And here is where I haven't been able to pin down in what year the following took exactly. In trying to figure it out backwards from the little bits of evidence I have and anecdotes I remember, As best I can figure it out, there were two separate expeditions out to Africa - the first was probably primarily a scouting/prospecting expedition from which he returned and reported back to the mining interests of the expedition's sponsors. Then it looks like he spent a few monthis in Holland and then returned to again to Africa. I come to this tentative conclusion based upon the following chronological sequence of "known" data points.
From the anecdotes I can remember my Dad telling me, the first expedition consisted of three people. Dick Rempt (who came to an unfortunate end as recounted later), Pieter Oosterchrist, and my father. The first two were employees of the Dutch "Billiton" company and were experienced in prospecting and mining, while my father was sponsored and paid for by the countess (i.e. Lady Cavendish-Bentinck) as general assistant to help the other two with logistics. He represented the Baroness' stake in the expedition and provided her with some percentage interest in any fruits that might come of the expedition.
Not many details are known about this first expedition except that it was based in Mbarara in Western Uganda and there were a couple more people involved at different times. Here is a picture of the establishment in Mbarara.
The sign on the building on the left reads "Billiton Company, Incorporated in Holland." On the back of this photo were some handwritten notes as shown below with an interpretation of the handwriting to the right.
The man on the right is clearly recognizable as Piet Oosterchrist, and assuming my Dad took the picture, the man on the left would be Dick Rempt.
Later, three more people are known to have joined the company in Mbarara:
Miss Ledeboer – also from Holland, a geologist.Results from this expedition were apparently encouraging enough so that Piet Oosterchrist and my Dad eventualy returned to Europe with a positive report, while Dick Rempt decided to quit Billiton, stay in Uganda, and strike out on his own prospecting for alluvial gold in the shallows of the Kagera river. During this expedition, Piet Oosterchrist became divorced from his first wife, and on returning to Holland married a remarkable lady whose first name was "Jans". Later on this couple were to become friendes of the family for the rest of their lives, and became sort of honorary uncle and aunt to me, my "Oom Piet and Tante Jans".Count Vittorio Davico di Quittengo – an Italian aristocrat who soon quit and went on to establish a coffee estate in Tanganyika (see e.g. “The Mondul Estate” on this page). In the next chapter we get to read some choice scuttlebut about Miss Ledeboer and Count Davico in some notes written for me by Jans Oosterchrist (second wife of Piet Oosterchrist whom he met and subsequently married some years after this first expedition)
Hendrik Albert Stheeman – a Dutch Doctoral Student studying for his PhD thesis, the subject of which was “The Geology of Southwestern Uganda”. Below is an image of the front page of this paper and the beginning of the Preface. The full document can be obtained from this source here
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Piet Oosterchrist and my Dad returned to Europe - Piet to report back to the Billiton company in Holland, and my Dad to report back to the Baroness in London. As a result of these reports, my Dad ended up in The Hague again and became officially employed by Billiton to become a member of the second and larger expedition to Uganda together with Piet.
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I don't know where or when my Dad first met my mother. At the time of his return to The Hague after the first expedition but before the second, she was working as a pharmacy assistant - also in The Hague.
He met her now at the "Friese Vereniging" (Frisian Society) in The Hague but whether this was their first meeting or he had known her at some earlier time before ever going to Africa, I do not know. If not, it must have been a rapid courtship, because they announced their engagement in October 1932 while he was between expeditions, and just two months before he embarked on a ship to return to Africa.
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The photo below was found in a photo album of my cousin Jan Moeselaar in Holland, presumably he inherited it from his Dad (my uncle Wim Moeselaar - who would eventualy act as the stand-in
for my Dad at the
marriage ceremony as explained later) and appears to be dated 1934 i.e. the year of the marriage. That would mean that it had to have been taken in Africa which seems unlikely - given the stiff collar
and bow tie worn by my Dad and given the formal dress and jewelry worn by my Mum - so I am inclined to
believe this picture was taken while my Dad was still in Holland in 1932 at the time of their engagement.
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My Grandfather was a Sergeant-Major in the Dutch army living at the army base in Assen. So despite coming from a Frisian family,
being brought up
in Assen (which is in the neighboring province of Drenthe),
my mother (unlike my Dad) did not speak much Frisian, although she understood it fairly well.
My mother had two brothers, Harry and Pé. My uncle Pé lived with his second wife in The Hague and I got to visit them many years later, but I knew my Uncle Harry much better. This was because we used his home as a base whenever the family (i.e. My parents, sister, and myself) would return to Holland on "long leave" once every four years or so as we grew up. Harry had a wife (Tante Dien) and they adopted a daughter Liesje.
My uncle Harry lived in the village of Epe (in the province of Gelderland) where he owned and ran a drugstore (Drogisterij) in the Hugh Street. Besides over-the-counter medicines, the store had a cosmetics and perfumes department as well as a photogrpahic department. Harry himself also dabbled as a professional photographer and was hired for the odd special assignment. In addition he had a shed in the backyard where he ran a factory that manufactured a kind of sunscreen protection fluid (also recommended as a treatment for 1st degree burns) called "Tschamba-Fii". The ingredients arrived in sacks in a form that looked lied dried chunks of clay, In Harry's factory these would be disolved in distilled water, filltered and then bottled in containers of different sizes and boxed for shipping to other drug stores around Holland. This was a franchised operation with similar factories in Germany, Switzerland, Poland and some other countries. The finished product looked like tea, and how it worked nobody seemed to know. The raw ingredients I think came from India or Nepal. The brand seems to have disappeared from the market and I recently found this on the web for the German supplier:
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