At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa

Where is home for an American child in southern Africa? Certainly not the United States where Henderson-James visited only three times before she was 16. Perhaps not even in Angola where she lived with her missionary parents, for she knew she would have to leave eventually. In this memoir of growing up in colonial Angola, the author learns five languages, goes away to school at nine, and travels 1500 miles for high school in Rhodesia.

In love with Angola, she must leave when war breaks out in 1961 and find her way in an alien America, in her parent’s hometown of Tacoma, Washington.

The summer Henderson-James turned 14 she studied Umbundu, the language of central Angola, with an Ovimbundu friend. It was her fourth language, beginning with English, the language of her family; Portuguese, the official language of the colony; and French, the colonial language of the Congo next door.

Learning Umbundu was a lifeline, anchoring her to the culture. Her language studies were interrupted by the arrival of an Angolan orphan whom she nurtured for 5 months. Tez, the orphan, arrived a scrawny seven-month-old, unable to hold up her head, turn over, or smile. By the time Tez was returned to her extended family at age one, she was a sturdy toddler on the verge of walking.

For Henderson-James, understanding the language and knowing the people tied her to Angola in a way that she could never, as a teenager, be attached to her parents’ America.

Excerpts

“Five Teens on the Loose in Lourenço Marques” from the No Reservations chapter

We were hot and sticky from carrying our luggage across town in the stifling humidity, but when we walked in the front door of our house, the cool of the brick walls and floor tiles was like a cold-water plunge. We staked out the bedrooms we wanted, the boys in one and the girls in another, and I suddenly felt less shy with the boys. Moving from bare acquaintance to living together in the brief span of three days had transformed them into something more akin to brothers. The sexual edginess I’d felt around them softened into comradeship.

The large eat-in kitchen was equipped with utensils, a stove, deep sink, and table. The uneven, well-worn tile floor and the dozens of pots and pans stored in the cupboards suggested that some family had eaten heartily from this kitchen. But rather than cooking, Mr. Claire had suggested we order in our meals from the pensão around the corner.

“One of the young boys here at the mission can bring the food over for you.” For the noon meal that day, he carried in caldo verde [potato kale soup], batatas fritas [fried potatoes], and bifes [beef steaks]. He stacked one pot after another on our counter.

“Oh my gosh, look at all this food. How will we eat it all?” we all exclaimed, peering into the pots. “And did he say it only cost twenty escudos?” That translated to eighty cents. For supper he brought potatoes, cod, and cabbage, with boiled potatoes left over to turn into hash browns at breakfast the next morning. Breakfast wasn’t available from the pensão, so we bought milk, eggs, and bread and planned to supplement them with leftovers.

That evening we relaxed in the living room, with a luxuriously competent feeling.

“We found a free place to stay, thanks to Mr. Claire, and cheap food,” I said. “Now all we have to figure out is how to pay for the train.”

“Let’s get out all our money so we can see what we have,” said Kathy. We emptied our wallets and purses onto the coffee table.

“Hey, look! I forgot we had this.” Kathy pulled out the fifty dollars Mom had given us to buy clothes in the Salisbury department stores. I looked longingly at that bill, imagining the shoes, blouses, and skirts it would purchase. For a moment I thought about snatching it back, hoarding it for Kathy’s and my pleasure. I hankered for a pair of heels for church and dressy parties and some nylon stockings, nylons to make my legs sleek. But when I looked around at our group, I knew I was dreaming. Of course, the money would have to be used for getting us back to school. I rather loved the drama of sacrificing for the group.

“Even with the fifty dollars,” Kathy figured, “we’re still going to need a conto [about forty dollars] for train tickets. Maybe we can borrow that from Mr. Claire.”

This detour in Lourenço Marques reminded me of the Famous Five mystery adventures I used to read when I was a kid. Five Run Away Together, Five Get into Trouble, Five Go Adventuring… Barbara, Melvin, Jerry, Kathy, and I had landed in the middle of our own mystery, the mystery of life really. While we sorted out the problems of room, board, and travel, we were learning about each other, especially how boys and girls interacted. I had wanted to rely on Melvin to figure out how to solve our predicament, just as Julian in the Famous Five took the lead. But I realized I had a whole lot more sense than Melvin did. Even Barbara, who was younger than Melvin and me, took charge of guiding us around while the boys acted like useless appendages. It made me wonder again what Mrs. Glegg was sheltering us from and why the boys at A.M.F. were allowed so many more freedoms than the girls.

Since the train didn’t depart until 6:30 in the evening on Wednesday, we had another two days to spend in Lourenço Marques.

“Tez” from the Prologue

Maria Teresa. Her birth name too long for her tiny body. At seven months, she was a wizened eight pounds, unable to hold up her head, roll over, or smile, and so she became simply Tez. I gazed at her soft brown skin, her dark eyes, and her springy curls. She grasped my finger and held on. I cradled her. I suckled her with bottles of rich milk, and watched her blossom into a sturdy grinning one-year-old, on the verge of her first step. Her legs had transformed from fragile twigs into strong saplings, planted solidly on her Angolan land. I prepared to give her, healthy, back to her family just a year before the colonial revolution against Portugal. We boarded the train, I to continue on to Rhodesia for high school, she to go home to a family she didn’t know. What became of her?

I’ll never completely come to terms with the audacity of handing Tez out the train window at the Bela Vista whistle stop. Wrenched from me, a 14-year-old who didn’t know about repercussions, didn’t understand how the body never forgets. I went on with life, moved to school 1500 miles away, learned to maneuver another culture, and left Africa abruptly when war started. But what happened to that little Angolan girl forty-eight years later, if she survived war, land mines, hunger, and flight to a neighboring country? Did she die or did she grow up a refugee—one of 300,000 who fled? After forty years, the war sputtered to a close in 2002. Has Tez returned to Angola, hoping to make her life in a devastated land, in an unfamiliar country? Whether and how she survived continues to haunt me.