MY STORY – IRENE LOUISE (NEE KUCKKAN) MUELLER
Written By Irene L. Mueller

Mom’s Autobiography – Chapter 6 – In Book, Page 14

April 10, 1957 through April 13, 1957, Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia, 1957

Wednesday, April 10, 1957

Today is the day we are to leave. Have all our suitcases packed, ready to go. Missionary Schweppe came to see us off. We took pictures. We felt very sad to leave Schweppe, Helen, Ed, their children, Linda, Shelley, and all the other people at Obot Idim. They had been so kind to us. Winters took us to Port Harcourt. Their car broke down on the way to get us. He drove terribly to Port Harcourt. Didn’t think we’d get there in one piece. Debbie and Dickie were sick on the plane. Were to leave Kano, Nigeria (on the edge of the Sahara Desert – in those days there weren’t all the plane connections there are now, so we had to go to Kano) at 2:00 a.m. Got to airport and they said we couldn’t go – no transit visa to South Africa (Dad had been told in the States that we didn’t need one). We could have cried. Had to get off the plane and go back to the awful airport hotel.

Thursday, April 11, 1957

This morning Dick ran all over trying to get us a visa. No plane until tomorrow night. Kids and I slept this morning. It was so hot, 105 degrees in the shade, so we slept in our “undies”. When Dick came back I took the kids and walked with them so Dick could sleep. There was a line of buzzards sitting up on the roof of the hotel. Then we ate and went to bed.

Friday, April 12, 1957

This was a bad day, and yet a good day. We went on a ride through Kano. It was called “Mud-City” – dirty, dusty, buzzards, lizards, beggars lying all over the streets, people living in low mud houses like rats in holes. The stench was terrible. Sewage ditches on both sides of street – no plumbing. Debbie got sick. We got out of there fast. Our visa came through – good news. If we had known they wanted a bribe, we could have gone sooner. What a relief to get out of Kano. Left on plane at 10:30 p.m. on a Pan American plane. Children slept.

Saturday, April 13, 1957

Stopped at Leopoldville in Congo. It was dark. Got to Johannesburg, South Africa (yes, the plane connection took us all the way down to South Africa and then north to Northern Rhodesia) about noon. Lovely city. From the air we saw swimming pools in back yards. Modern airport. Were blessed to get off plane and right on a West African Viscount, a beautiful plane. Didn’t even need a visa. Hurried us through customs. Got to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia – very nice. Before we arrived in Lusaka, we saw a beautiful rainbow in the sky. We’ll never forget it. It was God’s promise to us that he would be with us and guard and protect us. Arrived in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia at 6:30 p.m. tired and worn out, but what a joy it was! It had just rained and looked like a garden at the airport with beautiful bougainvillea climbing all over the Quonset hut type building. And there were so many other wonderful blooming tropical flowers, bushes, and trees all over Lusaka, our new home! Missionary Harold and Ruth Essmann met us and took us to our home, a rented house in Woodlands, a suburb of Lusaka. Pressed clothes, took baths (church service the next morning), and went to bed – anxiously looking forward to spreading the Word of God to our brothers and sisters in Africa.

LUSAKA, NORTHERN RHODESIA (ZAMBIA) – 1957

Home is where the heart is. We felt very blessed, amazed, and happy that we were to live in Lusaka, quite a modern city, the capitol of Northern Rhodesia. We unpacked our suitcases, and “made do” with mission furniture. Our one crate with our leftovers from Crivitz, Wisconsin, would arrive later. We lived in a rented house in Woodlands, a suburb, until a mission house was being completed on Suffolk Road How happy we were; that now we would be able to start settling down. Debbie and Dickie, being very little, adapted quickly. They made African and “European” (English-speaking) friends, and other friends from other parts of the world. And so did we – cf. THE BLACK LIGHT, JUNE 4, 1957, written by my husband after our arrival in Lusaka. As you read all THE BLACK LIGHT issues, you will know how enthusiastic and eager we were to go and “teach all nations.”

You will also know that Lusaka, even in 1957, was quite a city, probably not by American standards, but it had all the necessities. Sure, when I went shopping in the grocery store, there were all different kinds of food, but there were only two or three brands. Maybe everything we wanted wasn’t there, but what we needed was. The Lord provides. When I would go into the “butchery” (meat market), the meat would be hanging from the ceiling and the butcher would cut off a piece (hey, I grew up on Wisconsin farms). But it was very good meat, some from Zambia, and also Australia. There was only one time in all those fifteen years when the “mincemeat” (hamburger) I brought home was not good. When I opened the package, whew!!! Dick and I almost fainted. Even the dog and cat wouldn’t eat it. I took it back. The butcher was very nice and replaced it. He said that it had been kept over the holidays, and that’s why it wasn’t good.

We learned to drive on the left hand side of the road. The English then ruled The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. I drove up and down Cairo Road (a beautiful street with stores, post office, bank, etc (with a deep drainage ditch, for the rainy season, in between the lanes) and Livingstone Road (Asian stores, restaurant, African market, Carlton Café, Caruso’s) as if I had lived there my whole life. There was also another road, Stanley Road, which was not yet “tarmaced” (blacktopped. There were only four roads going out of Lusaka – north, south, east, and west. They were all dirt roads – mud roads during the rainy season.

Missionary Habben, his wife, Susie, Missionary Essmann, his wife, Ruth, and family, were living at Sala doing mission work there (forty miles from Lusaka in quite modern houses although the only electricity was from a generator during the evening hours. There were twin palms near the Essmann mission house). They would come into Lusaka once a week to do their shopping. They would come to our house to visit and have lunch. They would also invite us to their homes in the “bush”. We had a lot of happy times together. Sometimes we would leave late at night. One night after we had been there a little over a year, during the rainy season, we got stuck in the “mud” road. Dick was not able to keep the car in the ruts. There we sat. We had to open the windows because it was so hot, and then the mosquitoes came in droves. Thankfully, our new-born baby, Timmy, (born April 24, 1958), had mosquito netting over his pram. What to do? Again, our loving Lord took care of us. Out of the dark night came an African on a tractor and towed us out. It was a miracle! We will never forget it.

We took our anti-malarial pills every week. There were different kinds of medications, among them Daraprim or Chloroquine, which we took regularly.

After the mission house was completed on Suffolk Road, we moved in. It was a very nice home with a lounge, dining room, kitchen, utility room, bathroom, separate toilet room, and three bedrooms. One morning I opened a kitchen cupboard, and there was a lizard looking at me – no ceilings in the cupboards! There were no ready-made drapes and curtains available, so we bought material and I sewed them. After we got the draperies in the living room up, we noticed one morning what appeared to be a dirt tunnel going up a drapery. Guess what – termites! When the house was built, they had poured the cement “ant course” for the patio separately from the house “ant course”, so the termites came in between. Dick called the architect, and he came and poured arsenic in between the ant courses – no more termites there! The English architect and his wife, the Andersons, invited us to their home for dinner one evening. When one of the people who had just come out from England noticed a fly in her soup, Mrs. Anderson calmly picked it out and said, “You’ll get used to it.” How true! The English people are very polite – the men all stand up when a lady enters the room – and take their hats off!

The living room had teak floors, so we had a servant, “Rafus”, whom we inherited from the Essmanns when we arrived and they moved to the “bush”. It was the custom at that time to have servants. He was affordable even for us, and lived in the servant’s quarters (which were also built when the mission house was built) with his wife and little girl. We supported a family. I did the cooking and baking, and he would come in from the servant’s quarters and do most of the household duties. He would put the strap of a brush around his foot and “skate” across the teak floors in the living and dining rooms, polishing them. It was a sight to see!

There was another advantage to having a house servant. We got to know the African quite well, and also learned some Chinyanja. One day Rafus came into the kitchen and presented us with a “gift”. He had gotten honey, filled with little bees, out of a tree and wanted us to have it. We thanked him profusely, and I think we did eat some of that honey. One day we noticed that there were lots of African women holding tins and picking up something from our yard. What were they doing? They were picking up white ants (termites) which had lost their wings after flying out of the huge anthill (which was later taken down) near our house. They would take them home and eat them. Hey, don’t some Americans eat weird things too? Also, we wondered why there were never any Hibiscus flowers on the bushes. We found out that they loved to pick them and eat those too!

Besides the furniture, the mission also provided a vehicle. At first we had a van. On our way to Matero (a huge African suburb) where one of our Lutheran services was held, one day we saw a wheel rolling down the road in front of us. At first we laughed, being as young as we were, but then realized it was our van’s wheel. We came to a very abrupt stop! After that we had another vehicle, an Opel station wagon, which said “Rhodesian Lutheran Church” on its side.