Understand B.M. gets other papers besides the Digest, one is a French paper.

Love to all,

Dorothy

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