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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker Life
January/February 2004
Special Insert: In Memory of Edith Ratcliff 1917-2003
Edith's Life Story
Edith Elaine Ratcliff, daughter of John Anderson and Bernice Benson Ratcliff, was born on August 30, 1917 on a farm near Tryon, Oklahoma in the United States of America. She departed this life on July 28, 2003 at the age of 85 years, 10 months and 28 days in Kenya, East Africa.
When Edith was five years old, her mother died of tuberculosis, leaving her father with four small children — Harvey, Helen, John and Edith. Her paternal grandparents lived near the farm and helped with the children's care until her father married Edith Fern Cook on November 1, 1922. Her brother, Richard was born in 1923.
Edith's grandparents had been missionaries to the Iowa Indians when Oklahoma was still a Territory. Her grandmother was a Friends Minister.
In August 1931, the family moved about 1000 miles to Friendsville, Tennessee where her father taught in the Friends Academy. Edith and her older brother, John went through High School there and Edith graduated as valedictorian of her class. In August 1935, the family moved back to the farm in Oklahoma and she went on to Wichita, Kansas to attend Friends University. She graduated from the University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in June 1940.
"As long as I can remember," Edith wrote, "I had always gone to Sunday school and church. The folks were always very active in Meeting. Father was Recording Clerk in Quarterly Meeting. The family altar was a special part of our home life. All the time I was in Wichita, both in college and in nurse's training, I attended Sunday school, church and Christian Endeavor as much as possible. I enjoyed the Christian Endeavor meetings and was usually responsible for preparing the meetings we had on missions.
"Sometime along the way the Lord put in my mind the idea of becoming a missionary and it was always Africa. Probably there were long periods when I did not think about it, but the Lord was careful to work it all out in His own way and time. When I was 10 or 12 years old, my Aunt Mildred, who was a missionary in Southern Rhodesia, came home on furlough. She came to visit us in Oklahoma. We children thought it was wonderful to have Aunt Mildred visit us. I don't know just how much my thinking was affected by the fact that Aunt Mildred was in Africa — but it was always Africa where I was going to be a missionary. No other place ever entered my thinking. Now this seems rather strange since there were no negroes in the community where I grew up. I said to the Lord at various times, 'Lord, if you want me to be a missionary, it will have to be something other than as a preacher for you have not called me to preach.' So nursing it was."
In January 1941, Edith went to McLoud, Oklahoma to work for five months in the home of William and Marian Byerly, missionaries to the Kickapoo Indians. "It was while I was at Byerly's that I sent in my application for nurses' training at Wesley Hospital in Wichita. During this time the members of the Joint Committee on Indian Affairs came to Kickapoo for their annual meeting. Lawrence and Amelia Lindley came and when they returned to Media, Pennsylvania at the end of May, I accompanied them."
She went to Pendle Hill for the Summer Session on a work scholarship. Returning to Wichita, Kansas, she began Nurse's Training in September 1941. Edith graduated from Wesley Hospital School of Nursing with a Diploma in Nursing in September 1944.
In October 1944, she started work as a camp nurse in the Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp at Big Flats, New York. She worked there until the end of World War II.
It was while working in this camp that Edith received a letter from her pastor in Wichita, Robert Cope, asking if she was still interested in mission work. If so, he encouraged her to write immediately to the American Friends Board of Missions in Richmond, Indiana, "for they very much need a nurse in the Friends Hospital, Kaimosi, Kenya." Edith replied immediately and was called for an interview. She was accepted to go to Kaimosi as soon as the war was finished and it was possible to get passage on a ship. The appointment was made in October 1945.
She wrote, "It was a great day when on April 25, 1946, I finally started to Africa aboard the ship Marine Tiger. It was a former troop ship that one of the companies had rented to help catch up on the backlog of people wanting to travel to Africa after the war and also to bring back the many Americans who had been waiting during the war to get home. It took us 12 days to reach the Port of Spain, Trinidad, where we docked to take on food, water and fuel. We all went ashore for a few hours and had our first view of a tropical country.
"Before we reached Cape Town, South Africa, we were told that we would all have to disembark and find our own way up the east coast of Africa to our destination. Since I was traveling alone, I was able to get a booking on a freighter traveling to Mombassa after only a few days. The troop ship had had about 250 passengers on board. The freighter, the Robin Tuxford, carried only 12 passengers, unloading and loading freight at different ports along the way. It seemed very fancy after being on the troop ship. It took 17 days to travel from New York to Cape Town and 21 days from Cape Town to Mombassa.
"When my ship finally docked in Mombassa on July 8, Dot Roberts and Marian McNiel were there to meet me and help me get through customs. They put me on the 4 p.m. train to travel overnight to Nairobi. When I arrived on Sunday morning, I left my trunk in the station and took a taxi to the home of William and Evelyn Davis, friends from the first ship. As soon as I got there, I accompanied Bill Davis to his Sunday morning meeting. When his meeting finished, the Friends came into the same building and had their worship service. Bill and I stayed on so that I could greet the Friends Meeting in Nairobi. This was my first introduction to Friends in Kenya.
"Monday morning I went back to the railway station. The Kisumu train left Nairobi at 12 noon. We traveled all afternoon and all night; the train was to arrive in Kisumu at 5:30 a.m. We pulled in a little ahead of time. I was not quite dressed and I could hear people outside talking. Then I heard Dorothy Pitman say, 'What if she is not on this train?' I opened the door, and said, 'I am here. I'll be out in a few minutes.' All the missionaries from Kaimosi, Everett and Ruth Kellum, Howard and Lyle Yowl and Dorothy Pitman, had come down to meet me. They had prepared a picnic breakfast to be eaten down by the edge of Lake Victoria. After breakfast we went to town where I went into the Standard Bank and opened a bank account — the first of my lifetime. (Now, after 50 years in Kenya, I am still doing my banking with the Standard Bank.) Before long we made our way to Kaimosi. I learned I was to live with Dorothy Pitman.
"As we drove into the mission, we passed the hospital, the dispensary and the maternity building, Dr. Bond's home and Dorothy's home. This was Tuesday, June 11, 1946. When we drove into the yard, I got out of the car and began to look around. I had the feeling I had arrived home at the end of along journey. I started working the next day, June 12 and stayed in Kaimosi for two years.
"On June 30, 1948, Jefferson and Helen Ford retired from the Lugulu Mission Station. The District Commissioner at Kakamega said to Dr. Bond (who was Missions Secretary at the time) that there had to be a missionary living in the Mission House at Lugulu so I spent the month of July 1948 at Lugulu. Then Dorothy Pitman and I took our annual leave together during the month of August and in September I settled into the work in a real way.
"When I first went to Lugulu, the outpatient work was carried on in a mud and thatch building (in very poor condition) by an African man, Chilson Nate — the only staff member. (Prior to my arrival, Helen Ford had helped to oversee the dispensary. She kept a supply of drugs in her house and also took care of the money until it was collected by Kaimosi Hospital.) By 1949, I had one midwife on the staff, but I was the doctor, ambulance driver and mechanic when anything needed fixing. I could change the wheel on the ambulance. I could also remove the tire, patch the inner tube and put it on again. I bought all the drugs and did all the bookkeeping. Whatever needed doing, I was there.
"In September 1948, I felt it was absolutely necessary to have a place for the very ill patients to spend the night when they were too ill to go home or needed more than one treatment. We unlocked the men's dormitory that had been used by the Bible School which had three large rooms; we used the classroom as our Maternity Ward. We knocked the old outpatient building down and moved the dispensary into the center room of the dormitory building. We put male patients in one end and women and children in the other. Lugulu has had ward inpatients ever since that time.
"We carried on in this manner with these buildings until Everett and Ruth Kellum came to Lugulu in September 1949. Everett was in charge of the educational work as School Supervisor. Ruth helped in the medical work. I came home on leave very abruptly in February 1951 (about 5 months before my five years were finished) because I brought Helen Kindel home for breast cancer surgery.
"I returned to Lugulu in February 1952 after spending time resting and speaking in many different meetings across America. Ruth Kellum and I enjoyed working together, but in February 1953 it was time for Grace Blackburn to return home on furlough from Kaimosi Hospital. I was asked to return to Kaimosi and left Ruth to carry on the medical work at Lugulu. During the time the Kellums were at Lugulu, a four-room brick Outpatient Dispensary was built and a thatch house was built which housed five African staff members.
"While Ruth was still in charge of the medical work at Lugulu, in 1954 she had the maternity building re-thatched with the lovely hollow-stemmed thatching grass that lasts many years. It really looked beautiful. But one day in 1958, when Dorothy Pitman and I went to Kaimosi, we returned at dark to find the maternity building burned to the ground. Fortunately there were no maternity cases in the ward that day — only one orphan baby and the maid taking care of her. They got out, but everything was lost. From 1958 to 1960 we raised money and on December 30, 1960 we opened a new maternity ward with 12 beds, a delivery room and one private room, just for emergencies. I thought we had a big maternity ward. But you know that by the end of four years that building shrank so that it could not accommodate all the people who came for delivery! You see, in 1964 we had 324 deliveries at Lugulu, with 22 sets of twins and three sets of triplets born as well as 1,999 general inpatients.
"The medical work at Lugulu continued to grow. By 1964 our dispensary building, built about 1951, was bulging at the seams. We had 13,610 outpatients and they were all being examined and given injections in a room about 8 feet wide and 12 feet long. It became absolutely necessary to have a larger outpatient unit. We had been collecting money to build some new inpatient buildings, but about 1966 I asked if that money could be used to put up a new outpatient unit. The mission board agreed and the USFW women in America helped us a great deal. We had the official opening performed by the Minister of Health, Joseph Otiendo, in June 1967.
"As the medical work increased, it was necessary to increase the number of staff and also the number of staff houses. In 1963 we started a staff house on faith that the money would come to finish it. It did, and when the house was finished we called it our faith house. More money came in and we built more staff houses. By 1965 we had these staff members: an office clerk, an ambulance driver, three men who helped with treatments and also night work, two midwives and four nurses.
"In 1970 and 1972 we built two long wards in back of our maternity ward — one for children and the other for women. In 1973 a gift of money came that made it possible for us to build a house for a doctor.
"Our medical work continued to grow. In early 1976 we had a visit from government officials in Nairobi who were impressed with what they found. They returned to Nairobi and had Lugulu Friends Health Centre gazetted as a cottage hospital. We at Lugulu learned about it almost 6 months later. About April 1 we learned that we were a hospital and on April 7 the government sent a doctor to Lugulu who was a refugee from Uganda. His wife joined him later. It was so wonderful for have a doctor again.
"In January of 1979, I moved back to Kaimosi where I finished my medical work. This was about the most difficult move I ever made, but looking back on it I can see that it was the Lord's will for me to return to Kaimosi to finish my medical work at the place where I had started. With my move, a second doctor's house was made available. By that time, Lugulu needed a fully trained medical doctor to take over the hospital that had come into being during the years from July 1948 to January 1979. I had a good four years at Kaimosi before I retired from medical work and become a volunteer to help with church work."
Edith moved from Kaimosi in July 1984 to live in the Masiyenze village, where she was permitted to build her own house in the home compound of Meshack Mudamba and family. She lived and worked as an evangelist in the community and in many other meetings in the Yearly Meeting. After Musingu Region was set up in January 1988, she served in many capacities in the regional and local meetings.
Edith was Recorded as a Minister in the Friends Church in August 1969 by Kansas Yearly Meeting of Friends in Wichita, Kansas (now Mid-American Yearly Meeting).
Compiled and edited by Trish Edwards-Konic from documents written by Edith Elaine Ratcliff in the 1980s and 1996. The 1996 document was previously edited by Elizabeth Gates in 2003.
Copyright (c) 2004 Friends United Meeting
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