GOODBYE AMERICA, HELLO AFRICA

Bob and Phyllis, with their one year old daughter, Kathy and her six week old sister Ruth, had arrived in New York City a few days before the steamship, African Enterprise, a combination cargo and passenger ship, was scheduled to sail for Cape Town, South Africa. They arrived there in their Chevrolet carryall with virtually all their worldly goods packed in trunks and cases. The vehicle and most of the luggage had to be at the dock the day before sailing. Fortunately Bob had been to New York City before as a summer intern with the Go Ye Chapel Mission, so finding the dock was not a problem, not to say that there were no problems. There were! This particular ship had been selected because it had a doctor and a nurse on the crew. They would be needed!

Baby Ruth had been ill on the trip, so while Bob took everything to the dock, Phyllis took Ruth to see a doctor. He took one look at her limp,feverish, little body, and said, "She has pneumonia." She should have been hospitalized, but didn't the ship have a doctor, a nurse, and a sick bay? Bob had been a sailor, and even the military ship he had been on had a sick bay and a doctor. Wrong assumption! No one said the doctor had to be a good doctor. This one took one look and promptly said, "I don't know anything about babies. Give her an aspirin." Praise to the Lord however! the nurse walking right behind him, took compassion on us and was very helpful the whole trip. We were eighteen days at sea, but eventually docked at Cape Town safely, but still with a very sick baby.

It had been Bob's first crossing of the equator as the ships he had been on, as a crew member, never went into the southern hemispher, so he was initiated by "King Neptune." This consisted mainly of being blindfolded, daubbed with tomatoe sauce,and ceremoniously tossed into the ship's pool. Being an ex-navy man, it was assumed that he would be used to rough seas, but as the ship neared Cape Town, all were wakened in the night to find the baby crib sliding about the room, and things falling off the furniture. The ship was passing over an underwater mountainrange, that marks the junction of the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans. Strong currents cause heavy rolling and pitching of the ship but as soon as it cleared the breakwater into the bay all was calm. That was good, but sadly the bad side is that Bob's sea sickness, always lasts a good day afterwards.