Repository: UIHistories Project: UI Library School Alumni Newsletter - 21 [PAGE 29]

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Alumni

A lf

News Letter, 1935

Houkom, M.S. '33, was married June 23, 1934, to Miss Mathilda X viand. Assistant Dc.m oi Women at S t Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota. Mr. Iloukom is Librarian of St. Olaf College. 0* Order partmc ity is Library. Alberta A. Auld, B.S. 33, is taking some graduate work toward the Ma-tor's degree and working part time in the Binding department at the University of Illinois this year. Lela E. Allred, B.S. '33, is now Librarian of the High School Library, Rogers, Arkansas. Simone Van Biesbroeck, B.S. '33, is an Assistant at the American Medical Association, 525 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois. .Mrs. Eve Kohl Clarke, B.S. '33, resigned her position as assistant in the Public Library at Wilmette, Illinois, to accept the position of librarian in the Calumet High School Library, Chicago, September, 1934. Leslie K. Falk, B.S. '33, has been an Assistant in the Army Medical Library in Washington, D.C., since last October. Hoyt R. Galvin, B.S. '33, has been appointed as Reference Assistant in the Technical library of the Tennessee Valley Authority with headquarters at Knoxville, Tennessee. Virginia J. Gray, B.S. '33, is teaching French and acting as Librarian in a high school for the children of missionaries in the Belgian Congo. Her address is Care A.P.C. Mission Lubondai (Tshimbula) Congo Beige via Lobita, Africa. She has written several very interesting letters relating her experiences in making the long trip via auto from Matada to the interior. While everything was interesting and often picturesque, she was disappointed not to see tigers and crocodiles at every turn. For nine days ^hey drove over every sort of country from mountains to vast stretches \oi sand, and it was more often cold than hot. The native villages were ^specially fascinating, some just grass huts, others of clay with whitewashed walls and crude drawings on them. The natives were curious but friendly. Lubondai is a lovely spot located in a plateau 3000 feet high; there are five residences, two guest houses, a church, the hospital, and the buildings of the native boys and girls homes, all of the houses being built of brick made by the industrial workers of the school. A later letter tells of a vacation she took with two other teachers in a Chevrolet truck. "After much discussion as to whether three girls should go off alone, we jogged away and had a better time than has been had in many a Rolls-Royce. We must have made a ridiculous picture tho, with tropical tin trunks, chop baskets, sun helmets, and the native boy. Driving in the Congo presents difficulties, torrential rains may wash away parts of the road, or deep sand may be encountered. Native villages swarm with humans, and animals of all kinds, especially starving dogs. A Congo ferry is a plank platform stretched out on native pirogues or canoes. You get onto it across two boards about a foot wide. It's quite a trick to center the wheels and once on not to plunge off the other end." She spent Christmas at Bibango where another native school is located. This is a beautifully located station, "it teeters dizzily on the crest of a peak, the houses are built with their backyards in neighborly proximity, and their faces out in the atmosphere; the view is made up of peaks and abruptly rolling hills which arc carpeted witli lush green grass, but the narrow valleys between are thickly forested. Living in sight of that