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This is a complete transcript of the oral history interview with Lydia Christine Wire Maillefer (CN 328 T1) for the Billy Graham Center Archives. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case [unclear] was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as “ah” or “um” are usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English.

. . . Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker.

. . . . Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.

( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.

[ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.

This transcript was created by Robert Shuster and a student worker and was completed in April 2016.

Please note: This oral history interview expresses the personal memories and opinions of the interviewee and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Billy Graham Center Archives or Wheaton College.

Collection 328, Tape 1. Oral history interview with Lydia Maillefer by Paul A. Ericksen on May 13, 1986.

ERICKSEN: This is an interview with Lydia Christine Wire Mayfair...Maillefer by Paul Ericksen for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place at the offices of the Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois on May 13, 1986 at eight forty-five a.m. [recording turned off and on] Well, Mrs. Maillefer, I=d like to begin by getting sort of a quick sketch of your life. Just want to check some of the figures and data that I=ve got. You were born in 1927 in Chicago? Is that....

MAILLEFER: Right.

ERICKSEN: ...right? And where did you grow up?

MAILLEFER: In Winnetka, Illinois, suburbs of Chicago.

ERICKSEN: And I understand that you grew up speaking Danish.

MAILLEFER: That is, I spoke Danish before I spoke English, and I stopped speaking Danish just about completely when I...when I started school.

ERICKSEN: Okay

MAILLEFER: Yeah. Uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: And what did your folks do?

MAILLEFER: My father was a cabinet maker, and my mother was a seamstress. My mother had applied to go to South Africa with a Danish mission and had gone to Moody, and it didn=t turn out because it was just after the First World War, I guess, and so she turned around and married my father instead.

ERICKSEN: You attended a Free Church?

MAILLEFER: No. Winnetka Bible Church...

ERICKSEN: Okay.

MAILLEFER: ...which had had a lot of Free Church leanings and direction over the years. We=ve had a lot of Free Church pastors, so when I looked for a mission board, our pastor happened to be Free Church, and he directed me that direction.

ERICKSEN: I don=t know whether you can pin down a date. It=s not necessarily important. But is there sometime when you would say that your conversion took place?

MAILLEFER: It was a...a struggle, because I was looking for feelings like a lot of kids reared in Christian homes do, but I would say that I accepted the Lord when I was ten. But when I was a freshman in high school, and again when I was a freshman in college, I took a stand of affirmation on it, because I was concerned that my childhood experience hadn=t been sufficient. Then it was while I was at Wheaton that I began to learn that a lot of kids going up in Christian homes have that problem.

ERICKSEN: You graduated in 1949.

MAILLEFER: Right.

ERICKSEN: With a B.A. in...?

MAILLEFER: Christian Ed.

ERICKSEN: Okay. And during one of your furloughs in 1961, you got an M.A. in French?

MAILLEFER: Uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: From?

MAILLEFER: Northwestern U.

ERICKSEN: Okay.

MAILLEFER: I also went to Northwestern a year after I graduated from Wheaton because the mission board wanted us to have a non-religious major. That is, the mission didn=t require it, but Congo required it as then, because you had to have a non-religious major in order to become a teacher in Congo.

ERICKSEN: [Pauses] What year were you accepted by the Free Church to work in Africa?

MAILLEFER: 1950.

ERICKSEN: Okay. Do you recall when your furloughs have been?

MAILLEFER: 1956 and 7. >Course, these are starting in the summer and ending [in the spring].

ERICKSEN: Sure.

MAILLEFER: And then 1960 I came home because of the.... No, I came home to stagger furloughs, actually. I wasn=t evacuated. So, I came home to stagger furloughs. There were too many of us going at the same time, and I came home to work on my master=s, and then I got married the following summer. So I stayed home another year then, while Eric was at Trinity Seminary. And then we went back in >62.

ERICKSEN: Okay.

MAILLEFER: Then, we came home in >64 because of the rebellion. We didn=t have to be evacuated. I had come out earlier because of my daughter being expected, and I came home on a government paid ticket for school teachers. And by the time I was ready to come back after Renee was born, then the rebellion was in full bloom, so we stayed home then until the summer of >65. And then we were two years in Kenya and two years in Zaire, which had by that time become Zaire, and we came home again in >69. Went back again in >70 to Kenya. We came home in >74, went back in the summer of >75. And then we stayed six years because of allowing for our two daughters to graduate back to back from high school out there. So we came home in >81, went back the summer of >82, and came home the summer of >85, because our son had graduated from high school.

ERICKSEN: And just on the future end, do you know where you=re going to being working?

MAILLEFER: We=re going to be working in Brussels on loan from the Evangelical Free Church to the World Evangelical Fellowship European office, working in conjunction with the European Alliance and the Free Church work, and we plan to leave in August.

ERICKSEN: Okay. Okay, well let=s...now let=s head back. I just have a few questions about your early life. What kind of religious background did you grow up in? You mentioned that....

MAILLEFER: Very...very strong Evangelical, because of living just a block away from the Winnetka Bible Church, which has always had a very strong Evangelical stance. Very meaningful church experience. And very staunch Christian parents, who were actually Lutheran State Church from Denmark, but who enjoyed the freedom of the American Evangelical Scene.

ERICKSEN: What...do you recall any of your early impressions of church as a child?

MAILLEFER: In what way do you mean?

ERICKSEN: What do you remem...what do you remember about going to church as a...as a small child?

MAILLEFER: Oh, I think I remember, just off the cuff, would be enjoying good Sunday School experiences and especially Daily Vacation Bible School, which was usually a joint effort with the Evangelical Covenant Church, which was a small church just a...around the corner from our church. And a lot of...lot of experiences in church where we young people were allowed to be in programs. I think that=s something that=s missing in the church today. And I think that led toward my being able to be a leader on the field and to not be afraid to stand up in front of people and...and to participate in one way or another in a service. Lot of Christmas Sunday School programs and playing piano and singing in trios in high school that I think a lot of young people miss out on today because of being in these huge churches.

ERICKSEN: Did you ever get a chance to preach as a young person?

MAILLEFER: You mean as a missionary or at home?

ERICKSEN: At home.

MAILLEFER: No. No, those were pre...pre-women=s lib days as such. However, our young people=s group, our high school group was not one where the youth leader entertained us and made all the programs. We sat down with committees and decided our programs, so I often participated in a program that we had high school kids would have led, which was very meaningful.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. [Pauses] Where...where would you say the church put its greatest emphasis, if you had to...?

MAILLEFER: For me as a young person, you mean?

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: Well, I think that would be hard to say. I think it was very well-rounded, because it was a small church of probably only two hundred on Sunday morning, well-filled. We young people, I think, felt very much a part of the program. When I was in high school, we had Milfred Showen [?], who was our pastor, who was...they had no children of their own at the time, and they did a lot of things with us as young people. We didn=t have a youth pastor. Took us to camps, and took us to the Chicago Gospel Mission to participate in that kind of thing. But, I would say it was just a good...well...well-rounded program.

ERICKSEN: What sort of things did you do at the mission?

MAILLEFER: Well, I=m sure that we as young people learned more than we ever did for the drunk men down there. We would go down prepared to...usually some of us would sing, and if there was an instrumentalist among us, he would play. And then, one of the adults with us would give the sermon, or a college student. We high school kids didn=t do that. And then we would sit around and try to make conversation with the men afterwards as they were having their donuts or whatever. But it was meaningful to us, coming from the elegant suburbs, to see what we were missing out on through the position that we had in life and through what we had in Christ. I think it would...made an impression on a lot of us.

ERICKSEN: Any particular incidents that stand out from your conversations with the people you met there?

MAILLEFER: No, I don=t think so. I think we were not really trained or mature enough to really enter into...

ERICKSEN: uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: ...good conversations with them.

ERICKSEN: What kind of missions program did the church have?

MAILLEFER: When I was in high school, our mission...our church took on the first full-time missionary woman to support, and I remember it was a very big thing in high school. But I don=t understand...I think they took her as a full...they took on all her support, which of course most churches don=t do now, because I know that we were supporting several older missionaries from elsewhere too, but it must have been a minor part of their support. And I can remember when she had only been on the field about a year or so, maybe two years, she had to be brought home. She was a nurse in Ethiopia, and she had to brought home because she was in a medical state...because she wasn=t willing to take medicines. Since the Africans didn=t have them, she didn=t feel that she should be enjoying the health that she could have had if she=d taken the proper...proper measurements to...measures to take care of herself. And that made quite an impression on me because I saw the disappointment in our church, and even as a high school student, I...I...I felt that was a very unwise move on her part. She had to come home. I met her five years ago, I think. She=s now in good health, but it was an...an immature decision on her part which I don=t think we hear among missionaries today.

ERICKSEN: Was that the end of her career?

MAILLEFER: Yes. Uh-huh. I can=t remember what it was. I think one was teeth and the other was heart, and it was definitely attuned to the fact that she hadn=t taken care of herself.

ERICKSEN: How would you describe the beginnings of your Christian pilgrimage?

MAILLEFER: Well, as I mentioned, I was a very sincere believer and grew up believing. So it was a...it was a long road to how >til I became a sure...assured of my salvation. I went forward to accept the Lord in Sunday school when I was ten, knowing that I already believed in the Lord, and part of my reason for going forward, I think, was because the Sunday school super...superintendent said that those who accepted the Lord would get a Bible storybook, which I didn=t need. We had Bible storybooks at home, but that was...it was a very sincere decision to accept the Lord, but I can remember then when we went to Cedar Lake camp as a young pe...as young people. I was probably in, oh, sixth or seventh grade. The revival speaker, as were many speakers in those days, in my church and elsewhere, AIf the grease...grass isn=t greener and the sky isn=t bluer, then you probably didn=t accept the Lord.@ Everything should be radically different, and nothing was for me, because I was an innocent little child growing up in a Christian home, but I didn=t realize that. So I can remember at camp, one day, I said I wasn=t going to go swimming because I thought if I died I wasn=t sure that I was really a Christian. So I talked to some camp leaders then and got some assurance that I was a really a Christian. And then, when I was a...freshman here at Wheaton, it was just at the beginning of the...oh, just at the end of the war, but several of my friends from high school had gone into the service yet. And one of the boys was killed in a shooting accident in training. And I can remember at the funeral (we were allowed to come home from Wheaton for it...for it, several of us), and I thought if I had been that fellow who had died, I wasn=t sure I was a Christian, which was really ridiculous as I look back on it. But nobody had helped me with this problem. So I said to myself then, AIf the Lord lets me live until I get back to Wheaton tomorrow, I am going to the top man. I=m going to Dr. [V. Raymond] Edman [president of the college], and I=m

ERICKSEN: So, even though there weren=t missionaries necessarily supported by the church, there were still a lot of missionaries coming through.

MAILLEFER: Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah.

ERICKSEN: You mentioned your family. What other kind of activities did your family have that encouraged your faith as a child?

MAILLEFER: Well....

ERICKSEN: What happened that made it so real?

MAILLEFER: I think just the fact that they lived what they believed, and it was very meaningful to them. We...we had prayers before we went to bed. I don=t think we ac...we had...we read the Bible before we ate. But we didn=t really have family devotions where my brother and I sat down with our parents and...and prayed and talked through a study book of any kind like my husband I did with our children later. But my parents were very reserved Europeans, and I have seen that, of course, in my own husband now and his description of how difficult it is for Europeans to talk about their emotional relationship to their spiritual status. And I think more of my meaningful Christianity came then...came through my Sunday school teachers, continuity of Sunday School teachers. I had...I could still name them even from about third grade up, where I had the same teacher two or three years. And I think that continuity made a big difference in my Christian life. So I would say it was more through my parents leading me and yet really being fed spiritually by...by the church rather than through my parents.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. You said that you felt you decided to be a missionary when you were five.

MAILLEFER: uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: Can you describe how that happened?

MAILLEFER: No, I really can=t. I think it was just...I...I would say I hardly even remembered it, but it=s just, from that time on, I knew I wanted to be a missionary when anybody asked me what I wanted to do.

ERICKSEN: What was it about being a missionary that appealed to you?

MAILLEFER: I think the fact that this lady showed me pictures, which I can still remember, some of them I had up until a few years ago, of her sitting with little African children telling them about the Lord.

ERICKSEN: What...was she a teacher?

MAILLEFER: No, she was just a...sort of what we would today call an old fashioned missionary with a Bible under her arm. Sometimes, I wonder if it wasn=t even just a sort of a romanticized idea of what any good Christian should be, not that I should be a missionary, which then, later on, became more personal and real...

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: ...but it was just sort of an idea that that=s what you ought to do if you were really a good Christian.

ERICKSEN: Did anyone else know that that=s what you wanted to do?

MAILLEFER: Oh yes. Uh-huh. I think everybody knew.

ERICKSEN: When did you begin visualizing yourself as a missionary?

MAILLEFER: [Coughs] Probably when I was a freshman in high school. We went to, again, our youth...our pastor, and several of the men from church took us to Maranatha Conference Grounds, where we heard a good missionary speaker whom I don=t even remember the name of now. She was a missionary widow, and out of that group of about ten of us who went to that conference, there were, I think, seven of us that became missionaries. It was really a very directing time in our church, that...those years, where our pastor did a lot of ground work.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: And I can remember being at Maranatha Conference Grounds and coming out of the suburbs and nice homes, although my parents weren=t rich. I can remember some of the kids that went that weekend were un...very unhappy that living conditions were awful in summer camps those days. We couldn=t go swimming Sunday afternoon, and we=d grown up by Lake Michigan, so we were mad about that. There were quite a few rigid rules that we were really angry about, but out of that group came several Wheatonite missionaries and...and others. So it=s encouraging to me that when you...even though you have, oh, sort of a rebellious spirit, the Lord is still working, and even though conditions aren=t always the most beautiful, the Lord can work when you take kids

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. Had you began...begun to formulate what you saw yourself doing? Had...was it any more specific than being a missionary?

MAILLEFER: No.

ERICKSEN: When did you begin thinking about being a teacher?

MAILLEFER: Well, that be...came about because, when I applied...I applied to the Free Church and I applied to TEAM [The Evangelical Alliance Mission], because those were the two addresses that my pastor gave me. When I think of it, I was...really a babe in the woods, and I don=t think that I got enough preparation out of Wheaton on how to choose a mission board, how to know where I should go, what kind of training I should have as a...as a missionary. Perhaps, I should have gone on to a Bible school and gotten more training. When I applied to TEAM, they said I would have to go to a Bible school for three more years before I could become a missionary, and idealistic as young...some young missionaries, especially of that day, were, I said, no, I=d gone to a Christian college, and I didn=t need anymore, and I was going to go out and win the world for the Lord. Whereas, the Free Church, at that time, was just getting into the subsidized teaching under the Belgian government in Congo. And so, when I wrote to them, they said that they would like to have me, but I would need a non-religious major in order to qualify with the Belgian government. And I had majored in Christian Ed, much to the discouragement of my parents. They felt I should have a...an academic major, but my pastor felt that a Christian Ed major would be very good for missions, and I am not too sure now that that was a good idea. I don=t think it was complete enough for a missionary, and I probably should have gotten more experience or more Bible training to be really...really well prepared. But...so then, coming back to why I became a teacher, the Free Church said, AWe would like to have you if you can become a teacher, get your teacher=s credentials.@ So, this was even before I graduated. So when I graduated, I enrolled at Northwestern U[niversity] and went through there and got an English major and did my practice teaching in a Chicago high school that year. So, by the end of 1950, then, I had two majors and my teaching certificate. Then, the Free Church said, ANow, you should have a year of experience at least before we send you out.@ So I got a...a job with a...a church down in Ohio through Moody Bible Institute. I wrote to them and asked if they had any kind of Christian experience that I could get into for a year. Now, when I see the preparation that young people have to have and experiences they have to have before they can go to field...to the field, I think it makes more sense. But, that=s the way I went. And I think that were other experiences in Wheaton and in my year=s work in the Ohio church that did more to make me as effective as I might have been through the practical experiences that I got.

ERICKSEN: What was it that you were doing in the church in Ohio?

MAILLEFER: They asked me to come down there to replace their organist for a year, because she was having a difficult pregnancy. And so, they asked if I would come for a year to take...to play the organ and to sing on their daily morning broadcast. There was my preparation from Wheaton

Glee Club and my experience in my high school days leading young people, rather than any missions course that I got at Wheaton, which I really used a lot. And I thanked Mrs. [Mignon] Mack several times on that, because she was our Glee Club director then. So I went down there hired to be the organist and soloist for the morning broadcast, but I was also asked if I would help them start a Christian bookstore, for which I had no experience, but that was my whole afternoon job. And my whole morning job was to be the pastor=s secretary. And then, on weekends, I was supposed to lead all the high school groups, so I worked a...a tremendous weekly schedule down there, but for a year, you can do something like that. And it was very very meaningful to me, and I think it was meaningful to the church. Most of them down there had...had not...in that particular church, had seen very many...very few college graduates. Most of them were just...they=d get out of high school, and they=d get married. So, it was good for them. I was able to steer several of the young people in high school there into college, and it was my first year totally away from home, which was also a meaningful experience for going overseas. So it was...it was a great experience for me, and I probably did put two years of training into that one year because of that whopper of a job that I had to do. So I went as a teacher only because the mission wanted...that=s the slot that they had for missionaries at that time. So then, of course, under the Belgian government, we had to go to Europe and study in the colonial course in the University of Brussels for a year in a...a very...very concentrated courses as well, so that we could go to Congo as a teacher who understood where the Belgians were coming from. Belgian history, Belgian law, Belgian economics, hygiene, twelve oral courses that we had to take in French. Not...not twelve oral exams we had to take at the end of these courses plus a nine months proficiency course in French. So that=s how I became a teacher down there.

ERICKSEN: Have you...have you thought about what you would have liked to have done? I don=t...to have done?

MAILLEFER: No, I think was very happy in what I was doing as a teacher. I think, as I=ve said and thought many times, the Lord just directed me, an...an innocent babe in the woods, until he got me to the place where I could maturely use what I had been given in instructions, because I fully enjoyed my...my teaching career. When I arrived on the field, there was quite a debate and strong feelings going on…on our field because some of the evangelistic missionaries felt that the mission board was sending out way to many teachers in compliance with the Congo government=s requirements and that we were spending too much of our time and personnel on teaching the young people in the three hours rather than in being a Bible toting missionary. And so, there were strong feelings. I can remember the nurses and the teachers and the doctors became very irate just about the time I got the field because the evangelistic missionaries felt that we were just really second rate missionaries, and that didn=t touch me. I said, AI don=t care what label those people put on me. The Lord has called me to be a missionary teacher, and if we can=t win these young people to the Lord through the schools, we=re really missing out on a tremendous opportunity. And it=s interesting to note that that sort of died down, and yet today, we=re hearing more and more of this philosophy among missions again now, that we shouldn=t be an institutional work. We should be Bible-toting missionaries. That=s not the word you use for it now, but that=s what the great discussion was when I went out in the >50s, and now we=re coming back to that. And yet, in our Free Church work in Zaire today, the church took over the schools because they wanted it. They felt they could get more money out of the government if we weren=t in it, but now they=re begging for the missionaries to

© 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T1 Transcript - Page 11 come back into it because they know that their schools have gone down hill academically and spiritually. And the Catholics have hung on to all their schools, and so they=re going forward academically, whereas our Africans took theirs back, and now they don=t have the personnel to staff them. And the African Protestant Christians can=t get into the Catholic schools, and there aren=t enough public schools, so we=re not getting our Christian young people educated. And furthermore, on top of that, we=re not getting our Christian young people educated well enough to go into our Bible schools and seminaries to become the church leaders, so there=s a real dearth now in well-trained African pastors, and we can see that even more now because of my husband=s work with the Association of Evangelicals [Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar, AEAM]. We have, in the last twenty years now, started a seminary, which was supposed to be post-graduate level, one in English and one in French. There=s never been one in Africa before. Now we have them, but we don=t have the Africans to put in them because the African Christian men and women have not had enough good training through the elementary and high schools and Bible institutes in their area to qualify for post-graduate level. And so, both seminaries, especially the French one, is still admitting young men and women who don=t really have a bachelor=s degree qualification to get into the seminary. So, I make no apologies to anybody for the fact that the Lord led me into education. I think it was tremendous experience. We have one of our former students now at Trinity working on his PhD/ThD. We have several in government positions in Europe. One of my students, only with the high school training, was...became one of my teachers when I was a principal of the schools in 1960, and then he became a member of the first parliament in Congo, already Zaire) (and then became a very important man in Mubutu [Sese Seko]=s government. So, it seems to me that, as a missionary teacher, if you can train Christian laymen and Christian pastors, even if you=re just...if you just think you=re teach...teaching them for three hours, you=re teach a person...

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: ...who can later become a...a meaningful Christian.

ERICKSEN: What...what class of people were coming to the schools?

MAILLEFER: Very poor peasant people. Our mission stations of the Free Church and the [Evangelical] Covenant [Church], who work together, were in the northwest part of Zaire, way up in the bush. And the Congo government, the Belgian government at that time, even said AThis is a forgotten corner of Zaire. It has nothing to offer. The people are dumb. The weather is awful. The land only produces cotton and coffee.@ And they often joked that, AIf you didn=t produce in the sphere of government service, you were posted to our corner,@ because it was the corner that was the least productive for the Belgians. So they were all poor people who were brought up in the mud huts and hadn=t seen much in the way of civilization.

ERICKSEN: What...do you recall what your first impressions of the station were when you got there, other than this squabble that was going on?

MAILLEFER: Physically, geographically, it was a terrible experience. I came by ship, which was a good experience, from Europe to Kinshasa (then Leopoldville) flew up to Libenge, and stayed

ERICKSEN: What picture did you have in your mind before you got there as to what you would see?

MAILLEFER: I suppose I...I realized what I was going tos ee, these mud huts and dirt, but you can=t really know what it=s like until you=re there. Of course, we=ve heard that from many many visitors who=ve come out to see us too, even our relatives, who have gotten letters from us and descriptions of everything. They are just totally amazed when they come out.

ERICKSEN: What...what were the exact...what were the du...duties that you were assigned at the school?

MAILLEFER: I was...I arrived in September, and then I was given three months of language study, learning a tra lan...tra...trade language was not too difficult. I was teaching Sunday school in it after about six weeks. I couldn=t understand everything they said to me, but I could talk to them. And...and Christmas time, I helped one of the missionaries put on a Christmas pageant, and that was all the formal training I had at one particular mission station. And then, I was moved to our biggest station, where I was...I took over being the principal of the...of the station. Now, some of the missions, of course...missionaries thought that was absolutely awful to put me into that job, but there was nobody else to do it. And so I ran the station school, which was grade one through six. The curriculum was pretty well decided by the Belgian government, so I didn=t have to worry about that. And there was another missionary there, another Wheaton grad, who had instigated and encouraged the mission to get into education. Dr. [H. Wilbert] Norton had done some of that when he was out there as, our first missionary, and then, Marty Showen [?], from Wheaton, was on the station, and he helped me. Otherwise, I couldn=t have done it. And he said, AThis is nuts. We shouldn=t be putting a brand new missionary into this job, but we don=t have anybody else to do it.@ So, running the school was really not that much problem. It just...it didn=t take much sense. I mean, I=d had training as a teacher, and even though I hadn=t had much experience, my biggest blow was that they were all boys. There were about five hundred of them maybe. And my first job was to take them behind the schools and to lay out their garden plots for them, because each child had to have his own garden, partly to learn and partly to raise his own food, because they cooked their...raised

© 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T1 Transcript - Page 13 and cooked their own food while they were at school. Coming out of the suburbs of Chicago, I knew nothing about gardens except that my dad had had a vegetable garden in our backyard. And then I was to help them build new outhouses behind the school, because the government would come and inspect once and awhile to see that we had them healthy enough. I had hardly even seen an outhouse, much less knew how to build one. But there again, really, my job was just to...to tell the men who were on my crew and get the boys to build these outhouses. So that was the biggest blow to my jobs, which I=ve pointed out many times that you arrive on the mission field, and you always end up doing something that you...you=re sure you couldn=t do and you=re sure you would never have to do. And then they started that year the first sixth grade. There hadn=t been a sixth grade before that, so I taught sixth grade all morning long. So it was much too big for a brand new missionary on the field, but I survived. And then, I had only been there a year when our mission decided to cooperate in a big secondary level school to train teachers down at what was then Coquilhatville, later became Mbandaka. And we cooperated then with four other missions, and since I was available, they decided somebody...there were a couple men coming. They could take over the school that I was in, and they sent me down to be the representative teacher from our mission with our first group of students who went down into this teacher training school. And there again, I...the curriculum was set up by the government, so it wasn=t that difficult to teach, and I had no trouble with languages, which was another plus. So...and I taught under mature teachers down there, and it was a very good experience.

ERICKSEN: Going back just a minute, what was the name of the station that you first arrived at?

MAILLEFER: Lebenge.

ERICKSEN: Okay. And then....

MAILLEFER: That....

ERICKSEN: ...the station where the....

MAILLEFER: That was way up in the northwest corner, right near the Ubangi River.

ERICKSEN: And then the...the station where....

MAILLEFER: Then I went to Tandala, where I taught for that one year before I went to Coquilhatville. So Tandala was a Free Church school, again, but then, Coquilhatville was a cooperative school which the Disciples of Christ, Indiana...Indianapolis had started. And then the Swedish Baptists from Sweden and the Regions Beyond Mission from England called the...the Congo-Balolo Mission and the Covenant, Mission Covenant, and the Free Church, we then joined. And we would send a teacher or two depending on how many st...students we had as part of our responsibility to lead the school. It was a good experience in those years. We went...we were in the school system down there I think for about twenty years until we felt we could start our own teacher training schools. We couldn=t agree, of course, with everything that the Disciples of Christ had in the way of theology, nor with the Swedish Baptists, nor with the Regions Beyond. We were a very dis...different set of missions, but because it wasn=t a theological school, we could agree on morals

ERICKSEN: Going...I=m not going to keep all these African names straight.

MAILLEFER: No.

ERICKSEN: So going back to the station where you were the principal for the year, can you describe the...the physical layout of the station? What was it like?

MAILLEFER: Well, there was the typical palm lane. And the school and the church were the first buildings that you came to as you came in off the main road. And then there were the missionary houses down beyond that on the palm lane. Missionary houses are always separate from the African homes by direction and law from the government of the Belgians. No African could live within x feet of white people=s homes. And then, off on another side road was the big hospital complex and the homes for the African students from our school and the African nurses and workers. Our school was very poor. We had two buildings made of cement block with thatch roof. We had two buildings...two rooms made of...mud plastered on a sticks and stones structure with thatch roof. And then, just before I got there...no, just after I got there, they made three more buildings with cement floor out of cement block with a permanent roof, and I had a little office there. We had a homemade...we did have homemade benches, decent benches, two on a bench, but in the mud building, which was supposed to be temporary, we still had some just logs propped up on two more logs and little sticks.

ERICKSEN: How large would you say the whole compound, the station, was?

MAILLEFER: Oh, I suppose...probably, half a mile each direction. It was our biggest station, but...maybe a little bit bigger than that, but it would be considered big in...in Zaire. We were about twenty white people there.

ERICKSEN: Could you describe a typical day while you were there?

MAILLEFER: Yes. We started at...I had supervisors, African teachers, who lived in the compound where the African students lived, and so they were called out at about five-thirty and their dorms were inspected. They just slept on their own mats or little bamboo beds that they would bring from home, and they had their own pots and brought their food, so at five-thirty they would be gotten up and told to clean up and get ready and get their uniforms on, and then at six o=clock, they were marched into the church, and we would start chapel for fifteen minutes. The reason for starting so early is partly because of the African mentality (they get up early) and partly because we needed to get through all our academic subjects by noon because of the tremendous heat in the afternoon. So, [clears throat] we would have [clears throat] classes till about [clear throat] eight, and then a little free time when they would go home and clean up and maybe have a little more to eat, [coughs] and then we would start math [clears throat] and reading and arithmetic, Bible, history, and geography,

ERICKSEN: Are you meaning going out and hunting?

MAILEFER: No, no. They would...I suppose they would if...if they...it wasn=t that it wasn=t allowed, but most of them didn=t have that kind of equipment.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: They might have been able to go out and shoot birds with slingshot and have that, but most of them just had rice, beets, and peanuts, and a spinach type of leaf of some kind, and they=d cook that over an open fire.

ERICKSEN: So they=d go out looking for....

MAILLEFER: Yeah.

ERICKSEN: ...vegetables.

MAILLEFER: Uh-huh. And they would...some of them would bring food from home, and then they would walk it home again many miles over the weekend. So my dad would start at six, and worst of my academic labors were over at noon, but then I was usually out with them in the afternoon to make sure that the overseers were doing their job to see that the students were doing theirs.

ERICKSEN: Now these would be African overseers.

MAILLEFER: Yes. Uh-huh. All my staff was African. None of my teachers were that well-trained. They were supposed to have had at least six years of education before they could teach. My teachers were almost all married older men. Just about the time I came to Africa in fifty-two, they decided...the missionaries decided they would not have any more married men in elementary school. Up until that time, we still had married men. They thought that children were too dumb to learn anything on...out of white man=s books. And we had very few girls in school, because the families thought that their job was to be at home to take care of the children and to learn to be good wives.

ERICKSEN: How much did the students pay to come to school?

MAILLEFER: Well, it was heavily subsidized by the government, so that helped. We were given a subsidy as missionary teachers for being in the school and for having qualified through the courses in Belgium. Otherwise, we did not get a fee for that. This was a cause of great heartache because the Africans...as the African church grew, they thought that we were pocketing this money, and we were becoming rich on it. I think now that they=re running their school in poverty they realize that we were not taking any of that money. We lived on our support, and any money that we got from the Con...Belgian and...or the Congo government was fed back into the schools to help build schools to buy more books and notebooks. After independence, when my husband and I were teaching in the secondary school, we noticed that the grammar schools had nothing. They would come to our dumps to pick the papers off of our tin cans to just have any kind of little paper to take notes on. So the school today is in dire need of finances, and most of that finances is being channeled elsewhere where it should be going into the school systems.

ERICKSEN: What...what happened with the controversy between the educators and the...those who argued for....

MAILLEFER: Well, it...it simmered. I think it has always been there, and it will always be there. As we have lived now in Kenya, we...we still here it among the missionaries. And I think it behooves a missionary to be very sure of why they are going to the mission field, and then you don=t really worry about that. But if...if you=re...sort of a timid soul to start with, it could really bowl you over. But most of our people, it really...I would say our nurses, doctors, builders, teachers, mechanics...it...I don=t think it bothered them, but it made for uncomfortable discussions if we really got...if it...if it came to the surface.

ERICKSEN: Did it very often?

MAILLEFER: No, not really. It...it...we all loved one another. There was no problem with that. There was a real feeling of family in our Free Church. But it did come up when it came to how we would allocate the budget that was allowed us from headquarters. For instance, when my husband and I were teaching later on in a secondary school, the men who were on the committee to decide the budget for field cars decided that we missionary teachers didn=t need a car because we were teachers. We really didn=t need to go anywhere. So they allocated the cars to the evangelists and the...and...that meant that when we needed a car to go to town or to go out to see our schools that out in the out-lying areas, we had to...to beg a car. And then the feelings would surface again. So that...that was a problem.

ERICKSEN: How did...how were discipline problems handled in the school?

MAILLEFER: Usually, the African teachers could take care of them themselves. Because they were usually at least twenty-five or thirty and the students were not usually older than fifteen, which is old for elementary school, but that=s the way...well, it went. And if they couldn=t handle it, they sent them to me. And I would usually...I would never spank them myself, because that would have been too much shame for an African man to handle, an African boy even, to have a white man spank him. The little ones I would spank. But I didn=t like to use corporate punishment, because if you allow an African adult to spank a child, they usually do more than they need to. If it was really bad,

I would ask...I would expel of suspend this boy and told him he couldn=t come back to school until his father came with him. And that usually took care of it, because the fathers were helping to pay some money, and they wanted their child to get an education. But I tried not to do it too often, because sometimes the father would beat the child unmercifully, and it was unnecessary. But we did expel students. It was usually for moral reasons, usually if they had gotten in trouble with...morally with some girl. We did expel some because they...they would flunk, but we would try to keep on those that we thought could do better by letting them do it over...do a year over. But we didn=t have the discipline problems that you have perhaps here in...in any kind of an area where children aren=t motivated to go to school, because all of our children were in school because they wanted to be, because school...schooling wasn=t compulsory, and it was very hard to get into a school because there weren=t enough places. So I would say we don=t have the discipline problem that some people would have across the world.

ERICKSEN: Now you said that the teachers took care of most of the problems. How would they take care of...deal with...?

MAILLEFER: Just by being strict with them, and the students obeyed the...obeyed them because they wanted to be in school, so we really didn=t have a whole lot of trouble. Now, I think there is more trouble, because of a lack of respect, but thirty-five years ago, there was still quite a sense of respect for anybody older than yourself among the Africans.

ERICKSEN: It sounds like, on your first day, you had quite a crisis, with the rain and the mud. Did you have any other crises during your first term?

MAILLEFER: You mean as far as my missionary career is concerned?

ERICKSEN: I guess.

MAILLEFER: I mean my...I never doubted that I wanted to be there. One example of that might be the fact that, when I was in Belgium, I started to date a Belgian man who became a Christian that year. And I was so determined to stay as a missionary that I said I wouldn=t marry him unless he became a mission...missionary. And our mission wisely tethered me on that. If they had put their foot down, I might have rebelled, but they said, AOkay, Lydia. We=ll give you permission to get engaged even though we haven=t met him, and we will discuss this with him.@ And he was a university graduate who felt that he could contribute something to the work there. But as I went, he...then he came out to Eastern Zai...Kenya...Congo and worked there with a big government company, thinking that, if he was to join our mission, he ought to understand something of what Congo was like. He worked for a big mining company. And I went over there to visit him, and we became engaged. And the mission let us become engaged, even though that=s not usually done on the field. But toward the end of my term and his term, he said he just didn=t feel he could become a missionary, and I could just as easily serve the Lord among the African people if I would be married to him and work in this mining company over in East Africa. And I could see that. I knew that he was contributing quite a lot to the people over there. But I felt so strongly that I was called to be a missionary, so I broke the engagement at the end of our first...my first term. So, in a way, you could

ERICKSEN: Did you feel any either help of pressure from the mission at the time that you made your decision to break the engagement?

MAILLEFER: No. I...as I look back at now, I...I suppose they knew my personality and gave me...they gave me as much rope as they could on it. And when I made my...when I asked them if we could become engaged, they said that was okay. And when I broke it, they were sympathetic and...and I never have felt that I made the wrong move at all.

ERICKSEN: Where was the...the Free Church=s mission headquarters in Congo?

MAILLEFER: It....

ERICKSEN: I assume that=s where all these sort of decisions were being made.

MAILLEFER: Uh, no. That was really...that kind of a personal decision would be made with the home board. Our field chairman...chairman had to be notified that I wanted to go and visit him. I had to receive approval from that, basically because our...our board does have the rule that you don=t leave the area in which you=re working unless you notify the headquarters.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: And so I received their support of that, and so the missionaries on the field would have no say on that, because it was a direct ruling from headquarters. So, they were...they were sympathetic, and they were understanding. I don=t know what I would have done if they had said I couldn=t. So I think they...the Lord....

ERICKSEN: [unclear]

MAILLEFER: ...dealt wisely with them, too, in letting me feel my oats on that one.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. As long as we=re talking about the mission, what was the process that you had to go through to become a Free Church missionary?

MAILLEFER: It was much easier than it is now, and I suppose, when I became a missionary, much ea...much more difficult than ten years before that, as it=s becoming more sophisticated. I...first, I asked my pastor for some suggestions for a mission board, and he gave me these several, and he wisely included the Free Church because he was a Free Church man. And then I filled out the preliminary papers. Then, I went to Minneapolis and had an interview with the board, which was really very superficial, as I look back on it now, and they....[pauses].

ERICKSEN: Go ahead.

MAILLEFER: ...they said that they felt that they could use me if I would get this year=s education courses to become a teacher and then a year=s experience, because they needed teachers so badly on the field. And I suppose I filled out a second set of papers. I never saw the board again, before I went out. And I had a physical. That=s it. No psychological testing or anything like that. No future...final analysis of my year at Northwestern or my year in Ohio.

ERICKSEN: You say the...your interview with the board...the...the board was superficial. How so?

MAILLEFER: Well, because I don=t remember them asking me any deep theological questions. If anything, I think my home church challenged me more than the mission board did. They asked me why I wanted to become a missionary, and if I...you know, various questions. Whether or not I thought I could be effective and could I stand the heat and did I think I could stand the bugs and...they challenged me a little bit more than the mission board did.

ERICKSEN: How did Africa become the place that you decided to go?

MAILLEFER: I think probably more a romanticized decision than anything, based on these African missionaries that I had known as a child. And that was sort of the place to go in those days. China was kind of out. TEAM would have wanted to send me to Japan. Africa always just sort of was a thing growing in me that that=s where I wanted to go. It wasn=t any...there was no academic decision about it, I don=t think.

ERICKSEN: What about the Congo?

MAILLEFER: That was just because that=s where the Free Church needed people, and they were the ones that gave me the most go ahead on accepting me.

ERICKSEN: How did your family feel about your being a missionary and going to the other side of the world?

MAILLEFER: My mother was very supportive because she had wanted to be a missionary. She had never...never made me feel pushed, but I=m sure that it was probably a very meaningful thing to her that I went when she couldn=t go. My dad didn=t stop me, but he, I think, would have been very glad if I=d stayed home. But he never...he never voiced that as such, maybe more so in...when we went out the last time before he died, after I was married. Maybe then, he gave me a little bit more feeling that it would be nice if we were around. But neither one of them were against it. And I have only brother, and he just let me go my own way.

ERICKSEN: You...went you went out in 1951, you went single, and you were single for another ten years. What was...what was the status of a single woman on the mission field?

MAILLEFER: No problem at all. In...I=d felt very fulfilled in my teaching work. Maybe a little bit stymied by some of the mission leaders, although there were women on all of our committees and all our leaders and all our leading committees. Most of... (no, not, I wouldn=t say that=s true either)... a lot of us teachers were single, but we did have quite a few couples who were in the work too as

ERICKSEN: What was the status of married women? Was it different than a single woman?

MAILLEFER: No, it depended on the woman. In our mission, in the Free Church mission, a missionary wife is allowed to do...to participate in the work as much as she and her husband feel she should be doing. If she felt she should be home with her children, she was allowed to do that. But as I observed them as a single teacher...single missionary, I felt that the ones who were involved in one way or another, in...in whatever capacity or time element they could fit in, I=m sure that they were much happier than the ones who did nothing, because they would stay in their houses, and they just didn=t relate to the Africans, and then they weren=t happy. So, the...the ones who were part time, I saw several who did too much, but I think that would be the case here in the states too of a woman who=s giving too much to the work. So I think it would be quite equal to what situation you might hear...see here in the states.

ERICKSEN: Do you recall any cultural blunders you made during your first term?

MAILLEFER: Yes, but none that were ever of any great crisis.

ERICKSEN: Mm-kay.

MAILLEFER: One very silly one was that I had a pet monkey, and he got loose and knocked the whole kit and caboodle off of one of the teachers= wives heads. She had dishes and food and everything...dishes. She was going down to the river to wash the dishes, and he came along, scared her, and jumped on her, and the dishes broke. And so I went to the African man, and I said, AI want to pay for those dishes.@ And he said, ANo, in our culture, you=re not allowed to do that. You are paying by carrying the burden in your heart of the fact that you made the dishes break, so you can=t get that load off of your mind and heart by paying for them.@ And I said, AWell, that=s your culture.@ But I said, AI have to carry this now in my culture because you won=t let me obey my own culture.@ He was a very wise man and a very good friend of mine, so he said, AWell, I=m sorry, but this is the way it is.@ So I said, AAll right.@ So I went home, and I packed up a great big bag of candy, and I signed it from my monkey, and I sent that down to his kids. And that appeased my feelings a little bit, and he did accept that because it came from the monkey.

ERICKSEN: [Laughs].

MAILLEFER: Another place where we did have a little struggle was, when we were married, my husband lent, unwisely, one of his good tools to an African man, and it didn=t come back and it didn=t come back and it didn=t come back. And finally, my husband went to him, and he said, AI...why haven=t you brought that tool back?@ And he said, AWhy white man you could have had it long time ago if you=d come and asked for it.@ And so my husband said, AWhy didn=t you bring it back.@ And he said, AWell, in our culture, I keep it until you come and ask for it.@ And Eric said, AWell, in our culture, you bring it back when you=re through with it, and it isn=t polite for me to come and ask.@ So my husband was unhappy because he didn=t get his tool back, but it was because he hadn=t gone according to the culture. But as far as any...any real faux pas, none that I really know of.

ERICKSEN: Was there somebody who was sort of your guide to learning these sorts of things, so you didn=t make a mess of things?

MAILLEFER: I suppose indirectly. My...my teachers...my African...my missionary teacher, when I was learning the language, I suppose, might have brought some of these things to mind, but I don=t remember sitting through any, you know, orientation as to what I was to do and not do. I...I=m sure we were taught that you had to shake hands in the right direction and you had to...you weren=t allowed to point at people. But we were allowed to point with our tongue if we wanted to show where something was, which would be impolite in our culture. I guess just slowly you learn them. Once in a while, we do get in our...getting ourselves in trouble, but nothing that caused any great stir. I can remember...what...what...I guess I did get angry with somebody one day and broke down and cried. And I can remember then my teacher said that that was very shameful for an African man to have to talk to a woman who was crying. But that is rather nebulous in my thinking. I don=t remember it being any big crisis.

ERICKSEN: Did you have culture...any culture shock when you came home on furloughs?

MAILLEFER: People always ask us that, and I suppose we do, but I=m not too sure how much we realize we are in shock. I think maybe some missionaries have more problem with it than others, just because of their personalities.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.

MAILLEFER: Or the fact that a lot of missionaries don=t read on the field. We have TIME magazine. We listen to the radio. We get Good Housekeeping. I think a lot of those things are very important to keep up on styles. I don=t think there=s as much...there can be as much culture shock now as there used to be because we live in a much smaller world. We have a lot of people who come out. I can remember the first time a girl came to the field in 1960 as a short-termer in a mini-skirt, and we were all horrified. And the missionaries asked her to put on a long uniform. She didn=t have anything. So they made them...made her some. Said, AYou just can=t walk around here like this among the Africans.@ That was perhaps the biggest culture shock on the field. But I don=t...I don=t remember really having any problem with it. Maybe, also, coming back to my own

© 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T1 Transcript - Page 22 territory. I=ve always spent my furloughs in the Chicago area, so that helps. But I think radio and...and reading, and of course, the last twenty years, we=ve been living in Nairobi, which is a very cosmopolitan, huge, international city, so as far as dress and all is concerned, I don=t think it=s much of a problem. It=s always a problem when you come home to see the wealth among the Americans and personally realize that we don=t have it and will never have it if we stay in missions. And it=s also a discouragement to see Americans complaining of...of how little they have and when they have these boats and summer homes and air conditioning and huge cars and homes. I can see that they can kind of complain, but I can=t see that they can complain to us. I find...find that quite offensive that they=re not understanding enough to realize that we can=t sympathize with them when they=re having a hard time paying for their...their boat and their summer cottage. But Americans just don=t seem to realize that...that we=re not relating to that. So I don=t think it=s so much culture shock as a...sometimes, a disappointment, but you learn to live with it. I can remem...when my fur...when I came home on my first furlough, I did a lot of deputation. I came home from some meetings, and I said to my mother, AYou know, people don=t want to hear about Africa. They just want to tell me all their troubles.@ I said, AI get into these homes, and I do nothing but listen to people all day. They don=t ask me anything.@ She said, AWell, maybe that=s your ministry, just to be a listening post.@ And that kind of helped me that, if they didn=t want to hear about Africa, I was there to do whatever the Lord sent me there for to be in their own lives. And a couple of furloughs later, when we were living in the furlough homes, I had a...a missionary lady living next door to us, and she came sputtering over to me one day saying, ANo matter where I go, people ask me, >What=s it like in Africa?= and five minutes later, all they want to do is talk about themselves.@ And I said, AThis was my mother=s reply. Maybe it will help you.@ And I think that=s very true. But we have to be sympathetic because people haven=t lived in the enlarged world that we have lived in. And so we can=t expect them to really know how to answer...how to ask questions, even though there might be something they=d like to know. And if they say to us, ATell me about Africa,@ that=s a very hard question to answer.

ERICKSEN: I=m thinking more now about your first, maybe your second, furlough. Were there things that you missed from the Congo when you went home to the United States?

MAILLEFER: No. What...in what way? What would you mean? Fellowship, or...?

ERICKSEN: No. No. Well I....

MAILLEFER: My work, or...?

ERICKSEN: Whatever. Well, let me ask the question a different way. When you got to...to the Congo for your first term, what did you miss from your life in the West?

MAILLEFER: Oh, I suppose, being on a very isolated mission station, I missed the independence of being able to come and go as I would desire. And the missionary families mentioned that too. Now that, if you wanted to go off the station to the town two...two hours away to shop, it was unheard of that you could just take a car and go. You had to ask everybody else in the station, ADo you want to go, or what is your shopping list?@ So, you become very interdependent, so that is difficult. And of course, we missed a lot of American food, because we had very little in the way of

American foods up there. No television then to speak of, so that wasn=t any problem, but those would be things that we might have missed. But when I came home to the States, I suppose one thing that I would say that I missed was the good missionary fellowship. We had very good feelings among us as missionaries, and you become so bonded as a family that they become closer than your family here in the States. But I was very busy doing deputation and going to grad school and meeting my future husband that I really didn=t have time to...to worry about what I was missing.

ERICKSEN: What did you do on your...for free time on the stat...on the station?

MAILLEFER: That=s a question that a lot of people ask, and they especially ask it of missionary children. I=ve been a teacher of missionary children now for the last twenty years, and they=re always very concerned as to what in the world the kids do after school. I think we=re workaholics as missionaries, so we spend a lot of time working. We spend a lot of evenings writing letters, swapping books and any kind of reviews or magazines that come to the station. We make a lot of our own entertainment on a station like that. Anybody that has a birthday, it=s cause for a get together...a picnic. Playing parlor games. Of course, that=s an outpost mission station now. In the city, that was...we live...our leisure time was spent much more like it is here. Concerts and theater and programs and sight-seeing. Whereas, where we were up in the bush, there was no place to go sight-seeing even there. At my first term, there was more possibility of going to one of the big plantations to a swimming pool. And the mission did set up a little retreat at an inland lake, where they built four cottages. So, we all took terms...turns going there one or two weeks out of the year. The reason why it was so nice was because the lake had no visible source, and so the Africans were afraid of it, so it was totally isolated. Nobody wanted to be around there. But now in recent years, since the Africans have discovered that missionaries like it so much and it didn=t hurt them, they are moving in on the area, completely. So it=s not an isolated retreat area like it used to be. But the missionary kids had to have a lot of help to find things to do, especially in our Free Church school which only had forty kids which I never taught in. But there, they had to...teachers had to work hard to have evening experiences, clubs, sports, but at the big school where our kids went, Rethy Academy, they had a lot of Saturday sports. However, even there, we found that the student who gets lost in the crowd and...and in a discipline problem is usually one who doesn=t have any extra-curricular activities, because he floats after school. And my kids were involved in everything there was possible in the station, so they were really trying to get into too many things. But one child that was...I think of especially who was expell...suspended several times first, and we tried to get him interested in camera club or drama club or working on the yearbook, because he...he didn=t want to go into sports into music. He was a discipline problem because he could not find use for his leisure time. So, I think it=s probably important for a person that is a missionary to become quite self-sufficient in that...in that way, before you get to the field, so that you can find things to do that interest you.

ERICKSEN: Now, when you came back from your first furlough, you had been at the teacher=s school.

MAILLEFER: Right. Uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: Is that...did you go back there?

MAILLEFER: No. When I came back then...the first year, I was director for a elementary school in Libenge...in the city where I=d started out my first term, and then, the next year, rotating missionaries and so forth, they asked me to go back to the station where I had been principal my first year, and then I became superintendent of about twenty out-lying schools, small schools, plus being principal of the station school, so I was very busy then. Then after we were married, then we taught in our own teacher secondary school similar to the one I had taught in my first term, because we started our own then.

ERICKSEN: How was...how were the twenty outlying schools connected to the...?

MAILLEFER: They were connected in that we, at the head station, with the African board, decided who would be the teachers at these stations. We were the recruiters for the teachers and assigned them. We were the ones who had to order the books from the government for them and take the little payment that the kids gave in to help buy the books and notebooks and pencils. And then it was my job, hopefully, once a semester to inspect these schools to make sure the teachers were doing the job and to give the final test. And if the students did well enough, then they could come into our sixth or seventh grade, which was the finishing years. And that way, we sort of kept a hold of the teachers to see if they were actually doing the job, but never were these outlying schools as academically strong as the ones on the station, because the teachers just were a little bit lax in how much time they actually spent adhering to the program.

ERICKSEN: So, were the outlying schools sort of a feeder program for the last two years in your finishing school?

MAILLEFER: Yes. Uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: Does...that means that the last two years was a much larger....

MAILLEFER: No, because so few passed the exams to come into the schools. Out of...we might give five hundred tests. We still wouldn=t get more than forty who could pass.

ERICKSEN: Huh.

MAILLEFER: And of course, some of them didn=t want to come. Some of them would just go back to their villages.

ERICKSEN: How would you evaluate the effectiveness of the outlying schools program?

MAILLEFER: Well, it served the need. It made them literate. Some of those people then went on to more schooling later, adult literacy programs. It made them able to read their Bibles and know a few things. And of course, it gave them good exposure to Christianity. They did have Bible every day. So, I think it was an evangelistic re...outreach as well.

ERICKSEN: Uh-huh

MAILLEFER: And it was just a sort of a fatalistic attitude. AWell, I=ll go to school for a few years, and I can read and I can write and I can add, and that=s all I need.@ Of course, now, eve ryone of those regional schools that were growing then have now become fully full schools in their own right, and we now have several teaching training schools and secondary schools in the cities, so it was...it was a growing process, but we were...we were much to slow. We were far behind the Catholics. And that=s why so many of the leaders now are Catholic. And we see that=s true in Kenya too. The...the African Protestants wanted to take over their own schools, and some of them are not teaching as they should, and the Catholics have run their schools with imported personnel, and are...are...are fine academic standing, so they...their graduates are the ones who are getting into the universities and becoming the leaders of...of Africa, which is very sad. So we...we did our job, but we should have done more of it, and we should have had more missionary teachers to come out to do that job, but quite a few of our missionary teachers who came out to be teachers did that because that was the way that they were expected to come, but most of our married men teachers now have gone into evangelism, or they have left the field because they feel the evangelism should done...be done by the African. So we don=t have missionaries in our schools like we should have. There=s a slight change back now. We=re...we=re getting a few because the African Field Board is asking for them.

ERICKSEN: Now, would the be the African Board of the Free Church?

MAILLEFER: Right. Uh-huh.

ERICKSEN: What kind of time is being projected as far as catch up for the Protestant schools to be on par...?

MAILLEFER: I don=t think they=re even planning that far ahead. I think there=s just sort of hit or miss. Give us some teachers and we=ll see what we can do. Whereas in Kenya, there=s no move to get better teachers back into the schools. That is they=re not asking there for the white imported teachers to come back in. There are a few Peace Corps, but for instance, the big high school right next to the big missionary kids school has all white teachers, all going ahead, all kids...all the kids going on to college, and this fine boys and girls secondary school, which was all-staffed by missionary teachers and had the kids really going places, now has almost all African teachers. Some of them are not Christians. So, not only is the academic standing going down, but the spiritual standing. Now, it=s not that the Africans are any dumber. Most of them are...who become teachers are very very smart. But most of the well-trained African teachers don=t want to be out in these little schools. They want to be in the cities, where they can further their own education and their lifestyle is more comfortable. And that=s true of the medical situation in Kenya too. They=re building a huge medical complex in Nairobi, whereas the people are all out in the bush. But the African doctors don=t want to be out there. They want to be in the cities. So, for instance, the great big Catholic schools in Nairobi are all staffed with European white teachers, or they are hiring wives of expatriates who happen in Kenya working. So their academic standards are high. It=s really a shame that Protestant teaching has gone down like this.

ERICKSEN: Well, we=ve run over time.

MAILLEFER: Right.

ERICKSEN: And I think we=re going to have to pick up next time.

MAILLEFER: [Laughs]

ERICKSEN: Stop for now.

MAILLEFER: Okay.

ERICKSEN: Thank you.

END OF TAPE