Our history defines who we are. Africa is our identity.

What kind of ship was it, which soon was to leave the harbor and who were the passengers? The countries which were involved in the war were making an exchange of war prisoners, managed by the Red Cross and assisted by the Swedish America Lines ship Drottningholm.

This ship was painted all white and on the sides the word PROTECTED had been painted with big, black letters. In order not to cause any misunderstanding for submarines and similar vessels, the ship would be fully lit at nighttime, presumably being the only ship fully illuminated on the seven seas at this time.

The crew which should have consisted of 250 men was hardly fully staffed on this journey. The ship was destined for South Africa to pick up 1000 detainees who were to be taken to Lisbon in Portugal. They were to be exchanged for 1000 persons from the allied side. We were now, at last, on board of a big, nice Atlantic cruiser.

In order for us to not see too much of the war, our ship was to take a westerly route: past the Faroe Island, close to Iceland, approaching New York (having just two days distance to it), and then south, not very far from South America. We were to berth at Cape Town, but because Japanese submarines were active in the area, the ship headed 100 Nautical miles south of South Africa and then up to Port Elizabeth in the Indian Ocean. We debarked there on June 15, 1944.

When we passed Norway, German officers came on board for inspection. All our passports were collected, and we had to stand in long rows. A tense silence prevailed. Only the German officers went along the rows, screening everybody. They compared us with our passport photos, and we tried not to evade their glances, when they stared at us.

Every day a big bell was rung at noon time. But one day it was silent. No unnecessary sounds were to be heard across the sea. Far away we could see a number of ship silhouettes, one after the other. All of them were like grey ghost ships. Josef counted 80 of
them. We would later read on the ship noticeboard about the invasion in the Normandie, we understood that we had seen a small, small part of a big armada. Besides that, we saw very little on the seas. On the other hand, there must have been a number of eyes that were following our actions through submarine towers or periscopes.

What was then, my first impression of the Africans when we finally debarked? Most of the first ones were workers in the harbor. Well, strangely enough it was their beautiful, well-formed and rather small hands. When they were talking and making gestures, their hand movements were soft like the ones made by a (musical) director. A couple of years later, when I attended a meeting in Tanzania, I suddenly realized that the people surrounding me were those people, whom I had read about in my schoolbooks.

From Cape to the Equator
The long journey started to the north. Day and night, trains after trains. We saw cities and villages, slum areas, kraals and single huts together with huts for storage. The vegetation varied from tropical abundance to deserts with gravel and sand and some thorn bushes. When the train stopped at a station, soon a number of salesmen gathered outside the train windows. They offered to sell plaited baskets, animals carved in wood and other souvenirs. We stopped a couple of days in Johannesburg-South Africa, in Bulawayo-Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe). During the journey through Belgian Congo (Zaire) part of the journey was made by bus. It was the section between Kamina and Kabalo. That bus trip took approximately one day. It was crowded, hot, dirty and extremely dusty due to the fine red soil. Before travelling that distance, we had made a stop in Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) where we stayed at a hotel for some days. We stayed in a nice part of the town. The streets were broad, often with big, blooming trees, beautiful European houses and sometimes big, lush gardens. But we continued our journey and on July 5 we reached the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. Only one more night of travelling, taking a boat over the lake, and we were to debark in Kigoma in Tanganyika.

Tanganyika (Tanzania)
Early next morning we were approaching the new country. In the scarce light it seemed to me from a distance as a big desert like plain, resting in deep silence. From Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika we continued on the railroad to the interior of the country. Josef and I together with Rakel Lundström were to continue to Bukoba, Via Tabora to Mwanza and a night spent on a boat on Lake Victoria we arrived in Bukoba on July 11, 1944, seven weeks after starting from Gothenburg.

We had finally arrived in our little town, although we were not to live there. Our first home in Africa would be at Kigarama, up in the hills close to the western shore of Lake Victoria, close to the Equator. Kigarama was located high up and when the heavy rains came the water found its way through small brooks down the hill and on top of every brook a bridge was needed. While living there, I could count 25 small bridges between Bukoba and Kigarama.

People had to first put some logs over the brook. Across the logs some boards of timber were put close to one another, but they were not nailed to the logs. When Emil, our driver, had checked the bridge and then drove on it to the other side, you could hear the boards of timber jolting. We succeeded, however, in passing the bridges. For sure, the bridges would have been better if the Mission had been more developed and the African Church as well.

I remember once that the car stopped when Emil was driving down towards Bukoba. He needed some steel wire to repair something in the car engine. I gave him a couple of my hair pins. And – he succeeded in starting the car. ” You use what you’ve got”, as we say in Swedish. But you hardly experience something like that more than once in your life…

… and here we have to leave Judith and Josef Imberg for this time.