Christine (Finneran) McDonald, sister

I’m Sheila’s youngest sister, Christine. She was much older than me and like a second mother and I have many happy memories of our adventures together.

Sheila and I went skiing in Scotland one Easter where we had gone to visit a Kenyan friend. We borrowed skis from his school and went up the mountain. I was only able to slide backwards downhill and was just getting up from another fall, when Sheila called my name. I looked up and saw a wave of dark fog moving rapidly downhill towards us. John MacDonald, her friend, had expressly warned us about such a possibility, and had told us to get off the mountain immediately. Lucky he had, because by the time it took to pick up our skis, and get to the car, which was mercifully on the road nearby, the dense fog was upon us, but we were able to get away. It frightened me so much that I have never been skiing since. So she saved my life!

Another time she saved me was another Easter when I persuaded her to hitchhike to Greece for our 2 week break. It was more difficult than anticipated in the bad weather, so we were happy to get a ride on a German autobahn with a creepy guy who couldn’t speak English. Sheila was sitting in the back seat, me in the front, when he suddenly took out a knife from the glove compartment, calling it his ‘sister’. Then, as SF was quickly thinking about how she would tackle him with her judo moves in order to save me, he got out a gun! There was deadly silence in the car when I suddenly felt his clammy hand on my knee, which I immediately threw off. Very luckily for us, he stopped the car and we leaped out. We were both so scared that we fled into a nearby field, though there was snow on the ground, and spent the night there, huddled together on the icy ridges of the frozen earth. Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep, and were up as soon as it was light, in order to hitch a ride again as we were in the middle of an autobahn. Who was the car that immediately stopped to pick us up but a raucous bunch of GIs from nearby Frankfurt! They were just on leave, and though there were 6 of them, we gratefully squeezed in- we trusted them because they were American!! My (American) husband reminded me of them when we first met…

When I first went to visit Sheila in 1972, we drove in her grey Beetle all round Kenya, Uganda, and even the north of Tanzania. In Uganda, we drove to the furthermost western border because she wanted to see the pygmies of Rwanda and the Mountains of the Moon. With her driving and me the navigator using paper maps, she realised after a little while that I had misdirected her and we were in fact driving away from the border. She was SO disappointed, but did not utter even one word of reproach, or make me feel bad about my mistake. Is it any wonder that I adored her so completely?

Later on, we were going up a small mountainside-where we suddenly came upon an eagle. We drove around a curve, and there it was suspended in air, pumping its claws and wings to stay in the same spot-I shall never forget it. Soon after, her trusty VW Beetle coughed and died-we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. SF told me to stay in the car, whilst she went to find a village to get help. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life, I can tell you. She finally came back with a Ugandan villager, with whom she communicated in fluent Swahili. He fixed the engine by sticking half a matchstick in an engine part!

On that same visit, we stayed in Queen Elizabeth Game Park in Uganda somewhere. The campsite was just an open space in the park, with no boma (African thorn fence) around it as protection. SF considerately insisted on my staying in the one-man tent whilst she (the taller one) was cramped up in the VW. I spent a sleepless night listening to lion roars in the distance and champing grass by buffalo all around the tent. I was deathly afraid they would stampede and crush me to death.

Anyway, at dawn’s early light, I got up and went to use the primitive bathroom. It was a rickety, corrugated iron structure with a hole in the ground, but there was a sink outside. I never found out if it had running water because there was a little bat stranded in the sink. I was holding it up and ‘cooing’ to it, when I heard a tremendous thumping sound, and saw a bloody big elephant lumbering towards the bathroom. Needless to say, I can’t remember what happened to the bat, but I screamed and scuttled back to the car where SF was sitting. We then watched in horror as the bull elephant slowly lumbered towards the toilet in order to scratch its backside on the corrugated iron roof! I don’t remember much else about the episode except the Ugandan rangers falling about laughing when they heard of the ‘mzungus’ (white people) adventures with the elephant. They KNEW what the elephant’s routine was, and hadn’t warned us in advance!

I met my now husband, Michael, in Africa on a visit with Sheila and photos on this website of her climbing Kilimanjaro reminded me of some of our own mis-adventures once we married. We went camping out in Kenya near the Tanzanian border with Mount Kilimanjaro in the background. We four (Michael and his brother, Jim, me and baby daughter, Kath) had gone on safari in the famous Masai Mara game park during the migration of wildlife south in search of greener pastures. Michael was driving a hatchback station wagon with a sloping back window. We had eaten, baked beans I think, and then went to bed in the tent. I got spooked by the fear that Kath’s baby cries might alert a nearby lion, who might come and kill her, so I took her carrycot and went into the back of the car. A little while later, I woke up screaming with my face against the back window right under where some racoon-like creature was busy licking up the bean sauce spilled from the night before – it was literally 3 inches above my face! That must’ve spooked Michael because HE then came to sleep in the car too, in the back seat where he could stretch out. Finally Jim came in too, but that meant he had the worst position-by the driver’s wheel. After a few hours tossing and turning, he finally had enough and went back to the tent. As he got into his sleeping bag, he let out a terrible scream. We were horrified by it, thinking there must have been a snake in his sleeping bag and he had been bitten and would die…turned out that a stray kitten which had been playing around our campsite, had got into his sleeping bag and was snoozing, as cats do, but it had given him a terrible fright-us too! After a sleepless night by all four of us, Michael took a photo of me standing, bleary-eyed, with Kath in my arms in front of Kilimanjaro in the distance.

Another time we were staying in a luxury campsite-where they stayed when they were making ‘Out of Africa’. (Apparently, a lion was seen near the campsite, so Robert Redford bolted to Nairobi, and refused to stay at the campsite any more. They had to pick him up in Nairobi every day-an hour or more driving each way.) Michael and I had gone out on safari that day, and were driving back to camp when we picked up a Masai man to give him a lift in the back of our pickup. We turned off at the campsite turning-he still wanted to continue with us, but unfortunately we got stuck in some mud miles from anywhere. The Masai man helped us to push the truck, but without success. He then decided to walk his way home and invited us to join him. “Masai manyatta” he said, indicating with his spear that we should go with him, but I was too scared. He then went off by himself into the dark and we got back into the truck cab to wait out the night. I remember it was cold. Fortunately, the campsite managers realised about 10 o’clock what must have happened and came out and rescued us. Can you imagine what an exciting night it would have been, had we gone off with the Masai man! I can’t say he was a warrior, because he wasn’t very young, but he was wearing Masai clothes and jewelry and carrying his trusty spear.

Sheila knitted me a beautiful green PLEATED dress and jacket for my new doll, Catherine. It had a miniature ladybird brooch on it too. I kept it for years. Unfortunately, it was stored in the garage where moths got at her beautiful and loving handiwork. I was so sad when I saw it riddled with holes.

It gave me a good laugh recalling all the happy times that Shodsy (that was my pet name for her as a little child) and I spent together.