Good News Letters I

Alright! From my last post you are aware that I was able to visit the London Missionary Society archives kept at SOAS in London and it was super cool. The box with the photos is a box of a few different sorts of things, so it also had a chunk of incoming letters about the SS Good News, my favorite missionary steamship. Since I didn’t have a whole lot of time to peruse each letter I just took photos of the ones that seemed like they would be interesting and now after long last I have transcribed them to the best of my ability (“best of my ability” because man I cannot read some of their handwriting). So in two parts I will show you what I found.

The first neat thing is the original contract for the SS Good News, signed by LMS Foreign Secretary R. Wardlaw Thompson and Forrestt and Son boatbuilders (photos at the top):

Memorandum of Agreement entered into this Fifteenth day of April one thousand eight hundred and eighty two between Messr. Forrestt and Son of Britannia Yard Millwall Shipbuilders hereinafter called the builders of the one part and R. Wardlaw Thompson of 15 Blomfield St. London Wall acting for and in behalf of the London Missionary Society hereinafter called the owners of the other part.

The said builders hereby agree to build for the said owners a steam launch in accordance with the terms of the specifications and drawings hereto attached and to deliver the said launch in parcels for shipment free alongside steamer in the river Thames for the sum of £1,600 (one thousand six hundred pounds).

It is further agreed by and between the said builders and the said owners that if the launch be so far completed as to be tried under steam on the river Thames a further sum of £150 (one hundred and fifty pounds) shall be paid for the additional labor and expense incurred thereby.

It is also further agreed by and between the said builders and the said owner that the purchase money for the launch does not include any of the following items of the outfit viz:-

One complete set of spars

One complete set of sails

One complete set of blocks

One large anchor

One compass

And the said owner hereby agrees to pay the said builder the before mentioned purchase money in these equal instalments viz:-

One third when the launch is in frame

One third when the launch is plated and the deck laid

And the remaining third when the launch is finished and delivered to the said owner.

As witness our hands this fifteenth day of April one thousand eight hundred and eighty two

R. Wardlaw Thompson – Foreign Secy London Missionary Soc

     J. Messtt Frm [?]

Witness to both signatures (Clerks to the London Missionary Society 14 Blomfield Street E.C.

     William Ford Brown

     Mm Ley Lerk [?]

After the contract the next neat thing is a letter from James Roxburgh to G.S. Goodwin, Esq. Mr. James Roxburgh was an engineer that went to Lake Tanganyika on behalf of the London Missionary Society to build the Good News. Looking back I should have written a biography of him in my Chronicle transcription. I didn’t because he’s not on the LMS list of missionaries because he wasn’t sent out as a missionary, but as a “practical engineer in the employment of the Society,” as the LMS put it (though they also referred to him at least once as “our missionary engineer”). I have a blog post on Building the SS Good News with excerpts from books by E.C. Hore and A.J. Swann, but it was Roxburgh that was the main man in charge of actually building the boat.

This letter came to the LMS archives when it was sent to them by Andrew Hamilton of A. Goodwin-Hamilton & Adamson Ltd, apparently a firm of naval architects (as I learned from their letterhead), some 40-odd years after it was originally sent to G.S. Goodwin, Esq. It is not clear to me from the letters or some subsequent googling why Mr. Roxburgh was writing to Mr. Goodwin. My guess is that Mr. Goodwin was the boss of a firm of engineers from whence Roxburgh was hired by the LMS. It’s a pretty chatty letter, starting with the story of launching the Good News and talking about parts still missing, but then at the end gets into the state of Roxburgh’s health. Unfortunately this is foreshadowing; James Roxburgh would die on Kavala Island on May 18, 1885, about three months after writing the below letter on the same day he launched the Good News.

The cover letter from A Goodwin-Hamilton & Adamson Ltd.:

A. Goodwin-Hamilton & Adamson Ltd.

Naval Architects, Consulting Engineers, Surveyors, &c.

Cunard Building, Liverpool, 27^th February 1931

Dear Mr. Chamberlin,

I came across the enclosed letter written by Mr. Jas. Roxburgh, dated 3^rd March 1885 from Lake Tanganyika at the time of the launch of the “Good News”.

This will I think be of interest and may deserve a place in the Society’s Museum & or History of the Tanganyika Mission.

With Kind Regards.

Yours truly,

Andrew Hamilton

And now the letter from Mr. Roxburgh:

Liendwe Central Africa

3^rd March 1885

To G.S. Goodwin Esq.,

Alexandra Buildings,

James Street,

Liverpool.

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

This has perhaps been the greatest day that Central Africa has yet seen, and the Natives here have been privileged to see a work accomplished that has been a very great puzzle to them for a long time past. As they could not conceive how it would be possible for us to carry such a big heavy boat as the “Good News” into the water. I am glad to inform you that the “Good News” was successfully launched today at 10/30 a.m., everything went well. We had not a hitch of any kind.

She now lies at Anchor opposite our camp here on the Lofu river and I am sure if you were here to have a look at her as she is on the river at present I think you would say she is a good clean tidy job and a credit to all who have had an important part of her to do, especially to the designer of her. I got on board as soon as possible after the launch and made a complete examination of her all along and I am glad to say I did not find a single leak. I do not think there will be much work for the bilge pump in our little steamer as no part of her is depending on putty nor paint.

Our Motto here has been, that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. I may say I laid the ways for Launching on the same principle as is carried out at home, but it was a very big job getting and making the ways out here with very poor tools, etc. We had to go to the forest and cut down no less than 42 trees, giving us a total length of 380 feet, as the boat was built a long way back from the river on account of the great floods that often come sweeping down here in great force during the rainy season. She had a clear fun of 105 ft on her ways before the stern touched the water, that length of a run as you know is much longer than usual.

However that part of it is all over now and I am very thankful it is a very great load off my mind to know she is safely afloat on the water.

Though the boat is launched there is still a great amount of work to do at her yet, but I cannot give you any opinion in regard to the time she will be finished, as I don’t know how long it may be yet before I get the fittings. I still want all the cabin combing plates yet, also 2 bulkhead plates and boiler seat plate, then I have got nothing of the boiler here yet but the smoke box and 2 pieces of the funnel.

I have written to the African Lakes Co. about the boiler and engine time after time but as yet my writing has had very little effect. However I have just received a note from one of the Company’s Agents informing me that he was about to try and form a very large Caravan to bring up our boiler fittings etc. from the North end of Lake Nyassa, if he succeeds in getting the men he says he expects to be at Tanganyika by the later end of April or early in May, that itself is very good news, but we shall be at a complete stand long before that time. My patience has been very much tried on account of these long weary waits from time to time. I can enjoy a good week’s holiday at home, but it is not so here with me, for as soon as I am idle for a few days here I get laid down with fever. I think the very best medicine a white man can have for the good of his health in Central Africa is a moderate amount of work to do every day, this has at least been my experience since I came here.

I hope you received my last letter dated January 1885, with the list of boiler fittings I want replaced and sent out as soon as possible, I believe there are more boiler fittings awanting yet but I cannot find out what they are till the boxes arrive here. I know for certain that there is a box lost that contained 60 boiler tubes, but as there is a complete spare set I have never re-ordered them yet.

Now for fear my last letter to you of January 1885 may not have arrived your length, I shall here below repeat the list of lost fittings that I want replaced and sent out here as soon as possible.

2 test cocks.

1 5/8 water gauge cock for the bottom end of glass.

1 ½ steam jet and

12 fire or flue box screws or stays

1 spring for safety valve

I hope nothing else belonging to the boiler may be amissing, so that if the boiler plates etc. arrive here in April, I may be able to get it finished right off and put under steam.

I may here say that Capt Hore has not up till the present time seen much of the “Good News” yet, as he left here just 9 months ago to go and meet his Wife and child at Qillimani [Quelimane] and it happened rather unfortunately for him that the late native war down on the lower Shire river was going on and the river was blocked up for all traffic. However after some delay he got to Quillimane to meet his wife there, but on account of the native war he decided not to come via Nyassa with his Wife so he took steamer for Zanzibar and came up the Old Route, they arrived at Tanganyika on the 7^th of January but he has never got this length yet, as I believe he is busy building a house at the other end of the Lake for his Wife and family, as it is a much healthier place than this is. After he gets this finished he informs me he is coming down to see the “Good News”. At the time he left here she was only in frame and she is now lying at anchor out in the Lufo River.

I am sorry to inform you that I have not been in very good health for a long time and if it does not improve very soon I am afraid I must come home. However I sincerely trust that I may soon get stronger again if it is the Lord’s Will, for it will be very grievous to me if I have to part with the “Good News” before she is under steam and has had run round the Lake.

I have been down for over 4 weeks with a severe attack of jaundice and although I seemed to get over it all right, so far I don’t seem to have regained my usual strength since I have been up and moving about for nearly 3 weeks now, but I am so weakly yet that I can only work two or three hours per day, after which I have to turn in to my bed again, in other words, I have to lay in my bed the best half of the day, nearly every day. However I feel pretty well about the body and my appetite is fairly good. My weakness is all in my legs. I send with this Mail a letter to our Secretary in London.

Hoping this may find you and your family all in good health, and may God Bless and Guide you in all you do.

I remain,

Yours faithfully,

James Roxburgh

More LMS Photos

Reading this week:

Visions from the Forests, General Editors Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers and Alexander Bortolot
Sacred River by Syl Cheney-Coker
Afro Sport

This fall I got to visit the London Missionary Society archives kept at SOAS in London! It was super cool. I had wanted to visit them for a long, long while, and if I was rich I would pay to have them all digitized, transcribed, and hosted online. I only was able to spend a morning in the archives but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The process of accessing the archives was super simple and everyone was really friendly, but since it was only a morning worth of looking I could only look at so much. I will write more about my visit to London (don’t you worry about that) and what else I could find in the archive, but one priority was pictures. I’ve seen a variety of LMS-related pictures in lots of places but I figured the archives would have a pretty good selection. Below is what I found, all photographed hastily on my phone camera as I tried to look through as many scraps of the archive as possible.

Good News

The first chunk of photographs I looked at were of the S.S. Good News, which of course you know is my particular obsession.

The above photograph is of the Good News in drydock following some damage, with the Morning Star alongside it. This was not a new photo for me but neat to see it in the flesh.

The above photo and the next two were new to me, and it seems like they might have been from the same photo session. If they are, then the above photo must have been taken by Alexander Carson, because the caption on the back says that is A.J. Swann in the photo. I think this is corroborated by the hat.

Here’s what I mean by the hat; the caption on this photo identifies that as A.J. Swann on the deck of the Good News; his mate is unnamed.

And then above is Alexander Carson, which is why I think the first of these three photos was taken by him. At first I had actually thought this was another picture of Swann given the similar outfits and beards. I guess this is why they had different hats.

These two photos, one of the hull of the Good news and the other of a young man, were pasted onto a piece of paper. The only context was given by a short letter, originally typed on a different piece of paper but cut out and pasted onto the same paper as the photos. I’ve seen this exact photo of the Good News before, as in someone else took a photo of this same document out of the archives (I can tell from the larger crop of that photo). The letter reads:

Dear Mr. Chamberlain,

Yours of yesterday to hand. Considering the fact that the photo was taken at Kituta, and that the only steamer there was the “Good News” you will be safe I think to conclude it is the hull of that vessel. The “Morning Star” & the “Good News” were both damaged by the Huns but the latter was not completely destroyed. It is the properly of the A.L.C. [African Lakes Corporation].

Trusting you are well and with kind regards.

Yours sincerely

R. Stewart Wright

If Rev Wright took the photo, that dates it to between 1915 (when he left the Mission) and the start of WWI (when the Germans shelled any other potentially workable steamer on Lake Tanganyika to ensure their naval superiority). However, it doesn’t give a lot of clues to the identity of the man.

Portraits

The next section is portraits. The first two are particularly cool because I’ve seen them before, but as engravings instead of as pictures.

The caption for the above photo, from the January 1884 edition of the Chronicle (where it was included as an engraving) was: “The group of figures in the above engraving from a photograph will be recognized by many of the Society’s friends. From left to right the names are as follow: – Rev. D.P. Jones, behind him Captain Hore, Mr. A. Brooks, the late Rev. J.H. Dineen, the late Rev. J. Penry, and Mr. A.J. Swann. The trucks in the background contain the larger sections of the life-boat.” That life-boat was the Morning Star.

The above photo is Adam Purves, and was featured (as an engraving) in the December 1900 edition of the Chronicle with the caption “Mr. Purves Preaching to the Awemba.”

There were a few different copies of this photo in the archives, of James Dunn, A.J. Swann, and Arthur Brooks. It was taken in 1882 before they set out, apparently at the studios of Brown, Barnes & Bell. They’re posing with the tools of their trade(s), as they all were artisan missionaries. Dunn (with a saw) and Brooks (with a pickaxe) were slated to form an industrial station at the south end of Lake Tanganyika, and Swann (holding a sextant) of course joined the marine department. This copy of the photo has been updated with their eventual fates, with Dunn having died of fever in 1884 and Brooks killed as he was returning to the coast on his way home to England in 1889.

I can’t quite make out the names listed on the back of this photo; they were written in pencil and were a bit faded and I took a poor picture. The couple in the middle are Mr. and Mrs. James Hemans (also here).

This one is also a bit mysterious, I think the caption identifies the seated missionary as Rev. W.C. Willoughby, and it doesn’t name the missionary in the back (Swann maybe?), nor does it name any of the people with them (except as “natives”).

Now this is pretty neat because this is Mirambo. You can find this photo in a few different spots already on the internet (like his German Wikipedia page) or the cover of the book on Mirambo by Dr. Bennett, but hey here is a slightly wider shot even if I could have done a better job reducing glare. Someday I’ll go back to the archive and digitize these things with more skill.

Lifestyle

And then finally we have two photos that just show some of the lifestyle in and around the mission stations at the turn of the century. The above photo is just labelled “Swann’s tent.”

And then our final photo is only really notable to me because a nearly identical version is online in the USC archives, they must have been taken one right after the other. It was taken at Kambole, and according to the USC page it was more specifically taken by Rev. James Ross circa 1925, featuring a tip cart made at Kambole in front of a wheat field.

So pretty neat. The trip to the archives was fun and I will milk it for several more posts as I figure out all I was able to take a look at; I took a bunch of pictures of documents without having a chance to really read them in the moment but I will work my way through them. I’ve already learned a few significant details and will have to update my transcription of the Chronicle with more photos and biographic details when I get the chance.

LMS Photo Album Pictures

At risk of copyright infringement, I wanted to highlight for my loyal readers a super cool book of photographs that I saw pop up on eBay, leading me to the wonderful-looking shop Globus Rare Books & Archives. If you click the link (provided no one has since bought it), you’ll find for sale at the bargain-basement price of $3,750 (man I wish I was rich) a “historically significant collection of original photos, illustrating the activities of the Central Africa Mission of the London Missionary Society.” It’s so cool man. So many photos of cool things I hadn’t seen before, and it amazes me that this sort of ephemera survives and makes its way out there into the world.

Since it’s a missionary photo album, most of the pictures are focused on daily missionary life, along with travel through places they would have seen on their way to and from the mission. There are also a number of photos of contemporary life in the area, such as this one labelled “Spirit Huts – Mambwe:”

I can’t tell who made the album, though the pictures seem to range around 1905-1910. There are a few different group photos of the missionaries. The below photo is labelled “Wright, Mrs. Clark, Clark, Ross, Mrs. Turner. 1906.” So that is Rev Robert Stuart Wright, Rev Earnest Howard Clark and Harriet Emily Clark, Rev James Arthur Ross, and Gertrude Alice Turner. When I was assembling the LMS biographies I couldn’t find a picture of either of the women, so the above is the best photo I’ve seen of either Harriet Clark or Gertrude Turner. In 1906, Wright was stationed at Niamkolo, Ross and the Turners at Kambole, and I think the Clarks might have been stationed at Kawimbe (they were married there, at least). All of which to say is the above photo could have been taken in a wide variety of places and it’s hard to tell. There are plenty of cliffs around the southern part of Lake Tanganyika though I wonder if maybe it was taken on a sightseeing trip to Kalambo Falls. They certainly seem to be having a rather grand time!

This set of photos is sadder. Our friends at Globus interprets the below two captions as “Mrs. McNeil’s grave, Kawimbe” and “May & Mrs. McNeil, Abercorn, 1907”:

I’m not sure who either of these women are. I can’t find a record of any McNeil being associated with the London Missionary Society, so it may be a member of another missionary society or the British colonial administration. I’d have to do more digging and I’m not familiar with all the records. However, if the graveyard pictured is the Kawimbe church graveyard, I have been to it! I wish I had known what I was looking at when I visited and one of these days I have to go back. When I visited it, it was overgrown, and I didn’t take pictures of every gravestone (and the ones I did take aren’t very good), but going through my files I have the two below. On the bottom left is a stone that I think says “In Loving Memory of Amy, the Beloved Wife of [] McNeil.” Of course it is a bad photo, I am bad at reading this particular type of writing, and also there is no gravestone in the picture of Mrs. McNeil’s grave. But maybe they added it later. The photo on the right I thought might be the gravestone pictured as being behind Mrs. McNeil’s grave since it’s a similar shape. It’s the gravestone of Dr. Charles Mather, who died in 1898.

Also included in the album are landscape shots, and having lived in the area it is entrancing to see people a century ago enjoying the same sights. The photo at the top is Kalambo Falls, where I have also been, and it was as impressive then as it is now:

Less touristy but just as interesting to me is a panorama shot labelled “View from Niamkolo Station.” The first time I tried to find the Good News, I wound up on the plain above Mpulungu and must have stood pretty close to the spot where that photo was taken (though not exactly the same). Since then, as you can barely see in my photo, Mpulungu has built up a lot more since then, but the distant shores of Lake Tanganyika fade away in just the same way.

Besides landscape shots, there are architecture shots. The below photo (as you can see) is labelled as the church in Kambole. Since the album spans about 1905-1910, this would have 10-15 years after the mission at Kambole first opened. USC Libraries has another collection of LMS Central Africa Mission photos, and this photo is also labelled as “The Church” in Kambole. It is from a different angle but looks like it could probably be the same building, except in the linked photo the church has a cross on the top which I don’t see in the above photo. The linked photo is labelled as being circa 1925, so another 10-15 years afterwards and has definitely gotten a new thatching job at the least. Still, pretty neat to see the same subject (potentially) a number of years apart.

Then there are some more adventure-oriented photos. The stern-on shot at left at bottom is labelled “LMS Canoe T’yika.” There were a few different canoes owned and operated by the LMS through the years. This one doesn’t seem to have had a name, but looks to be the same canoe pictured in the story “Afloat and Ashore in Central Africa,” by the Rev. R. Stewart Wright published in the November 1905 edition of the Chronicle:

And then speaking of boats, here are two more! Neither of them are in our usual area of operations for this blog, but are neat nonetheless. The ship on the left below is identified as the SS Clement Hill at its launch. The Wikipedia article differs, but according to The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis she was launched on December 21, 1906 in Kisumu (Lake Victoria), and she carried 250 tons of cargo and passengers in “elegant accommodation.” On the right is the SS Queen Victoria, a cute little boat not covered in Lake Steamers but which makes an appearance in this pdf. According to that pdf she was put into use on Lake Malawi by 1898, making her probably around a decade old in the above photo, give or take.

Anyways, as long as it hasn’t been sold yet you should def check out the album, there are more pictures of Zambia, Zanzibar, and Uganda, and it’s all super cool. And then someone should give me enough money to buy the thing. If you’re reading this from Globus Books then please don’t be mad at me, I just want everyone to know about this fantastic photo album you have.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This may cause strife, even within my own marriage, but I have to speak my truth: there is no better chocolate chip cookie than the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie. Nay, there is no better cookie than the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Right up front, you must know that this comes from the heart. I’m not in the pocket of big cookie and have no relationship with the Nestle company. I just have a life-long relationship with chocolate chip cookies. They might be the very first thing I learned to make in the kitchen. They were always my favorite, and I always liked to “help” mom make them, which involved eating a lot of cookie dough at various stages of cookie dough-ness. Eventually I realized I could just do it myself, the instructions were right there on the package. I could have cookies whenever I wanted. One time I recall making cookie dough just because I wanted to eat the dough and my sister snitching on me, like I was doing something wrong. But love can’t be wrong, she should have known this. I eventually got a chemistry degree and a daresay step one of that was discovering that I was good at following instructions for mixing things and then heating them up.

I realize that people have incentives to say that cookie recipes other than the Nestle Tollhouse one are better. And I am not knocking other types of cookies! I, too, will enjoy an M&M cookie, or a double chocolate chunk cookie, or a white chip macadamia nut cookie. There is room in this world for all types, except maybe oatmeal raisin, look I know I am not breaking new ground here on the cookie opinion front. But what really gets my goat are the fancy-pants recipe writers, who think their take on the chocolate chip cookie could ever be better than the original, the sublime, the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I’m talking about the people who think you need flaky sea salt as a topping. Who create absurd shortbread versions, who think it means something to add browned butter to the recipe. Those recipe writers who think their version could possibly be more “gourmet,” or somehow better, than the simplest and most straightforward of them all. These people are blasphemers, who would who create Ecce Mono of Ecce Homo, who would look around on a perfect summer day with cloud-dappled skies and a gentle breeze and wonder if things couldn’t be made oh so slightly better by adding I dunno a wine bar. The Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie is already the most masterful mix of flavors, the perfect proportion of chip to dough, the correct amount of crinkle, and the leading luxury in an overwrought age. They can do no better.

I mean, there are actually tips and tricks to improve your cookie a little bit. But even as I say that they mostly boil down to following the instructions. When they say cream your sugar and butter, they mean it. Mix it until the sugar is fully dissolved. Add the eggs only one at a time, preferably at room temperature, to let the sugar and butter meld even more. The flour should be put in only a bit at a go, to make the mixture smooth. The one tip not in the instructions is to maybe refrigerate the dough overnight. If it has benefits, it is to let the dough homogenize a bit more and I think maybe it does something to the edge of the cookies when you bake them and the dough is a bit cold. But that’s not totally necessary, just an added bonus when after you make your first batch you stick the rest of the dough in the fridge to make the next batch the next day.

But look, I know I’ve gone too far here. I mean, I’m still right, Nestle Tollhouse is the best, you don’t need any other cookie recipe. But the joy of baking is in the process and the sharing, and it doesn’t matter so much what cookie recipe you use if it achieves that end. This brings me to my final tip, which is the most important of all. The secret ingredient that will make every cookie delicious. The first step in any cookie recipe should be to ensure you are making them with love.

Gardening Anew II

The Amistad Revolt by Iyunolu Folayan Osagie
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

It has been the better part of a year since my last gardening update and once again the rainy season is upon us, so it is time to let you all know where things stand. The dry season was actually pretty good for the garden. The disadvantage of the dry season is that you have to water the garden yourself, so that’s a morning chore I had to accomplish the whole time. The advantage of the dry season though is that many plants don’t actually like having gigantic deluges dropped on them every day, so a lot of stuff grew really well. The picture above is probably the garden at its peak. As covered in the previous post there are some additional garden boxes but they were trying to grow brussels sprouts which never gave us any sprouts for reasons I am too lazy to even google. But the above boxes gave us some pretty alright harvests. The chives and green onions grew well, though a bit slowly, and we have still a good garden bed of mint my super amazing wife likes to make into tea. And then our single most successful crop was basil, which grew really well in this climate. We made a lot of pesto. Some of our other harvests are below, which included calendula, purple green beans, and about a half dozen total cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes just didn’t grow well.

The two plants I have tended to the most though are the trees I am growing, below. On the left is an avocado tree that I seeded and has shot up. It’s getting to be almost as tall as I am and I am excited for it to be taller than I am. There is also my little lime tree. Both of these trees I grew from seeds from fruits that we had bought so that is neat. I am a bit confused as to why the lime tree is still looking more like a short lime bush, but again I am too lazy to google like, lime tree lifecycle. I just like growing fruit trees even if I’ve never managed to keep one alive long enough to actually see them bear any fruit. But someday somebody will get fruit from these trees and that is neat.

We have not been the only ones enjoying the garden. Thankfully we haven’t had too many pests of the type that will actually eat plants, but we’ve had some visitors. The bird below acted a bit suspicious but I don’t think ate anything. And if the rather large spider ate anything I don’t mind because we aren’t eating the same things. I had to remember to not walk through that web though because for sure that spider would have eaten me.

As stated above it’s now rainy season and a lot of the plants don’t really like all the rain. Although the beans and the mint do well the basil we were using so much of absolutely just wilted under the rain. That’s fact one. The other fact you have to know is that we have a gardener and our neighbors have a different gardener. I think our gardener gets jealous of the other gardener. We really hired our gardener just to mow the lawn, and him working on the garden is just a bonus thing on top of the lawn. The neighbors though, they have a much smaller lawn and also give their gardener more leeway. And the neighbors’ gardener shows up seems like 2-3 times a week, whereas we only have ours come once. All this to say that the neighbors’ garden, although not as big, is much more lush and has a wider variety of plants. I think this makes our gardener jealous. Often when the neighbors garden gets some feature I’ll discover our gardener has done the same to ours.

Which brings us to the most dramatic events of the past week. One solution to “the plants don’t like all the rain” is to build a shelter over the garden. Our neighbors’ gardener had built a little hut over their garden and put a tarp over it to shelter it from the rain. So our gardener started talking about doing the same. We were enthusiastic about this, for the sake of the basil. Except a couple things. One is that it took us too long to get our act together and the basil was pretty much done for anyway. The other is that by the time we got our act together our neighbors’ garden shelter had collapsed because the rain was too much for it. This was not going to show our gardener up. He was undaunted. He was not only undaunted, he was like, taking this as an opportunity to shine. The neighbors’ structure fell down because it was too weak, our gardener explained to me. We would do better. Still I was surprised to come home one day to find the man constructing the absolutely giant canopy pictured above. It was a very robust structure. The picture above was taken last Tuesday, when it was brand new. But alas, the picture below was taken last night. The poor thing didn’t even last a week. It’s not our gardeners’ fault, his structure held up beautifully. But the tarp failed. The tarp I chose. So I have let my gardener down and I don’t know how I will face the man on Tuesday, when he comes again. But I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, basil RIP.

*The hubris of man against the forces of nature.*

Tink

Our cat Tink died a month ago. It was sudden, and I wasn’t here to help my wife when it happened. I had left the day before and she woke up to find Tink unwell. Where we are there isn’t much veterinary care available. Our neighbor drove my wife to what vet care there is but almost as soon as they got there Tink was gone. They buried Tink near the avocado tree I planted in the yard.

We didn’t know Tink for very long. We adopted her from Mt. Purrnon in October 2021. We have pictures of when we first met, with her curled up on top of a cat tree. She was already six when she came home with us, so we never knew her as a kitten. “We don’t have her baby photos,” is how my wife described it. We don’t know much about her life before we met her, though her paperwork said she came from a hoarding situation. She had the name Tink when we got her, and we kept it because she would come when called, though day-to-day she quickly became Tinkerbell.

Despite knowing her for so little time it was such a delight to watch her personality change as she grew more comfortable with us. Mt. Purrnon described her as a “Curious Calico” and that was always true. Any time we brought her to a new space she would want to explore. We had planned, when we brought her home, to keep her in the bathroom for a bit to let her get comfortable. But right away she wanted to head through the door and see the new space, jump on all the surfaces and discover all the nooks and crannies. Her curiosity would always overcome her fear. At the vet she would be terrified, but it was still a new place to explore, and she would be out of her carrier and climbing up to the far reaches just to see what was there. If you held her, she wanted to be up on your shoulder, to give her a better view of her domain.

She was also always so extremely kind. She would, in extremes, hiss to let her displeasure be known, but she never lashed out, never bit, never scratched. We put her through some trying times occasionally, trimming her nails or giving her a bath, but she largely just put up with it. She forgave easily, especially if she got a treat.

Tink was so small, not even six pounds. I wondered what that meant about her life before she came to us, whether she had kittens young or hadn’t eaten well in her first home. Everyone said she was small but I liked to insist that she was perfectly normal-sized, lest she ever develop body image issues. And when she first came home with us she was so quiet. She didn’t meow much or at all. You could tell when she wanted attention because she would approach you but not quite brush your leg and vibrate her butt. In the mornings she would make her presence known, walking all around our bed to try to gently encourage us to wake up. Eventually she found her voice, coming into our bedroom in the morning to loudly meow for her breakfast.

The best part of Tink getting more comfortable with us is how she eventually became a lap cat. She always liked people. When we had guests over, she wouldn’t run and hide but would make sure to be in easy reach for a scratch. At first the three of us, Tink, my wife, and I, would hang out on the couch, Tink perched on a pillow on top of the couch for maximum comfort. One time, in a special moment, my wife and I were laying on the bed, her falling asleep in my arms. Then, unexpectedly, Tink came to lay on me as well for a nap, and it felt like my whole world was right there. Tink eventually grew to like us enough where instead of being on the couch next to you, she preferred to be on your lap, and family movie nights were just perfect.

We were excited to move to this new house with her. Tink was always an inside cat. She was curious of the outside and liked looking out windows, but I remember the first time we opened the door to the balcony she was scared of the wind. We thought a house would give her so much more space to explore. And it did, though for a long while she liked to spend most of her time on our dining room table. We tried to convince her otherwise, but through and through Tink was a cat. So we forgave her sleeping on the table, and as she got bolder we forgave her drinking from our water cups and, when we weren’t fast enough to stop her, we forgave her from snatching pieces of chicken off our plates. These are the things you put up with from the ones you love.

I came home a week and a half after Tink had died. I knew it had happened but it hadn’t felt real until she wasn’t there to greet me when I returned. We had shaped our life around Tink and with her gone the hole feels so large. I go to leave the bedroom door open at night so she’ll be able to come wake us up in the morning. I go to close the kitchen door so she can’t get into the sink. Descending the stairs I expect to see her there waiting impatiently to be fed, a meow in greeting hoping for a treat. Every box we opened she would inspect, using some for weeks as a bed and others discarding right away. Now we just throw the boxes away. These are the lingering acts of memory.

We loved Tink, with all our hearts. I hope she was happy with us. We were so very happy with her.

National Museum of the DRC

*The South Korean flag is because the South Koreans funded it.*

Because I was very lucky I was able to go to the Musée National de la République Démocratique du Congo! The lucky part was that I was in Kinshasa and therefore able to go. Getting to Kinshasa is the hard part. If you’re already in Kinshasa it is pretty easy and you should definitely go, it is great.

Although the institution is older the physical museum itself is pretty new, having opened only in 2019. It’s a really nice location, with a brick fronting and an open and airy interior. It is such a nice location that when I arrived I originally thought it might be closed for an event as there was a wedding (I think) going on out front. But it was very much open, and despite it being a Saturday is was rather packed with school groups, which is just awesome. It is those kids that this museum should really exist for and by golly it was existing for them. Though I suppose it is a pretty alright wedding venue as well.

I took a taxi to the museum and he was nice enough to wait for me in the parking lot, which itself was pretty neat because it had shade structures built of solar panels and a cool display showing you how much power the solar panels were generating. Paying for admission was a bit confusing though, because from the parking lot I actually had to go back out the gate to find a guy who took down my info and who handed me a slip of paper. This slip of paper I handed to lady in a booth across from info guy, along with the entry fee. This lady gave me a receipt. I then walked in past the wedding to the front desk, who took my receipt and at that point handed me a ticket, at which point I was I guess fully in the museum.

*A hall showing musical instruments from different cultures within the DRC.*

*Displays showing various household objects.*

The museum is not terribly large but packs in a good chunk of stuff. There are several permanent and a couple temporary exhibits, arranged on two floors. Since the museum is new the displays are very well done with explanations mostly in both French and English. One thing that confused me is I couldn’t tell at first if different exhibit halls were open, as they are behind rather large sliding doors/walls. The exhibits are in fact open, it’s just that the exhibit rooms are air conditioned while the hallways are not, so they doors are keeping in the cold air. A lot of the items on display were familiar to me, what with having gone to the Royal Museum for Central Africa. One object that it took me a moment to realize was familiar was a Kakuungu mask, pictured below:

What was significant about this mask is that the Royal Museum had made a bit of hay about having returned it to the DRC, with President Tshisekedi himself having participated in a ceremony. So I recognized it from the Royal Museum and now here I was seeing it in the flesh, pretty cool. The mask isn’t officially owned by the National Museum, as Belgium doesn’t have the laws on the books to officially return it, so when you go to Kinshasa to see this mask it is merely “on loan.” As I discussed in my post on the Royal Museum this is a bit of a thin excuse but I guess possession is nine tenths of the law and right now the mask is in possession of the DRC so that’s something I guess.

Despite my familiarity with a good chunk of the objects on display, a good many were new to me. We are interested in witchcraft and divination on this blog, so seeing the divination basket was pretty cool. I was also entranced by the collar in the below gallery. That sucker must have been really heavy to wear but I suppose that is the burden of status. And when I first looked at the Monzombo backrest, I thought it was trying to be a chair of some sort (it was next to some other chairs), but I thought surely it must be something more utilitarian like a sword stand or something. But I guess it is the sort of chair you give to dignitaries. But maybe it was for dignitaries you don’t like? Or maybe it is more comfortable than it looks? And then finally in addition to being fans of witchcraft on this blog we are also fans of palm wine, and now I need a palm wine cup and a palm wine cork or else my kitchenware collection will never be complete.

*“Panier Ngombo Tshokwe, Katanga Province. This basket serves as an object of divination. To obtain the answer, the diviner shakes the oracle and interprets the position of each object found there.*

In addition to the household objects it is was the mellurgy and blacksmithing displays that I was particularly interested in. They had a whole recreated forge set up with hammers and anvils and bellows and everything so that was very neat to see. Then on the wall next to it they had the blacksmiths’ products on display. The utilitarian objects that the blacksmiths produce, like hoes and other farm equipment, are impressive in their own right, but the arts pieces are really what blow me away. I saw more decorative and ceremonial knives and objects like the bells shown below are really what give you an insight into the mastery of craft that these guys had achieved.

Alas I am sad to say that I didn’t spend way too long in the museum. Like I said it is not particularly large anyways but the masses of schoolkids moving through the place made it feel pretty hectic. I am super glad to have seen those kids in the museum though; me visiting all by myself would have been rather sad. The museum isn’t really meant for me and I have access to places such as the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium that these kids might not be able to see. But here they were very, very excitedly going around the museum entranced by the tour guides telling them about their own history and culture and that was really great. After kind of zooming through I instead found refuge in the gift shop, where the very kind sales lady showed me the different crafts and postcards and souvenirs. I eventually bought a ceremonial stole covered in cowrie shells that was really beautiful before heading back out into Kinshasa. The National Museum of the DRC is really really great and really well done and is existing to serve the people of the DRC and Kinshasa and if you are in town you should visit too to see all the cool culture they have on display and to support their mission. And maybe get married, who knows?

Morocco IX: Casablanca

We were off to our final city, Casablanca. Before we left we found out some fun information about the tortoise in our Fez riad. For 11 years the tortoise had been named Paul. Then a friend of the owner brought over another tortoise and after it had been around for a bit they found Paul laying eggs, and so they changed her name to Paula. Oh, love. The trip to Casablanca was fine. It was another slow speed train, and we were a little mortified to discover that instead of individual seats we were in a compartment with four other people. The other people were lovely, but the mortifying part is there was no place for our large suitcases except bumping up against the knees of our fellow passengers, which to their credit were extremely nice about it (they took it all in due course). The final leg of our ride to the hotel was a taxi ride, made unfortunately exciting by our bags flying out the bag of the car as we headed down the highway. The taxi driver stopped and we recovered our bags with all their contents unharmed, though not without damage to our calm demeanors. Settled into our hotel (the Hôtel Central, which I’ll charitably say looks good for being over 100 years old), we got some dinner and settled in for the night.

The big tourist attraction in Fez is the Hassan II Mosque. And I will say it is big. This is very much its defining trait. Quoting from Wikipedia, it is the second largest functioning mosque in Africa, with a capacity of 105,000 worshippers and a minaret 60 stories high. We decided to walk to it from the hotel, because we thought we were relatively close, but we were not, it was in fact kind of far away but because it is so big it looked closer. We got a little lost trying to find the entrance, which turns out is via the museum, but once we got there someone there very kindly gave us a ride in a golf cart so we could make our designated tour time.

I enjoyed the mosque. Going in I thought it was going to be an interesting comparison to the Mezquita in Cordoba but man. I mean, it is. They are both mosques. There is a mosque style. Open floor plan, etc. But this thing was just on another level. The columns are gigantic. It has to be one of if not the largest room I have ever been in. Enormous. Colossal. Truly monumental. It is a beautiful structure. I had expected it to be rather plain, like many of the more modern cathedrals I have been in. But the mosque delivers, no expense spared. The walls and ceiling are covered in mosaics and patterns and the stalactite-mimicking ceiling in the corners. One aspect I particularly liked is that the mosque is built on landfill due to a Koran verse and the western “doors” open up into a sea view. The sea off Casablanca and the mosque was so powerful. The entire time we were there it has been nothing but heavy Atlantic rollers crashing into the reef. They come straight it off the ocean and curl over the shallows to bash themselves into the seawalls. Adjacent the mosque, the sea becomes part of the majesty of the hall.

One question that the tour guide got asked over and over is how long it took to build the mosque. When I was viewing some of the other large cathedrals and mosques that took centuries or more to put up (like the Mezquita), it made sense. It seems like you would just need that much time to stack so much stone and plaster atop other stone and plaster. But this sucker got put up in six years! With no detail lacking for the compressed timeline! We had learned over and over on this honeymoon that there are so many mosaic motifs that the mosaicists will use and when they put up this mosque it seems like they made sure to use every single one. My super amazing wife also pointed out in the more ancient mosques there is a more limited color palette but in this mosque they really expanded their repertoire given modern-day color technology. This included more pinks and purples and different hues of green.

After the main area we went down to the ablution area with the sturdy and delicate fountains that I would have liked to see in action. And after that we filed out of the titanium doors and the tour was done, but for us walking farther and farther away to finally be able to get the whole thing in frame. Before our visit I was pretty whatever about it actually but afterwards I was glad I went. My super amazing wife didn’t feel the weight of history in the Hassan II Mosque, especially as compared to the ancient sites we had seen, but I felt the weight of sheer weight in the thing. “It belongs to God,” the guide said, and it looks it.

But onto our final event. No trip to Casablanca would be complete without a trip to Rick’s Café. We went there for our final dinner of the trip. Lemme tell ya it was really great! The place doesn’t look anything like Rick’s Café from the movie in terms of layout but on the other hand they got the ambiance just right and it is in fact a really nice restaurant, and not too expensive to boot. We split some oysters and my super amazing wife got the seafood linguine and I got the duck confit and man that was to die for. Melt in your mouth. The waiters wore waistcoats and fezzes and the service was prompt. The piano player showed up as we were having dessert. He started of course with “As Time Goes By.”

And that, dear reader, was the last thing we did on our honeymoon and the last thing we did in Morocco. After dinner we packed our bags and went to the airport to take an overnight flight back on home. It was a beautiful country and we can’t wait to go back, hopefully when we are filthy rich so I can buy all the mosaic tables I could want.

Morocco VIII: View from Above

Reading this week:

Memories of the Slave Trade by Rosalind Shaw
The Lake Steamers of East Africa by L.G. “Bill” Dennis

Don’t worry loyal and overextended reader, our journey through Spain and Morocco is coming to a close. The morning dawned on our last full day in Fez, and since we were now experts on the artisan scene in Fez, and since there would be no other towns after this (we go to Casablanca after this but didn’t expect to do much shopping), it was our last chance to pick up any particular souvenirs we wanted.

One thing my super amazing wife coveted was a copper tea kettle. In our artisan tour adventures the previous day we had swung by the metalworking street (the damascener was on the saddle street) and although didn’t really stop to check anything out it meant we knew where to go. Many of the things for sale were like, large copper pots, but we found a shop with a few copper teakettles. We asked after a few, got rather high-priced quotes and so walked away for the moment to go back to the leather street. I had wanted a weekender bag but after poking around I didn’t find anything that I really loved or cheap enough to settle for less. But it gave us time to gird ourselves for copper kettle negotiations. I was letting my super amazing wife do the haggling though I tried to act unenthusiastic as a foil to help her lower the price. The most entertaining part is that when I pointed out the lid of the kettle she was looking at didn’t fit (I was trying to get the price lower), the guy just took it over to the anvil to reshape it until it did. The was pretty neat to see actually. We eventually walked away with the kettle and in my recollection we paid more than we should have but what that price was I don’t remember, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

The weirdest buying interaction I had is when I noticed a stall selling wooden buckets that they use in the hammams. My dad at the time wanted a wooden bucket for his blacksmithing purposes. The one he was looking at was expensive but here was one at a very reasonable price, hand-made I assume by the two older dudes who were lounging on the floor of the shop when we stopped by. I was eventually convinced that it would be difficult to a) fit a whole bucket into my suitcase and b) ship it back home to my dad, but on the other hand they had these very cute wooden mugs made in the exact same style of the buckets with staves and copper bands and everything. That was much more doable and I did eventually buy one but the dude seemed kind of confused about me wanting one and also I couldn’t understand what he was saying but presumably eventually I handed over enough money. Dad liked it a lot.

And that was very nearly the end of our shopping. We poked around for some slippers but didn’t find any we liked, so with our two purchases in hand we head back to the riad before setting off on our next adventure. We had gotten a thorough tour of inside the medina, so now we were going outside the medina. To do this we arranged a car tour and met our driver Sadiq at one of the gates of the medina. He drove us around to look at different things while trying to explain them. It was fun but a lot of being driven around to different spots, which is suppose what we asked for. First we stopped at the Jnan Sbil Gardens, which were pretty. Sadiq had us wander around them for a bit. There was a section with guinea pigs, chickens, and pigeons in cages for reasons we were unable to determine. From there we popped over to the Jewish Quarter and looked at the cemetery. We checked out the door to the palace (or more accurately the seven doors) before it was off to a panoramic viewpoint. Sadiq had the joke of the day when he called it the “parabolic viewpoint” because of the all the satellite dishes. That was really good.

The highlight though was checking out Art Naji! Man that was really great. My super amazing wife was interested in the pottery and they have a whole factory there and they are super impressive in the way that people doing a certain thing day in and day out for years and years are. We had a little tour of the pottery making which included a guy throwing a tajine in just a few seconds entirely freehand. Then we saw them painting the things and while the main painter had some measuring tools mostly everyone was just again free-handing the things and they all looked perfect. But the most amazing part was the large-scale tile pieces they did. I was honestly blown away they so were gorgeous and intricate. Truly, very truly, poetry without words. The helical borders were the most amazing to me. Our guide from Art Naji made sure to point out their secure shipping methods but we couldn’t bring ourselves to ask the price. We did check out their gift shop but of the things in there I didn’t get any because they didn’t quite live up to the song in my heart that watching the process had inspired (it was more pottery in the shop than mosaic).

Filled with beauty though we left for another viewpoint, across from our parabolic view and beside the Merenid Tombs. We had been ensconced in the city but to see it from above was a different experience. The view really is stunning. A whole medieval city full of people and life and you are looking down upon it from the Atlas Mountains and it becomes mysterious and distant and a mass of puzzle pieces to pictures you’ll never see. Perfect.

Morocco VII: Artisan Tour Continued

As the name of the post implies, our artisan tour of Fez continues!

From our brocade artist we popped pretty much across the street to see some tile makers. We had of course been admiring mosaics all across Spain and Morocco at this point, but now it was time to see them made. Fez, as a city, does really support its artists and artisans, and these mosaic makers were housed in a nice new workshop in brightly renovated building. Except what I found funny is that they still did it the old-fashioned way despite the new-fashioned space. You see I was surprised to learn that the first part of mosaic making is to chip all the tiles into the correct shape. The mosaics are made up of all sorts of different shapes, like 8-pointed stars and 12-sided platters and ribbons and lots and lots of others. I had assumed the tiles were just molded in that shape? Like there was a little star mold and they stuck the clay in there to form it into that shape and then fired and glazed it in that shape? But no, what happens is these guys take square tiles, like you would tile your bathroom with or something, and using a hammer they chip them into the appropriate shape.

So what these guys were doing in their large, bright, airy workshop was sitting in one corner sitting on cushions and facing each other, chipping away at tiles while watching YouTube videos as piles of rubble and the raw materials of mosaics piled up around them. It was very old-fashioned and extremely impressive and I liked it a lot. It took a lot of skill to break a tile in just the right way to get just the right shape, and to do it thousands and thousands of times over and over again all day, every day. As I was standing there they carved up a little heart with my super amazing wife’s initial on it for me to give to her. Really just phenomenal skill. Later, they will assemble their many thousands of pieces into a mosaic inside of a mold and then cement them all into place for something like a table, or else for a wall mosaic it will be created in place. Artisans!

Since my super amazing wife was interested in textiles our tour could not help but go through the dyeing street. This felt like the most medieval thing we saw, in that it felt most untouched by the centuries. Like I marveled at in the last post every part of the supply chain is in this town, so those weavers weaving their beautiful cloths are getting the beautiful fibers they are weaving with here from the dyers. They still use vegetable dyes and we popped into one shop with his simmering vats of fibers undergoing the process. Then to get rid of the leftover dye they toss the water into the street where it goes down the drains down there. With the shade and the cramped space it was really a throw-back and downright magical.

But this, finally, brought us to the end of our artisan tour because it was time to go rug shopping. We knew we wanted to leave Fez with a rug so this was exciting. Our guide took us to a big ole’ rug emporium where we were treated to a whole rug-buying experience. First we got to see how some of them were made; upstairs was a woman weaving a rug, tying knots directly onto the warp to create the designs. My super amazing wife got to give it a go and the lady was very patient. Alone she operated at warp speed. But then it was time for the shopping. They sat us down in one of the alcoves lined with rugs and started unfurling rugs for us to look at. We saw Fez carpets, “magic carpets,” and our favorite were the traditional Berber carpets. There was a wool Berber carpet that I liked but was more than we were prepared to spend. Eventually they busted out a beautiful agave silk Berber rug which we settled on. Our guide declared the one we picked the most beautiful of the lot though I think we was just getting a little tired of watching us shop (he denied it). As I went off to pay for the rug the salesman tried once again to up-sell me, now that I was away from my presumably more fiscally responsible wife, and I admired the hustle. Souvenir in hand, and heads full of dazzling artistry, our guide brought us back to our hotel and our artisan tour came to an end. It was really really great and you should definitely go to Fez and check it out yourself.

BUT! The day was not over. The tour had brought us to slightly past lunch and boy were we hungry. Following the guidebook I dragged us over to Cafe Clock because their camel burger is apparently famous and I wanted to eat a burger made from a famous camel. The cafe is an amusing spot. It is wild to find; as we walked through the medina I thought we had overshot it but then found a sign pointing us down a dark alley. We went further then expected only to stumble into the restaurant. We wanted a table on the roof and got it, bursting out into the sun and admiring the view. The best part were the cats, which were everywhere. The staff kept trying to chase them away but based on the results I think it was more of a game for the sake of us tourists than anything else. A beautiful calico posted up next to us for a bit which was nice. The camel burger was pretty good though I only got to have half of one; we ordered two and the second never came and we spent two hours there. In the abstract I like the thought of a long lunch, though I started to get grumpy before the burger which I chalked up to being hungry. Once sated I was still a little grumpy, so I think my real issue is simply that I am American and don’t know how to relax. Unlike the very cute cats. Also though on American-ness the guy at the table over from us ate his burger with a fork and knife and like, man. America really is the greatest country in the world and what the hell is everyone else doing. Anyway.

Our final major destination for the day was the Nejjarine Museum of Wooden Arts & Crafts, housed in what was once the carpenters’ market. No pictures allowed except of the interior courtyard, so sorry. It took us a bit to find the place but we eventually got there. The part I liked best about the museum is they had tons of displays of all sorts of different wooden tools that we had just seen that morning still being used on our artisan tour. History and the present colliding through the power of tradition! Other cool things were decorated wooden hammers used for breaking up sugar blocks, and I learned the intricate tiered shelves I had been admiring all over the city are called “marfa.” The crown jewels of the museum had to be the stuff on the top floor, which includes a funerary stele from tomb of the saint Sidi Ali Al-Hajjam in cedarwood, and 17th century boards carved with customary laws. Super cool to see!

And then with that, finally, our day was over. We were going to go hang out by the pool in the Riad but I got us lost (again) on the way back and after taking a very circuitous route we were too pooped to do even that. A lovely dinner at the hotel though and another beautiful sunset capped off our excellent first full day in Fez.

Pat in the World

Paperwork enthusiast seeking new frontiers of paperwork. Former submariner, former Peace Corps Volunteer. Opinions, thoughts, and comments reflect no actual persons, living or in the Navy.

Year: 2024