Ibadan

25 January 1959

Dear Mrs. Barnett,

Since replying to your letter of last September, I haven't heard from you. I wonder if you did receive my letter which I wrote almost immediately after yours arrived.

What I should be interested to know are the titles you have succeeded in procuring. The university, which I have just joined to lecture in English literature, is developing its researchers into African subjects, literature included. I should be glad to know what bibliography you are tackling on South African writers and if they are still in print, so that I get them. I have Dhlomo's ‘Thousand Hills’ poem.

Do write and let me know also how far you have gone in your research.

Regards

E. Mphahlele

Ibadan

16 Februrary 1959

Dear Norah,

Here we are again in a new place. I left secondary school and am lecturer in English to groups of workers who have not had the luck to enter university. We are here for the next 3 months and then I set up a base in a town 90 miles north of us. I visit 3 towns each week and it is most interesting to meet the ‘interior of Nigeria’. Also, it has a myriad suggestions for setting in my writing. Rebecca is still home. She left teaching as she said she was ‘sick’ of the profession after leaving it for 3 years. At the same time social services here are still very colonial and she hasn't struck a job in her line. In the meantime there is another baby on the way, and so it isn't so urgent for her to get work. I must say, Norah, that for the first time in our lives we find we don't have to split our hearts and heads trying to meet our monthly budget. Salaries here are 2½ times those for corresponding positions in S.A. But of course we have to try to cover long-standing commitments which with the passage of years in that miserable country have piled up. Still, we eat better and are spiritually prosperous. The children keep in excellent health.

At last I am able to report progress – some progress in the Greek tragedy: Shaka. Yes, what wonderful and awe-inspiring material! It's my current big job and I'm applying myself these days better than I could ever hope to before.