Christmas in the Valley

THE CHRISTMASES OF MY CHILDHOOD do not evoke many memories. However I do remember that on at least a couple of occasions we traveled forty miles from Kawama Mission, where we lived, south along the Luapula River Valley to Johnston Falls Mission (now Mambilima Mission) to join forces with our friends the Fords. Jim and Dorothy Ford and their four children had come to Johnston Falls from the UK sometime in the early '50's. Margaret, Patricia ('Patsy'), Angus, and Jonathan had become our closest childhood friends both geographically and relationally and we were of similar ages.

Two incidents stand out in my memory from those years. On one occasion we were all gathered in the home of Bwana Lammond and his wife Betty, the center of the three main houses at Johnston Falls. Willie Lammond had come from Scotland to Johnston Falls in 1900 and established much of the mission work in the area. As we waited that Christmas afternoon around the Christmas tree to open presents, in walked Father Christmas with his bag of gifts. He turned out to be none other than Mr. Lammond. Before he handed out presents he had us all participating in a Scottish jig, leading it with much gusto. He was a man of incredible energy; in later years I remember him at age 90 supervising the installation of a metal roof in place of the thatch on his house. He was not contented to supervise it from the ground but actually climbed the ladder!

On another occasion the Fords were joined for the Christmas holiday by another boarding school friend, Adrienne Taylor, from Fort Lamy (now N'Djamena) in Chad. While we got to go home twice a year she was only able to get home during the longer mid-year break because it took a week or more to travel between Sakeji School in northwestern Northern Rhodesia and Chad. So she would stay with friends who lived closer to school and we were only three days' journey away. Adrienne was a wonderful friend and we enjoyed her so much that when our mother told us in 1960 that we would soon be joined by another sibling, we agreed that if it was a sister we would like her to be named Adrienne. And so it was to be - Adrienne Ruth Kruse was born at Central Hospital in Kitwe, Northern Rhodesia in April 1961, while Esther and I were at boarding school and we received the news by mail a few days later.

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