| Description | The depositor spent two years teaching in the Cayman Islands. The file also includes a detailed typed account of his time there which was written in the 2010s.
The letters are sent from the West Indies, and later in Kenya. They reflect the end of empire and the emergence of independent commonwealth countries or in some cases Crown Dependencies. There are also a limited number of letters from his time leading the VSO programme in Tanzania. Some of the letters are to Howard from his acquantancies.
He mentions the poverty for many locals and the paucity of public services (which he says was an aspect of colonial neglect). He comments upon the impact of a proper airport able to receive jet aircraft, the beginnings of offshore financial services and the commencement of drainage of the swamps and how mosquito control changed the prospects of the islands. (Richard Ward the volunteer with whom Howard lived and who worked on Mosquito control, later became Professor of Medical Entomology at Keele).
A separate bundle of letters document his visits to Jamaica and Haiti which were sent when Papa Doc Duvalier was ruler. |