At sunset we saw camels crossing the plains. In the distance mountain peaks pierced low hanging clouds. My only regret was that I didn’t get to ride a camel!
Friends had wakened them at 4:00 a.m. to see the Southern Cross,
a beautiful Constellation. We stayed up to see the first sunrise we’ve watched at sea. Our last evening on board was the prettiest. The whole western sky was crimson. The full moon came slowly out of the water, almost red.
On New Year’s Day, 1934, Martin wrote a hurried note to his other family, his new in-laws, telling them that the mail boat would arrive in a few minutes. They were glad to be so close to the end of their voyage “and yet the old boat has come to seem almost like home.”
Mabel knew that her family would want to know about their last day on board the ship:
January 2, 1934
Yesterday at 5:00 a.m. we went on deck to see the gold sunrise on the spire of the Sule [SOO-LEE] Pagoda, the largest in Burma. That was proof to us that we had left the Indian Ocean and had entered the Irrawaddy River. Near enough to shore to see lights, and campfires in the woods. One of the loveliest sights was a butterfly-wing shaped sailboat gliding along in the path of the moon.
The newlyweds said farewell to the friends they had made during the long sea voyage and spent a few days in the capital city of Rangoon. Nothing was familiar among the sounds and sights and smells of an Asian city, warm and muggy even in early January. Mabel and Martin met church coworkers from the city and those from surrounding towns who had come to greet them. It took several and nights before the rocking of the ship gave way to “land legs.”
The couple’s next letter home was postmarked Bhamo (BAH-MOW), a river town near the China border where they were to live and work. They had taken the train from Rangoon to Mandalay and then up the Irrawaddy River by boat.
8
January 17, 1934
Dearest Ones [Mabel to her family],
We came just a week ago today, but it seems much longer, not meaning that the time drags, but it seems impossible that so much could be contained in seven days. A friend took us in his car to mail the last letter to you. From there we went to a Chinese bazaar to order 3,500 walnuts. Yes, they count them out instead of weighing them. Our co-workers in Rangoon had asked us to send the nuts back to them from Bhamo. The clerk gave us a few delicious dried persimmons, dipped in powdered sugar.
Their first job was to learn Kachin (ka-CHIN), one of the five main languages of a country the size of Texas. While some of the local people had studied British English, their Kachin teacher spoke not a word: “I have heard that is the best way to learn a language, but my arms are tired from trying to speak in gestures all day long.”
At the church-run school the first and second graders all said good morning, and some recited “Ding, Dong Bell” and “Little Boy Blue” to welcome us. Now I can understand how hard it was for them to learn those nursery rhymes in English. Luckily for us, it was an American pastor and teacher, Dr. Ola Hanson, who developed written Kachin. I say “lucky” because he used the Roman alphabet. We each have a Bible and hymn-book in Kachin to take with us to church and school chapel. It helps our language study to mumble along with the congregation.
Mabel knew that her father, with Scottish roots, would enjoy her word pictures about the bagpipes played for the colonial governor who had just paid a visit to upper Burma:
There were about 150 dancers dressed in red and black, with beautiful woven Kachin bags over their shoulders. The women had on big silver necklaces and the men carried swords that gleamed in the floodlights. While I was impressed with the bagpipers and the dancers, the governor looked a bit bored. His Excellency is a huge Irishman.
It is difficult for us to imagine a time without the Internet connecting loved ones spread across the globe. Letters took a long time back and forth, but Mabel, Martin and their families tried to keep up conversations by mail. However out of date were the letters by the time they arrived, Mabel’s mother would share the weekly news from Burma with relatives and neighbors. When they had made the rounds, Florence Orr would save them in her dresser drawer. She would write back about what was happening in Birmingham.
Mabel, in turn, would recount visits to schools and attempts to master a new language: “Some of the students were helping me clean house the other day. I went through all sorts of antics, showing them what I wanted scrubbed and swept. We had a good time laughing at each other.”
Bhamo, February 23, 1934
Dear Families,
Our first long “jungle trip” to the mountains will be the main theme for our weekly letter. The alarm clock made us rise at 5:00 last Saturday morning. We literally took up our bed and walked, or rather “rolled,” bed rolls made of green canvas, with leather straps. We took a car twelve miles to the end of the road and transferred to mules and ponies. At ten o’clock we stopped at the village of Law Dan and had a delicious breakfast; the head of the school was our host. It was our first meal under a thatch roof. The walls of the house were made of bamboo matting. Huge clumps of bamboo, teak forests and waterfalls along the trail. We heard the shrill cries of the black gibbon, a large monkey too wild to come in view of the path. Before we came in sight of the village we were to visit, we heard drums and bagpipes coming to welcome us. All the school students were lined up along the road, singing to us. We were escorted to a spotlessly clean house, which even had a small heater, welcome at night. A steady stream of villagers came bringing an abundance of all kinds of vegetables, eggs, chickens, and rice. Had delicious chicken curry and soups. A pretty young girl gave me a bag she had woven. Monday we walked over to the village of Sin Lum. Nothing could feel better than a hot bath in a big tin tub after such a trip! Love, Mabel
Sometimes homesickness crept into the handwritten note at the end of Mabel’s report letter: “No U.S. letters this week. It is Mother’s Day and I thank you for your constant love and support.”
Slow mail service was a frustration even within Burma. When Mabel needed to have several teeth filled, she had to go all the way back to Rangoon to see a dentist. “We better complain to His Majesty the King of England about the mails [Burma then a British colony],” she wrote to her new husband when her letter to him didn’t arrive. Then her mood lightened: “The train compartment had my name as ‘Lady Mabel.’ What did the trainman think of British royalty eating her lunch from an Indian tiffin-carrier [stacked lunch bucket]?”
While Mabel was having dental work done in the capital city, Martin was working in a village on the border between Burma and China: “I learned more in a week about village people than I would have in ten years in the United States, because I learned how they feel about life, and even about Americans.”
Mabel was ready to return home to Bhamo, and she was impatient because a washout on the train tracks kept her in Mandalay on Martin’s June 29 birthday, exactly a week after hers. Their first birthdays as a married couple, and they could not be together: “Look in the bottom of my brown trunk. I fixed up your gift in case I didn’t get back in time to celebrate with you.” Then Mabel described her June 22 celebration: “A friend and I had durian last night. It has such a strong garlic smell that the others made us eat it on the back porch. Birthday dinner, chocolate cake and ice cream finally took the taste away. This is one fruit we don’t want in our little orchard.”
In August of 1934, Mabel, who struggled with dental problems all of her life, found herself headed back to Rangoon to the dentist: “I need several teeth pulled and partial dentures. I feel much too young for that.” But the dentist knew that Mabel would be far away from regular checkups and told her to wait in the city until the dentures were finished.
To a friend in the States, Mabel described the long ride home on an Irrawaddy River boat:
Ribbons