African Animal Life: A Memoir 1931-37: Henry Lemieux (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781481913225)

On July 9, 1931, Henry Lemieux celebrated his twenty-first birthday on the ocean liner Laurentic. He was on his way to Sudan in Africa, where he would teach for the next six years in a place very different from the city streets of Fall River, MA, the industrial town where he grew up, and Montreal, Canada, where he continued his education and began his teaching career. After the death of his widow, in 2012, this manuscript was discovered among the papers squirreled away in a back closet of the family home. After seventy years of obscurity, it shed new light on the adventures of Henry that had been incorporated into family lore. The publication of this memoir will allow anyone interested in African history to read a first-hand account of a naïve young man who had been transported from an urban environment to a life without electricity, ready access to clean water, and familiar food, to live among an entirely different culture where many varied languages were spoken. Between the lines of his memoir, one can sense his loneliness of living so far from home, but also the curiosity and enthusiasm to learn about his students and surroundings. In 1937, Henry contracted what was called "black water fever." The disease was often fatal. In that same year, the rumblings of what would turn into World War II, and rise of civil war in the Sudan, threatened the safety of the teachers and initiated their return to America. He spent months recuperating in Canada before returning to a career in education which lasted all his life. He taught in Nashua, NH, and Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, R. I., where he was Prefect of Studies. In 1975, he retired from the public school system in Mansfield, Massachusetts, where he had taught math and history and was a pioneer in developing the position of guidance counselor, a new concept in the 1950's. Henry died in 2004 at the age of ninety four and right to the end, he never tired talking about his great African adventure.