Letters from Nigeria - Deeks, Elizabeth

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Résumé :
After spending a year in Plymouth studying Teaching English as a Second Language Elizabeth returned to Vining Centre in Akure in 1981 where she was no longer the Women's Warden but taught English and later Homiletics to the men students who were training to become priests in the Church of Nigeria. These letters tell of Elizabeth's many different experiences in the college while looking after those who were sick and needed to go to the local hospital to give birth or get treatment for snake bites or Tuberculosis. Elizabeth continued to be involved with Leprosy Welfare. The most stressful time was when a visitor having fallen and broken her hip had to be taken to Lagos to fly back to England for an operation. During the college holidays, the author was able to travel one Christmas to Lesotho via Nairobi and Johannesburg and another Christmas by road to Cotonou in the Benin Republic. Then after a holiday in Nigeria Elizabeth and her colleague, Sheila, were held up at gunpoint and the car as well as all their money stolen leaving them stranded on the road. The consequences of this were tragic for the robbers and traumatising for Sheila and Elizabeth but the help they received from colleagues and friends was amazing. During this time Elizabeth went home for her parent's Golden Wedding and later for her father's funeral. She went with her mother to New Zealand to visit her brother after Mary, his wife, died. Then at the age of 80, her mother came to Nigeria and Elizabeth arranged for her to meet up with many of the old students at St Andrew's College Oyo where Elizabeth's parents worked in the 1930s. Elizabeth was born in Edinburgh in 1937. She graduated from Leicester University and taught Geography in Tottenham before going to teach in Nigeria in 1965 with Church Mission Society (CMS). She wrote letters regularly to her parents until she came home from Nigeria in 1990.

Biographie:
Elizabeth Deeks was born in Edinburgh in 1937 and educated at five primary schools in Scotland and England, and then secondary schools in Bath and Hampstead. She gained a BSc in Geography and a PGCE from Leicester University and went on to teach in Tottenham. She completed a Certificate in Religious Knowledge (CRK) and recalls that her brother then jokingly referred to her as a 'Certified Religious 'Know-all' !! In 1965 Elizabeth moved to work in Nigeria, corresponding regularly with her parents who had themselves worked there with CMS in the 1930's.