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.