121 replies to this topic

[olcowhand]

Well hello africagirl2!  Any sister of Howard's is a friend of mine!  Glad you joined us!

[KennyP]

Welcome to the forum, africagirl2! I've enjoyed Howard's ramblings, just a birds eye view into life over there. Great reading!

[OkieGt]

Welcome to GTTalk AFG-2, Glad you stopped by and posted your story!!!!

[HowardsMF155]

It is Christmas morning.  Africagirl2 (who is now a mommy, and has been since mid October) sent me this link.  I don't think I could put a Kalwa Farm Christmas down any better than this young woman did.  

http://bundubaking.b...to-souffle.html

 

Feel free to try the recipe at the bottom of the page.  Alas, I never gained quite the appreciation for it that this young lady did, but it IS good.

[HowardsMF155]

I suppose I can't mention that africagirl2 is a mommy and fail to put up pics.

 

Guess that make me an uncle all over again!

 

 

I'm clearly not in touch with my feminine side.  Rachel was born after a difficult pregnancy October 16, weighed 7 lbs 10 oz, and was about 19 inches long.

Edited by HowardsMF155, December 25, 2013 - 03:41 PM.

[HowardsMF155]

I was playing around with my scanner a bit today, first time I've ever tried to use it.  Nothing remarkable at the moment, but the pictures certainly come out better than taking a picture with the digital camera, then loading that here.

These pics must have been taken around 1996?  I'm not quite sure right now.  Anyway, that is Dad and I in our house, and the other shot is a picture of the Massey and a trailer we built out of a scrapped "lorry" (large truck).  The rock dome we climbed up on was not on the farm, but it gave an excellent view of the valley area.

[HowardsMF155]

These two shots were taken from the top of the rock outcropping mentioned above.   The taller trees are around the homestead area.  In the one picture, you can see two roofs from some of the farm buildings.

This one is just a lovely rainbow.

 

[HowardsMF155]

Score!!

 

I bought a slide scanner last week, it arrived today.  I've gone though a few of Dad's slides, and found some gems.  First, my first two tractors:

 

The full size version I'm sitting on is a Ford Jubilee 1953 model.  Grandmother would have sold that tractor in less than 6 years (this picture was taken around 1971) when she moved into an assisted living home.

Edited by HowardsMF155, May 19, 2014 - 11:23 PM.

[HowardsMF155]

Perhaps the most memorable picture from our early years, not because of anything we are doing, but because of a comment this slide elicited when it was shown : "Where did you get ice?"

[HowardsMF155]

African Honey bees:  definite problem from time to time they would 'invade' rooms in the house.

 

The David Livingstone Memorial, with some ragged American kids hanging out in front of it.  This memorial commemorated the 100th? anniversary of his death. 

 

This is an early picture of the house we lived in, also note the road running right by the front door.  This group of missionaries became surrogate family; all of us kids ran around calling the adults "Uncle" and "Aunt".

 

I felt that Christmas at Kalwa was magical from the start, but an early look at our first Christmas shows how sparse the decorations really were.  Mom commented years later that she was really worried that we kids would feel shortchanged; she was gratified when we exclaimed "Best Christmas Ever!"

 

Contrast to several years later:

[olcowhand]

Keep them coming Howard!  Love the pics & stories!

[HowardsMF155]

I've been doing a bit more scanning, wanted to post a few pics here.  First up, the road crew!  From the pictures, I'm guessing this is sometime in the 1980s.  I don't know how frequently Dad did this, but from time to time he would build a road for a village or populated area.  First, he would examine any existing footpath to ensure the terrain could be traversed by his truck.  Then he would have the folk from the village widen the clearance along the footpath, including digging up tree roots by hand.  Once it was cleared to his satisfaction, the big tractor would plow down and back, creating a basic roadbed mound, with drainage ditches on the side.  While I don't see a disk in this picture, I was given to understand that the road would also be disked to break up the clods and begin to level the road.  Then, the blade would be used for additional leveling and shaping of the road.

 

 

Dad frequently played taxi for outlying villages when it came time for church and agricultural meetings.  Here is his truck during much of the time, a Mitsubishi Cantor:

 

I don't know if I'll ever find any pictures, but the first farm truck was a small Toyota with perhaps a 1-2 ton payload and perhaps an 8 foot bed.  At one point he had a Ford with perhaps a 12 foot bed, but he was never really impressed by it.  I don't know exactly where the Cantors fitted in, but I know that after he modified the first one with an extra leaf in the front axle springs, everything else after that was a Cantor-3 ton and I think a 13 ft bed.  I don't know how frequently he would change vehicles, but I know they were used hard and he didn't want to spend a lot of his time fixing up worn old vehicles.

    A specific thing I remember about that Ford, someone was driving it and found a good sized stump that had been left in the road then hidden with grass.  They didn't find any damage after the initial strike, but remarked that the steering wheel had to be held at  quite an angle to make the truck run straight.  When we pulled it into the barn to look at it, we discovered that the 1/2 inch rivets mounting the leaf spring to the frame had been sheared, all three of them.  After using a come-along to pull things back into alignment, the rivets were replaced with bolts and I don't recall hearing of any further problems.  

[HowardsMF155]

Some pictures of our house, from early stages on.

 

I've touched on this earlier.

 

The term "Ba" was used as an honorific, similar to Mr. or Mrs., but not gender specific.  On the right is Ba Pita (Peter?) who was the caretaker of the house after Malcolm Moffat died but before the house and farm was offered to the Baptist Mission for use.  On the left is Ba Buliya.  This man thought of himself as a giant.  I know this because there were several large trees around the house which Dad wanted trimmed up.  During one of our first trips to the farm, he spoke to Ba Buliya and asked him (in Bemba) to trim the branches off "head-high" and indicated this with sign language using his head and hands.  When we returned to the farm several weeks later, 3 of the giant cedar trees around the house had been delimbed up to about 25 ft high on the trunk.  

 

Here, it appears that the house has been renovated, as it now has the cement/asbestos roof that replaced the old clay tile roof.

Edited by HowardsMF155, May 21, 2014 - 03:51 PM.

[HowardsMF155]

Scanned a number of Dad's slides, then decided to scan some of my own.  Dad used his slide to illustrate points he wanted to make during his speaking engagements, so he didn't keep them organized by year, often they are loosely organized by a topic such as education, or crop growth, etc.  I'm thinking that his slides need to be re-organized back into year if possible, because all information about when the slide was taken, or worse yet notes he made on the border of the slide are lost in the scanning process.  I'm thinking that if I can at least organize them by year, that can help identify who and what is in the slides.

 

So, nuggets from my slides.  I found a few of the start of the hydro ramp which Dad built to minimize his supply water pipe.  First up is the tractor with the dam scoop which built both the ramp and later the dam which impounded the majority of the water which was used for the hydro.

 

About a year later, the ramp had grown in stature

 

[HowardsMF155]

I may have mentioned that fresh meat was hard to come by where we were.  Mom and Dad bought the biggest chest freezer they could, and would buy a fresh  half of a steer from some friends down in the Mkushi farming district.  We'd spend most of a day cutting it up, turning it into steak, roasts, and hamburger.  The hamburger was hand ground for many years, till Mom and I found and purchased a combination electric bandsaw/grinder from South Africa.  As I recall, that was in 86-87 when I made a trip to SA by myself and was able to sneak it back on the truck:

Yes, it is scanned in backwards.  I'm going to have to redo this batch, it did not follow the normal convention I had been using.

 

 

 

 

Ok, now the truck is facing the correct way and the front is legible.

Edited by HowardsMF155, May 22, 2014 - 01:28 AM.