Language study was a serious item in those days and, as a new missionary, you were given a couple of days to unpack and settle in and then you were supposed to start language study. I guess my Dad (your Grandpa) was in charge of our language study, but we were pretty much left on our own as no other missionary knew our language! I had the good fortune to have learned Bambara (or Jula) as a teenager and so I asked the local preacher (who had been trained at the Bambara Bible School) to act as our language helper. He needed the money and so we thought he was a good choice as he lived right in our extended yard. So we had not been in Santidougou more than a few days when I started language study. Saying a Jula phrase and writing down the Bobo translation. And at the end of each lesson, I would analyze what I had written, including what I thought to be pronouns, how to say various verb forms, and lists of vocabulary. I loved it! (A parenthesis here: I do not know if this pastor had a form of sleeping sickness or if he just got sleepy repeating the same things over and over, but I often found him dozing off during our language lessons. Not terribly inspiring!)
What I learned, I would teach Dad and he would study it with another person, and thus we progressed from day to day. Every week or so, I would gramatically analyze all of the material I had illicited into categories: verbs, nouns, prepositions, etc.
In the meantime, you girls were adjusting to life in Santidougou village. And learning the language as you played. You had a pack of friends and they were there at dawn to wait for you to wake up and come out to play! And of course you learned the language quicker than we did. You had a box of outdoor toys and the kids loved to investigate those toys - things they had never seen before. I had an old wooden, jointed doll that had been made in 1911, and was really an heirloom - but somehow it found its way into that box. You kids even named the doll Duasura, after a funny girl in town - and in time that wooden doll was torn to pieces. And that was the end of my childhood antique doll!
The neighborhood kids were always at our house early in the morning, as dawn broke. Dad was up early but my inclination was to sleep a while in the morning - for about the first week we lived there! Our window sills in the bedroom were low, so that any air there was outside would reach us on our beds to keep cool in hot season. Each morning, the first words I would hear were: "A nyi, a nyi." "Awo a sege, a sege!" And as I opened my eyes, there was a line of little brown eyes peering at me above the wimdow sill by my bed! So I always had an early start to every day. And the kids patiently waited for us to eat breakfast and pray together before you joined them to play for the day. It was a fun life for you. And good for us too.
Dad got a job he hadn't counted on in our village - village nurse/doctor. There had been a nurse stationed there some years before we arrived and there was no other medical help in town, so she took care of everyone's sores and diseases. You all know how squeamish I am about anything medical, and so the medicat ministry fell to Dad. He usually started about six am, stopped for breakfast at seven, and then finished up his line of patients afterwards. Plus all the emergencies that came to our door very often, day and night. He did refused to do baby deliveries, so I got roped into some of those. We did have a midwife (an old Bobo lady) in town so I only got called if it was a pastor's wife or a Christian - or something they could not handle. Little did they know, I wouldn't be able to handle it either! But I did do a number of deliveries - among them the wives of our pastors. And it always gave me a bit of pride to see my children I had delivered when they were grown up and functioning adults!
The first baby I was called for was at four am. We had a book "Where there is no doctor", and I had read the maternity section of that. That was my training, period! The book said you should have plenty of boiling water on hand (I always did this - but never knew what to do with it except to wash the mother and child after it was all over!) and a bottle of alcohol and some strangs of knitting wool. Plus a blanket to wrap the newborn in to keep him/her from getting chilled. So I had my kit ready and when the call came, we started boiling water. It was Rhoda, Tite's mother, and she was in labor with Nahome. It was a pretty straight forward delivery and all went well - the baby came head first, I cut and tied the cord, washed the baby and wrapped her in a little new receiving blanket from our baggage! I was pretty proud of myself, albeit a little shaky!!
I think the funniest story of Dad's medical work happened after Royles came and we were leaving Santidougou for Bobo and Royles were taking our place. Joan was squeamish about sores and so forth like I was, and so Rollo was going to inherit Dad's medical buiness. He had Rollo work with him a few days and one afternoon they had a Fula lady patient. You will remember that the Fula women had a custom of breakfing down a young girl's breast as they matured, and thus the grown women had these elongated, flat breasts. This particular lady had a large ulcer on the underside of one of her breasts, which had to be treated and wound with white bandages. Dad had Rollo hold the flat breast out away from the lady's body while he wound the white bandage round and round. After that, Rollo declared, "Hey, I'm not sure I'm prepared for this ministry!"
We lived in Santidougou that whole first term, and we always think of that as our village, even though we lived many years in Bobo-Dioulasso later on. As I was finishing up my language study, it was time for us to have another baby. So I had a goal - when I gave my final Bobo language exam (which was to be a Sunday sermon delivered in the language) I wanted to be able to get close enough to the pulpit to be able to read my sermon notes in Bobo! And so I planned that for a Sunday service when I was about seven months' pregnant with you, Elin. I did OK with the message - Grandpa Kennedy was my language supervisor - and I passed all my language exams before you were born in December of 1960.
And that bring us to....Our family increases!!
I had forgotten all about you doing midwifery, Mom! But I do have memories of you delivering babies. I thought that was normal at the time to have non-medical parents who did medical work. But of course now I know just how abnormal it really was! Your generation was made out of tougher stuff, that's for sure.
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