Specials
Rhodesia August 1957 -
There was some really fascinating scenery such as kopjes (piled up granite boulders) and ruwaris (defined as stand alone mountains or hills rising steeply from much flatter surroundings and better known as inselbergs). Whichever this is, it was a venerated feature called Urungwe on the edge of the Methodist Mission.
Our neighbours were kind – we had no furniture, no garden for growing our own food, no experience of living without electricity, or cooking on a wood stove . . . One family offered to share a hired cow with us. It was brought to the back door where its owner did the milking – a thin stream – into a tin which he handed over to me to put on the stove before moving on to the other family.
The American missionaries were generous in giving me secretarial work and inviting us for meals, even Christmas dinner (a tough stringy goose: ‘I’d cry if it would do any good,’ said our embarrassed hostess Mrs Sells).
But since it was all new it was also exciting and children haven’t lived long enough to have too many preconceptions of the way things ought to be.
Our first station, Mrewa (‘land of the blue haze’), consisted of a collection of houses for administrators such as the Native Commissioner and Assistant NC, the Land Development Officer, a Medical Officer and so on. There was a tennis club, a row of offices, another of shops, a police station and down a dirt road in the other direction a large American Methodist mission with about 1000 boarding students. Europeans on this Native District base numbered 70.
This was our house, with rain water tank behind and plenty of dirt and dust to keep the kids happy and dirty.
Mrewa was a big area so it had a bigger than usual set of shops. “Not here? Guess we don’t really need it.” (Besides, we hadn’t the wherewithal to buy.)
The Coca Cola usually came warm.
There was even an irregular bus service.
We hired a girl named Star to help manage wood stove, bread making, tilley lamps, laundry bashing and children. Laurie spent a lot of time being trundled about on her hip or back while I worked in the school office.
Laurie, 20 months, Mrewa
A beach? No, just part of the dust patch behind our house.
King and Queen of the tree stump.
A cricket bat mades a good horsie.
We had a great success at Christmas. With hardly any money, what could we do about presents? We finally put together enough to buy two small wheelbarrows on a trip to Salisbury and here are the proud owners.
They gave Daddy a bit of respite from the usual evening romples when everyone was recovering from the heat of the day.
A couple of memories of the mission
My part-
- We were invited to a service on one of our first weekends. It was national Sunday School Day and the church was packed – lots of mothers and little children, lovely singing, and much made of the collection. What was the congregation, much of it barefoot, collecting for? Mission work among South African Zulus!
- Rev Sells had been here for some time so his sermon on another occasion when we were
specially invited struck us as somewhat strange. He spoke in English and the interpreter
repeated In Shona. Rev Sells said he wanted to talk about three ships (JF wondering:
How many people in this land-
locked country have ever seen a ship?) And what were the three ships? Worship, Fellowship and Stewardship... - I never did discover just how the interpreter managed that one, but his commentary rolled smoothly on and I’ve often wondered if Rev Sells ever realised what a challenge he’d set.
We’re in the doorway of Joyce’s quarters cum ironing hut. Ironing was essential for everything as it kills maggot eggs which therefore don’t live to hatch out under the skins of children (or their parents).
Joyce had two sons. Since she had become Christian she thought she had to leave her husband because he had another wife or two. Not the only example of culture conflict here.
We headed home, but what would our neighbours think? Phew! They weren’t yet there. What a stroke of luck that they too were late back from their trip, full of apologies for leaving their son so long.
Mrewa was the headquarters for four ‘reserves’ – areas up to 70,000 acres – named Uzumba, Pfungwe, Maramba and Mangwende, each of which had between one and two hundred kraals (collections of huts).
Record speed in reserves without stops: 10 miles an hour.
‘To the LDO with the kitten in his hat’
A law had been passed that only four wives would henceforth be recognised for purposes
such as land allocation. The census-
In one kraal an elderly man, using his fingers, slowly counted the number of his children, wife by wife. He counted the permitted four wives and then (this was a rather long session) the remaining 18 who lived in a circle outside his official huts. He finally reached the grand total of 150 children born. Of these, only 48 (about a third) still lived, sadly a not untypical proportion.
At home that evening Barry, who had returned home with a small kitten in his bush hat (like a Texas ten gallon hat) received a message tucked in an empty cigarette carton. The bearer had been instructed to deliver it to ‘the LDO with the kitten in hishat’ and the message was that the old gentleman had forgotten one wife who had borne him 3 children!
Later came Joyce, with her own two children and she stayed with us for most of our stay in the country.
Here are Star and Joyce with their young charges. Laundry is drying and behind left is the house of the neighbours we shared a cow with.
That reminds me:
One day these neighbours, wishing to go to Salisbury unimpeded left their 6 months old son with us to look after. Barry needed to make a trip into the nearest reserve – estimated to take just the morning. The baby’s parents took him with them on their bush trips. Why not all go?
Barry’s Landrover had been recalled for other Native Dept duties and we now had a less rugged Bedford. But we loaded ourselves and three small children into that and took off. The terrain looked like this and it was easy to lose our way . . . I was beginning to think: Just a morning? We’d be lucky to get back by tea time!. . .
There was land to be inspected and mapped and allocated, and livestock to be counted including cattle to be dipped and constant chemical analysis of the dip strength, and checking of contour banks and storm drains . . .
The back of our house. We still had the Landrover and Daddy was at home. The door
at the right led to the PK -
It was mercilessly hot at about 1 p.m. when, drink supply already exhausted, we rammed into a tree stump (Barry was trying to avoid some sharp projections he feared would give us a puncture) and stuck. Forever? What would the baby’s parents think? Would this be the last time I’d be ever be allowed to venture into the bush too? What now?
Leaving me with three thirsty sweaty children Barry set out on foot to look for help. Then Star disappeared too, destination unknown.
While I tried to make a game of what obviously was not, and contemplated the end of cordial relations with our neighbours for having abducted and endangered their child, the bush telegraph was at work – as it so often is. (Star had gone to set it in motion.)
An old farmer appeared complete with an axe which missed his head by centimetres with each swing. From time to time he yodelled and got a response. Other helpers appeared. There was much chopping and chipping and jolting of truck which finally parted from tree stump just as Barry returned on a borrowed bike without brakes (and a leg would to prove it), having already been informed via a yodel interpreter that the job was being done.
That is enough background I think for understanding Barry’s sketches and the pieces that follow most of which I wrote in Mrewa and which were circulated in the USA by my parents. There are quite a few more pieces. Perhaps I’ll start a series of print booklets on certain topics like Rhodesia. Dad has some items for that kind of treatment too. Meanwhile, these are available.
Living in Mrewa 2
The Governor’s Visit
How Bravely We’ve Travelled
Looking back, it’s a wonder Barry was willing to take the family with him at all,
since we undoubtedly made difficult work more arduous still. He spent his weeks
bumping about in ‘native reserves’ with poor or non-
As you can see, housing ranged from pole and dagga to sun-
Other duties included census taking and tax-
There were also classes to be organised for plotholders and aspiring Master Farmers and meetings to explain proposed improvements the land. Why are the assembled mostly women? The men have gone to seek work in town
