CYCLE TREK THRILLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21076, 9 January 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

CYCLE TREK THRILLS.

GIRLS AMONG NATIVES. ■ ■ ■ • ' , ; t LIFE IN AFRICAN KRAALS. " In my opinion an African kraal is one of the safest places in the world." This, was the statement made to a Sunday Chronicle representative recently by Miss Audrey Richards, who, has' returned from Rhodesia, where she spent a year alone in native kraals.' -**' • v •• '■ Miss Richards, who is a slim, active girl, with curly, bobbed, auburn hair and a. merry twinkle in her eye, is a daughter : of the late Sir Erie Richards, an Oxford professor of law. She was educated at a Avell-kriown girls'- school in Kent, took a degree at Oxford, and went out to study social anthropology in South Africa. The Board of Mantu Studies of Capetown University and the British Rhodes trustees asked MiSs Richards to spend a year in -African kraals in North-Eastern Rhodesia Jto study the effect -ol the re-' cently-started copper mining industry on the village life. It took her only a couple, of months to perfect her knowledge of the dialects she was to use, and then with, her; younger sister she set off by lorry for 300 miles from the nearest railway station. • Then these two young girls, with 15 native carriers, who were, in charge of their tent, stores, bowks and ammunition, set off to trek by 4; bicycle from' village to village. Sometimes they stayed a week in one village, sometimes three weeks, and after a couple of months the younger sister had to return" to England, and Miss Audrey Richards was left alone in the middle of Africa. , In one village Miss Richards discovered that it was considered a disgrace for any girl to be unmarried over the age of 16. Hastily she and her sister invented husbands, produced pictures of officials of the university at Capetown to prove their existence. . ' Next the girls were obliged to invent a V family!" Pictures of smiling babies, quickly torn' from the condensed milk tins in their stores, were .pinned on the tent walls and were much admired by the native women. ■■ j 4 . In- another village the sisters posed as widows, since in Africa the status of a widow is a high one, and much attention was paid to them in consequence. On another occasion they were announced as the "sisters of King George."