Titch the dog and Blunder

When we were still at the Location House we had a strange little dog called Titch. He can be seen in another blog of mine below. He lived a regrettably long time. No-one really liked him. He had teeth jutting out his lower jaw and large protruding eyes and an irascible temper. He was also insanely jealous. When I was about 7 he killed our new kitten while we were at church. We came back to find the lounge full of blood and a savaged kitten corpse. My father was a man of few words and normally quite placid. He tenderly placed the kitten on a shed roof outside and then beat Titch until he howled. My mother hurried us sobbing kids inside but I do remember feeling that justice was being done.

Blunder was an enormous army vehicle from the Second World War. My dad had even used it as a plough on the farm. It was in permanent four-wheel drive and had bullet proof tyres. I will try to find a picture on the Net - I think it was a Bedford. I used to spend endless hours playing in and around it. It ceased to move from a lack of spare parts so my dad just kept it in the garage. I was once even inspired to stand on the high bonnet and wee far into the air.
I found a picture on the Net and it is posted above.
The following description is interesting: "CMP - Canadian Military Pattern, Heavy Utility, Personnel: Between 1939 and 1945, Ford and GM worked together to produce these trucks for the Commonwealth’s WWII efforts. "
Found another picture which is a Ford (the top one) looks more like the Blunder I knew

Stranger in the house

When my parents left the farm in Umvuma my dad found a job in a tobacco-curing company. He worked such long hours that he left before dawn and arrived after I was asleep. Once he arrived home early and had supper with the family. I was apparently very worried and drew my mom aside and whispered in her ear, "Who dat man, Mommy?"
My mother had little family stories we used to hear often. Another one about me was that I took a long time to talk as a toddler. My first utterance was during a bath, piping load and clear, "Don't wash that laig Nanny, I washed that laig 's morning."

Living in Gwelo - Safety and other trivia

As soon as I was given my first proper bicycle (a Raleigh) for Christmas at the age of 10 I was on the road. My mother was the most neurotic mother imaginable. "Don't climb that tree - you'll fall down." "Be careful, honey" was her creed. And yet such was the blandness of life in Gwelo she was quite happy to let me go cycling on my own all afternoon. And I didn't just stick to roads - one could dive off into pathways through the bush, twisting and turning. I was humming along a bush path at full speed once when I saw a big hole. It was a mine shaft - completely unprotected. I called some friends and we took turns throwing rocks down and listening for the distant splash. There was absolutely no danger from other humans - kids could roam where they wished. Cars on the road were no real danger because the roads were wide and on most roads there were cycle paths running parallel. Gwelo is also exceptionally flat - the whole of the Midlands was once a seabed. There was only one biggish hill called the Kopje (Koppie). My dad who studied Archeaology though Unisa used to take us there to find stone age axes - we found hundreds. When I was 11 my dad used to let me drive his Landrover on the bush roads behind the Kopje.
After moving away from Riverside we moved closer to town, into a house called a pise - it was basically poles and mud construction but well-built - very thick walls (picture above). After WWII there was a shortage of bricks so many houses were built like that. I remember it as being very cool with a long passage where I could play cricket with my friends.

We had a large family living over the road who initiated me in some of life's secrets. They had their own gang and we made a fortress in the bush. The password was "Bernadine" They taught me how to sling a brick about 50 metres. One of them had a girlfriend and there was talk of showing me some interesting things but the oldest brother looked at my wide-eyed face and said I was still too young. They had chickens in the yard and fixed motor-cars. Our next-door neighbours had a baboon which lived at the top of a pole. (You can just see the pole with a little hut on it just above my sister's head in the picture above.) Every now and then it escaped and there would be frantic hustling and bustling and closing of windows. My mother lived in fear of the wretched baboon.

I had my own pellet gun and used to blast my dinkey toys pretending I was a sniper.
I was back at my original school Cecil John Rhodes Primary and had two big crushes, one of them on a girl called Melanie. I was so painfully shy all I could do was fantasise that her bike had broken down and I could give her a lift. She must have sensed some of this ardour because at an end of term party we played "Spin-the-bottle" and she spun it straight at me. I was supposed to kiss her but I didn't, alas.

We moved into a nice house directly opposite my school and were there for my last two years of primary school. I would vie for first place with Jimmy, an American boy, who is now a Maths teacher in the States, and Audrey who sadly died of cancer in her 40's. In the final exam I just pipped them and was awarded Dux with a big book prize. Predictably I chose a lot of books about pilots and a novel by Stuart Cloete who was considered very racy.

I read prodigiously and was hard-working but when I compare my zero social skills and inability to talk to adults with the all-round skills of my youngest son who is about that age now I have to say that the modern child is much better prepared for life.

Fighter Pilot and shattered dreams

For a long time - from about the age of 10 to 15 I deeply wanted to be a pilot. I knew all the hero pilots of the Second World War, collected books and stories and knew the names of every airplane that ever flew. I had a model plane collection (Airfix) of about 60 - all carefully painted with Humbrol paints. It just took one chance remark by someone that pilots had to have perfect vision to shatter the dream. I just quietly put it away.
I discovered the last broken model plane the other day - can't even remember its name

Life in Gwelo 2

After the disastrous fire we moved to a suburb called Riverside. The day we moved in I wandered out of the yard to a massive boulder in the centre of the road. It had been too big to move so the road had split around it. I was clambering over the granite when a boy about my age appeared and without any preamble said, "I am going to hit you with my belt." This was too much for my tender soul and I fled home sobbing. That was the introduction to the rough neighbourhood. I had to move to the local school (Std 3 or Grade 5). We used to play wild games of "Open Gates" on the big field - the whole school participated. There were whispered stories about what went on with the older pupils in the reed banks next to the school. Altogether quite exciting. We moved to another house in the neighbourhood and I remember having shooting wars with real pellet guns in the nearby bush- once I came home with a pellet sticking out of my leg. I still have a scar there. Perhaps that's why we moved out of the neighbourhood within a year.

The Cursed Pot

My dad was a confirmed prospector. Any available time he had he was off into the bush trying to find gold or antimony or emeralds or whatever lead he could follow.
On one of the sites - I remember it well because I was taken there a couple of times, they nicknamed Pipe Dream because every prospector dreams of discovering a pipe of gold. It was next to a huge koppie (outcrop of granite which are very common all over Zimbabwe). I can visualise the sight of a pebble of pure gold stuck in the decomposed granite. At the top of the koppie there was a shelter between huge boulders which had a decorated clay pot. The koppie was a sacred site to the Shona people. Now my dad was very sensitive to local customs but he was also an amateur archaeologist and he couldn;t help himself. He took the pot home. Inside was earth and some beads. I think this is what he couldn't resist because he recognised them as Phoenician trading beads. There were two type - small rounded blue beads and longer cylindrical blue beads. He removed the beads and had them verified by the local museum to which he donated them.
The pot though was a sensitive issue because our cook took one look and bolted out the house, saying he would not return until the pot was far away. So my dad took it out the house and put it on top of the gardening shed, still with its sacred earth inside. Shortly thereafter our house was burned down and my mother always attributed it to the presence of the pot, which disappeared during the fire.

Life in Gwelo

When I was between 5 to 13 years of age we lived in Gwelo. My Dad found a job in Local Government in the administration of the township - a large settlement designated for black people. I am not an apologist for racist policies but people don't realise that there was a admittedly paternalistic but gentle side to the division of society. My dad spoke fluent Shona and Ndebele, was well versed in custom and tribal law and was highly respected. He was actually a frustrated social worker because he worked tirelessly in upgrading amenities. He planted trees all over, built a soccer stadium and olympic-sized pool. He hated the tedious nature of his job at times and used to rather go out an talk to the people. His office in Gwelo was right in the township and every Friday night he used to personally show movies at the local town hall. He never used to worry about security and our house was just on the outskirts of the township.

In 1960 the ANC from South Africa stirred up political rioting in Rhodesia. I was 9 and our house was burned down. We had friends over to supper and to this day I remember the sudden alarm when we heard the roar of an approaching crowd. Roar is too loud a word - it was like a deep humming murmer. The police phoned and told us to wait for them. We all stood in the passageway my dad and his friend armed with a pistol and shotgun. My brother was two years old - my mother holding him tightly. We didn't pack or take anything when the police arrived - they escorted us out behind an armoured car. My dad drove his car - a Humber Hawk and we went to stay the night at the friend's house. In the morning my mother woke me gently and said, "Peter, our house has been burned down." All I could say was, "Do you think I will find my marbles?"
I have added the picture of the house above. We went back to the house the next day. It was still smoking hot - just the walls standing. All the glass had melted out the windows into beautiful shapes. We sifted through the embers. A few things like the bowl from my mother's mixer and a few ornaments did survive. My mother spent hours looking for her diamond ring. I never did find my marbles.
At school I was sent out by the teacher to get some water and she must have spoken to the class because the following day there were big parcels of clothes for me. I was excrutiatingly shy so all of the exposure was much worse than the fire.

Life on the farm

My earliest memories of life in Rhodesia are of a farm near Umvuma. (I am using old pre-revolution names because they resonate in my memories better.) I was born in 1951 so this was in the early 1950's. My parents were owners of a tobacco farm and I do have distant impressions. The land is very flat and sandy there and I remember playing in the long avenue with my dedicated nanny called Lenice. I was constructing an earth oven in the sand. The avenue was very long - probably about a kilometer between two lines of massive gumtrees. There is just an impression of sun and contentment and the concentration of putting in the sticks which the pots would rest on. My parents were poor but as usual on a farm there were many servants and my nanny looked after me the whole day.
I was actually born in a maternity home in Gwelo which is about 60km away I think, and brought back to the farm.
My father worked very long hours. The tobacco had to be cured very slowly and with carefully controlled temperatures in the tobacco barn.
My dad was a gentle man but he did have a short fuse and my mother told me he once broke his toe kicking the backside of a worker who let the fire die down.
Other memories are an amalgam of impressions and family stories. I do remember the PK with a sense of foreboding (this was the Picannini Khaya - or small house - the toilet) Like all farm toilets it was a 'long drop' with a wooden seat - well a plank with a hole in it. The PK was covered with a bougeinvilla - a decorative but very thorny creeper/bush. Cobras were fairly common and they liked living on the roof of the PK. My father killed one with the Japanese sword which was a keepsake of World War II - I will tell you that story soon. At any rate it is little wonder that most toiletry business at night was done into the 'jinky' - a chamber pot.
My father made all the furniture out of packing cases. They had two disastrous seasons in a row - first too much rain and then too little. There was no money and not many alternatives. My mother told a story that there was no food in the house one day so my dad said that they should go for a walk. They came upon a whole field of mushrooms which sustained them for a few days.
They had to leave the farm eventually and my dad found work as a tobacco curer in Gwelo.

Are you experienced

Well ... I am. Actually I looked at my first blog and Lo! it felt good.
I browsed around and thought what a great service. I am bored to hell with Facebook - no-one cares what I post. My friends aren't really my true friends.
This blogging really serves the garrulous nerd in me. Now I can hold forth on anything at all. I don't even have to care whether anyone actually reads it. What liberation.... now what to write about first.
Reminiscences .... nice safe early topic. I'll write about early experiences in Zimbabwe where I grew up. Not political - I am excruciatingly bored by politics - especially concerning my land of birth. Mugabe, Smith and all politicians began the whole slide into ruin. There - I have alienated most people already - and can proceed with my gentle reminiscences which have nothing and yet everything to do with politics.

Inaugural address

Well that's what it feels like right now. I feel tentative and uncertain, like a virgin outing (well - outing in the sense of an escapade and not in the sense of social exposure - you understand I am sure) But then, who am I talking to? At the moment I am thinking aloud to myself - creating an internal audience which at the moment is quiet and receptive. The audience may soon become rowdy and abusive. These words may be read aloud to a guffawing, thigh-slapping circle of sharp-eyed intellectuals. Oh the shame! It is my first blog and I can feel the blush rising to my cheeks at the confession.
Perhaps the only solution is to focus on that quiet person with warm eyes, sitting at the back of the group. Today she is a woman, dressed in sober colours but with a sense of cleavage that hints of sensuality. Certainly there is an implicit understanding in her glance and I will address all further words to her.
I am hoping this will get easier and I will dash off insouciant yet pithy thoughts for the day into the milling, clamouring hordes.
Now is the time to publish and be damned - I just want to see what it looks like - hopefully there is a delete function.
Begone!