The Poisonwood Bible

atole has lost weight this winter and I've lost even more, eight kilos, so fast I'm a little scared. Probably I have whipworm again. I'm pretty sure I was pregnant at Christmastime, but now I'm sure I'm not, so there must have been a loss in there, but it's easier not to mention it to Anatole. Easier not to count it, if that's possible.
I'm losing my family, piece by piece. Father is lost, wherever he is. Rachel I could only despise more if I knew for sure which way to direct my ire, presumably South Africa, where I guess she's finally hit paydirt with her exceeding whiteness and mercenary husband. I can't reliably get a letter to Mother or Adah. Mobutu's chief postal minister, a relative of Mobutu's wife, stopped paying all the postal workers for the last year so he could use the money to build himself a mansion in Thysville. Now it takes a huge bribe or a personal contact to get mail out of the country, and the letters incoming I can only suppose are piling up somewhere in Leopoldville, being sniffed for money or valuables.
If people are shocked by these unexplained losses