Ma and Pa Garlough

above Pa Garlough and his wife Sabina are pictured in Kenema. Pa Garlough is just heading off to work. Taken in 1969. 

Although this picture has been posted a number of times these two folks were perhaps the family closest to us while we lived in Kenema.  Pa Garlough had been in WW II in Burma with the West African Expeditionary Forces and had come back to work at Forest Indiustries in Kenema where he was a night watchman.  Sabina, his wife (pictured here) became our friend early on. She sold food occasionally at the local school market, ran a household, fed them and us, and some of her children were also our friends. They lived across the road from us.  Sabina was a country woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a very caring attitude toward her family and us as friends.  She asked nothing in return.  When she felt that we were too busy teaching to cook, she took it upon herself to see to it that we had a rice meal nightly.  The Garloughs lived simply - they had little money but were happy and satisfied with what they had.  One of their grandchildren - Baby Elizabeth - who is also pictured a number of times in prior postings - attended the local girl's primary school - we paid her school fees.  I was struck by how we and the Garloughs came from such different worlds - but yet to this day I have such fond memories of their many kindnesses as they reached out to us as their neighbors.  They were very wonderful people.