Makes you think.

by mylibrarylove

Hello again,

And thank you for all the comments and views I have received already!

I thought I’d post a few more thoughts I’ve been having as I read (:

A lot has been happening to the Price family since I last blogged, my sense of impending doom was sadly rather accurate. This next bit is almost certainly going to contain spoilers, (that’s your warning to stop reading if you don’t want spoilers (: )

So in amongst all the misfortune I was mentioning the other day I didn’t talk too much about some of the more intimate parts of the struggle the family seems to have keeping themselves alive, especially with lots of disease running rampant.

We do often see throughout the story the family taking as many precautions as they can to stay alive, i.e. malaria tablets, including of course giving the tablets to the youngest child Ruth-May. There is a slight hint that she doesn’t always take hers but with everything going on this quickly fell from my mind as I read on. Sadly and somewhat inevitably Ruth-May does get malaria, and the family being very far away from any sort of medical centre have to battle this virtually alone, unlike earlier in the book when Ruth-May breaks her arm and they manage to transport her to a facility in near-by Lepoldville.

And interesting thing to note at this point is that the Congo have been declared independent and this having a massive impact on the family. The main source of resources for the family come from the mission that Nathan has been sent by, however the new state of independence has very much thrown things up in the air. The people of the Congo feel a lot more comfortable now with their hatred of white people and the Price family are hearing many stories of white people being murdered in nearby villages like Lepoldville. At this point the mission decides to pull out until a safer time, and arranges for the Price family to leave.

I’m going to leave it as that little update for now as I gather my thoughts on what else has been happening as I have lots I want to talk about, including parrots, hunting and highly esteemed visitors! And of course I want to re-visit the subject of Ruth-May’s illness and the mission’s decision to pull out.

Ciao ❤