We had our three beautiful girls - Cheryl, Deborah and Elin - and they had a good life. They had adjusted well to the village. My parents, their grandparents, lived half an hour from us in the city of Bobo Dioulasso. But the time came when Cheryl had to start first grade - our only option was to send her to Mamou, the Alliance boarding school in Guinea. I had attended there for a couple of years and so I knew the school and actually had had a good experience there. But I remember when my mother brought my sister and brother (twins) to Mamou. She stayed a couple days and then had to leave on that evening train. They were inconsolable for a while. I could help Donna who roomed with me, but David was on the other side of the building, down the boys' hall. John Ellenberger, bless him, offered to be big brother to David and took him under his charge until he got used to being so far from home.
Do you ever get used to being away from home as a child?? I wonder. There is always that unfulfilled something inside you that longs for your own parents. It is especially hard for a very young child. I was in seventh grade when I first left for boarding school. I am thankful for the many options available to missionary parents nowadays, and so glad our Debbi is now able to be part of a team of educational consultants for the Alliance in Africa. Local schools and home schooling are now allowed, as well as boarding school. Nine of our grandchildren have grown up outside the USA, and have used various options for their schooling. But back in the 1960's there was one option for us - Mamou, three days trip from Santidougou.
We took the girls by car down to Kankan, Guinea, where we could take a train to Mamou. (This is really Milt's story and he needs to tell it, but I will do my best.) The two younger girls and I stayed in the city of Kankan while Cheryl went with her Daddy (and some other MK's going to school) on the train which ran from Kankan to Mamou - and beyond to Conakry. I cried many tears but had my two younger ones as consolation. Milt had this all night train ride with the gang going to Mamou. The toilets stopped up and water was running down the aisle. It was a difficult trip, but they finally arrived at Mamou about six in the morning.
Word had not gotten through to the school personnel that this trainload was arriving that morning, so no one was there to meet them in the early dawn, with the rain pouring down! He somehow got connected with someone from the school to come and get them and a car came to pick them up. The boarding school is on a hilltop, outside the city of Mamou and the scenery there is beautiful - forest country. But there was no beauty in it for Milt as he had to leave his daughter there alone.
The day was rainy and that evening , as the rain poured down on the tin roof, everyone met for a meeting in the big living room. As the meeting progressed there were sniffles here and there as the kids thought of far away homes. And Cheryl realized that her Daddy was leaving her. We bless the memory of Fordy and Rosalyn Tyler, who were dorm parents there at that time. The had Milt come into their little apartment and took Cheryl from him when he had to leave to catch his train. Of course, everyone was crying, including Milt. Fordy and Rosalys, bless them, kept Cheryl in their room and in their big bed between them that night so that she would get some sleep. And she made the adjustment - and so did we, as we drove two days north back to our village, minus one child!
We counted the days till we would see her again. Letters were almost non-existent in those days, and the ones that came were usually a smiley face and CHERYL in big letters! So we waited for the day in December when the kids came home from Mamou. Again Milt had to drive to Guinea to bring her and others home. I will never forget when the car drove into the mission yard in Bobo where I was staying with my mother. I hardly knew my daughter - her hair was cut very short and was covered in red dust, and her whole person was covered in that red dust from the trip! She had also lost all her front tooth, and had a huge grin when she saw me! But it was wonderful to see her. Milt said she didn't talk to him the first day, just grinned! I grabbed my child and rushed her into the shower and got her hair washed - wanted to make sure that was really Cheryl underneath all that red road dirt. (Those were the days before paved roads in West Africa!)
Soon Mamou was forgotten as we all settled into village life in Santidougou again. But a change was coming for us - we decided to leave the field a couple months early in order to get to the States in time to attend the Wycliffe language training course in Oklahoma. This meant Cheryl would miss the second half of her first grade at Mamou. The school principal and family were making a trip up through our country and were at our home for dinner. We decided to ask them if Mamou could give us some books so that we could complete Cheryl's first grade since we would be gone to the States before Mamou classes started again. (There was always a break in the middle of the year.) The answer was a firm NO. We still felt like we needed that summer linguistic training since we were in a new language and had had no training in phonetics, etc. So we went ahead and made plans to leave in May, leaving for our first furlough with our three girls. All the permissions were given to us and we flew back to the USA just in time to go to Alliance Council out in Arizona.
We had bought a new VW bus when we got to the States, which would accomodate our family, as we had a lot of trasvelling to do. We took our plane fare for the Council trip and put it into gas for the car, and were able to invite Uncle Jim and Aunt Donna to go with us. They were pastoring a small church in Maine and Aunt Donna was pg with Timmy. The seven of us crammed into the bus and had a wonderful trip all the way to Phoenix. We enjoyed the trip out - the scenery was new to all of us.
Two memories stick out in my mind from that Council. Cheryl and Debbi were staying with some friends of ours who lived right outside of Phoenix, but Elin clung to me and there was no way we could leave her. She had had enough changes in her life, from the village to the USA. You were very shy, Elin, so sat quietly on my lap through all sessions. I had bought a bag full of quiet, small new toys for you and that kept you happy through all the meetings.
The two special memories were these: the first morning we went to breakfast and were sitting at the table across from LL King. Someone came up and announced to him that AW Tozer, the big Alliance preacher, well known, had just died. And he was also scheduled to speak at Council.
The other memory from that Council had to do with the missionary rally the last Sunday afternoon. It was held out in an outdoor stadium, and there was a speakers' stand out in front of the stadium. Our family had been asked to sing a song in Bobo as part of the missions program. We had primed you girls and we were all dressed and ready for this. You, Debbi, were afraid of heights so felt a little shaky up in that speakers' stand. And you, Elin, were shy about seeing so many people! But there we were... and the program went on and on. It was so long that they decided to cut out some items and our song was one of them. They just skipped over our song in the program and went on. But we did not dare to take you girls down out of the speakers' stand for fear they would remember we hadn't sung and called us up to sing! It was a LONG afternoon for all of us.
Aunt Donna and Uncle Jim and we went out to California for a few days and then we flew the Albrights back to Maine and we drove through the Grand Canyon area and other beauty spots and ended up in blistering hot Oklahoma! And that is where we spent the summer, working on linguistics at a master's level in the University with SIL professors.
The SIL was well set up for families taking classes - they had child care all day while we adults were in classes. Elin, you screamed every morning when we left you until you found a lady you got used to. You other girls had a ball there. We lived in some pretty basic dormitories and the temps were up to 106 degrees every day! No air conditioning in the dorms but there were cooled classrooms. No cooking as everyone ate in the cafeteria.
It was a summer of hard work, but I was able to take our Bobo language and do a complete phonetical and grammatical analysis of a text. For a practical project, Dad had to learn something of the Kaiowa Indian language, which has voiceless vocoids (vowels that have no sound, just formed in the mouth!), something our African languages never had.
That was our first furlough and a short one, as we had to make up the months that we had left early in order to go to school. The missions had a time bank at that time, and your days were counted on the field - they had to come to a full four years for each term, and you had to make up the time if you went early or went back late! That was abolished after a few yerars. But it was back to Africa early for us. We went by ship so that we could take our house furnishings with us at little cost.
And now after this family interlude - back to: A son at last!
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