Before I went to Africa, I told
my mother that I wanted a brother, but she said that was
impossible, that there was no question of that, and that she
wasn’t going to have another baby. But she did! When the
baby was being born, my father was expecting another girl, but it
was a boy! He told Mother that if it was a girl, she, my sister,
and I would have to leave the house. After that my mother never
spoke again to my father.There were twenty years between John and me. When he was four years old, I left for the Congo, where I served for seven years before I left for the first time. I went to study at Scarritt College in 1958. In 1960 I returned to the Congo, and my brother was the one who always wrote to me.
The revolution started after I had been in the Congo six months. I stayed two years, and then went back to Belgium, but I had been there only three or four months when it became possible to return to the Congo. My mother had promised John that he could go to visit me there, but because of the revolution it was impossible. After about six months I had to go back to Belgium again because the revolution continued, and I was a Belgian citizen.
After a couple of months I went in October to the United States. I got a job as a nurse right away in Tampa, where I stayed nine years. In 1964 my mother and my brother came to the U.S.A., because John had finished his obligatory military service. John wanted to study in a computer school, so he did, and graduated. Father followed Mother right away after she came. He didn’t mind that she didn’t speak to him. John got work right away in Tampa after graduating. My father was retired when he came. I kept working there as a nurse until I moved to Brooksville, Florida, where I continued nursing. My parents and John stayed in Tampa. Mother died in 1976 and Father in 1984. John is a lifelong friend for me, and still is!