Beschreibung:

Africa.- A collection of typed and handwritten journal letters from Helen Margaret Bond (nee Thomas), an English missionary who spent several years on the borders of Uganda and Congo at the beginning of the 20th century. She arrived in Ngogwe, Uganda in August 1901 to help in a children’s school and “as there was no one else to take up this [medical] work, I began at once and the morning after I got there had my first experience of an African dispensary; at first with next to no knowledge of the language one found considerable difficulty in understanding a patient’s ailment…if the diagnose was not always quite correct, the patients were quite contented for their faith in the English person’s wisdom seems to be unlimited”; in another entry she writes “It is very hard to realize that we have got to the middle of November, with the brilliant sunshine that we are having every day; the rainy season that seemed to be coming […] has quite passed away, and with it all our hopes that our vegetables and seeds will be of any use […] Women all cultivate the banana plantations even the princesses” and adds ” a few of the women are learning to sew, and get on very well with it. That is men’s work here, the women have nothing to sew as they wear barkcloths beaten out; they are very picturesque, all shades of terracotta; but all the men who can afford it wear cloth, their dress is a long night-dress down to their heels of white calico or linen which they very often make themselves”, 17 November 1901. In a later typed account she writes “We have been doing a great deal of vaccinating here lately, there has been a great deal of small pox about, and the people have been most keen to be done, but until just lately we have been unable to get any lymph”. She mentions the condition of women in Uganda, who “for generations have been the slaves of the men, with no idea beyond cooking and cultivating, fetching wood and water, and it takes them a long while to learn. One sees them patiently plodding away at the Alphabet, or syllables, over and over again, without apparently getting any further; and yet after a time some do get hold of it and learn to read; and we hear there are 5 or 6 who want to be trained as teachers”. She also describes a trip to Lake Victoria “We went along the Uganda side of the lake to see the Falls, along a little narrow path and down a precipitous descent, then out on to some rocks which are closed down by the Falls…It is a lovely sight, the calm surface of the lake, the water gliding over the top of the Falls, then rushing down with a deafening roar”, 25 September 1904. Subsequent journal letters are written from Kabarole, in the Kingdom Toro, Uganda, where she worked at the local hospital. In a letter she writes “A little while ago it was the anniversary of the King’s baptism, so he made a fest in honour of the occasion, and invited us all up to lunch at twelve o’clock. He had made a great effort to have everything as it should be, in European style, and we had numerous dishes though the courses were perhaps a little mixed up first soup, and then sago pudding, after that various kinds of meat , and chocolates and strawberries to finish it up”. She also writes about plans and sites for building a new hospital in Kabarole, as “our Hospital is constantly overcrowded, and it is our usual condition now, to have extra patients in the middle of the ward (where there is very little room) or on the floor”. Another letter discusses the different people met on her journey “…They had never seen a white woman before and stared hard at us. They had filed teeth, and large holes in their ears, and their tribal mark cut on their foreheads…”, “We first saw pigmies here, a little man and woman who are living with the chief. The man was Bulasiyo the first pigmy to read and be baptized, but now sad to say, he has gone back again to his heathen ways”; also included is a large quantity of watercolours depicting mostly views written of in the journa