3) The Honeymoon

Jonny had come to meet me in his pride and joy, a very old Rover 90. He was trying to impress me but it was not the most reliable car in the world and we had problems getting from Ndola to Chingola. We broke down a couple of times and stopped off in Kitwe at the house of one of Jonny’s friends for help. Jonny eventually had to admit defeat and phone his sister Cecilia to come and fetch us. She was very smug and said, “I told you so” Apparently he had had trouble with the Rover the previous week and she had offered him her new Ford to come to the airport but he wanted to come in the Rover.

I remember my first impression of Northern Rhodesia was space. I had never seen so many miles of nothing but trees and anthills. No people, or houses or shops or buildings of any kind for miles and miles and miles. Huge anthills and the never ending sound of the cicadas. The weather was lovely and warm to me even though it was the middle of winter there. The winters are completely dry so it was pretty dusty. The rains started in November and lasted until about March.

Chingola was the town that had grown around the Nchanga copper mine. It was part of the huge copper belt in the northwestern part of the country. Copper was the main wealth of the country and most people were directly employed on the mine. The others all indirectly derived their income from the mine. There were engineering businesses; electrical businesses and that sort of thing that did direct contract work for the mine and all the shops were there to sell goods to those who worked on the mine. I am not sure what I expected to find but I was surprised to see a shop with a window full of electrical appliances, fridges, washing machines and vacuum cleaners. At the time the copper prices were high and people were making very good money there. Life was very good for the white people there; they had nice houses, big cars, servants and lots of money.

Jonny’s sister Cecilia was married to Derrick Van Leeve and they had one daughter called Bernice who was four going on five when I first arrived there in May 1964. Derrick was in his own electrical business, in partnership with his father and a friend called Dennis Brookes. They did a lot of work for the mines and seemed to me to be doing very well. They lived in a lovely big house in an area of Chingola called Kabundi East. This suburb was for privately owned houses most of the rest of the town were houses owned by the mine and rented to mine employees. Cec and Derrick had a house servant called James and a garden servant too. I stayed with them until Jonny and I were married in August and I got on well with my sister-in-law and learnt a lot from her about conditions and what was expected of me there.

Most of the married women I met did not work but spent a lot of their time having tea together. They chatted about babies, servants and husbands. And I learnt for the first time that one has to be very careful when you live in a small town. I had heard a story about how naughty someone’s children were and I repeated it to someone else, without using any names, being such a small town she knew exactly who I was talking about and I was very embarrassed but it taught me a good lesson, everyone knows everyone’s business in a small town. One of the main topics of conversation was what would happen when independence came in October. Northern Rhodesia had been a British Protectorate, independence was not far away and elections were being held. People were nervous of the changes that were about to take place and many had plans to leave. It was not long after the terrible massacre in the Congo and it was still fresh in everyone’s minds. The most asked question must have been “Where are you going?” I don’t remember a lot about the political parties or the electoral issues. I suppose when one does not have a vote one does not take too much notice of those sort of things and I was too busy settling in to my new country. I tried to get a work permit but was told that my entry permit was to allow me to get married and I would only become a permanent resident after that marriage and would only be allowed to apply for a work permit then.

Jonny was living in the single quarters supplied by the mine. There were four single quarters in each block each with a bedroom and a lounge. They had a combined shower section. I think each of the young men that lived there had a servant to keep their rooms clean and to wash and iron their cloths. Jonny’s servant’s name was Moses. He had been the house servant of a friend of Jonny’s who had left the country and as he had been pleased with Moses, Jonny had been happy to give him a job so that we would have a reliable servant when we got married. Moses had been brought up in a mission station and was hard working and honest.

Cecilia’s mother-in-law, Edna Van Leeve known to everyone in the town as Mrs.Van said that she would be my mother, as I did not have one in Africa. She and her husband Mr. Van had been friends of Jonny and Cecilia’s parents when they were all young in Northern Rhodesia together. She was a tall Afrikaans woman, very hard working and a great cook. Her house was always beautifully clean and tidy and there was always a home baked cake to go with the cup of tea at whatever time one dropped in. In a community of women who generally left their servants to do all the work she was unusual in that she usually worked alongside her servants, whether it was digging in the garden or painting the house. All the family called her Aunty Edna, she was very good to me. She baked beautifully and if you ever asked her for a recipe she would say, “Mix some flour, eggs, milk, sugar” and I would say “Hold on, hold on, how much flour, eggs, milk or sugar” and she would say “I don’t know how much I just put it in and know the right amount” but that method never worked for me.

I remember the first weekend I was in Chingola we went through to the next town Kitwe to watch a game of rugby. We had lunch at the mine mess and I ordered a prawn salad. The next morning I had a line of red itchy welts on my forehead, in my hairline. As the morning progressed the line went lower and lower and soon by whole face was swollen and it marched on down my body. Cecilia called the doctor and he came and said it was urticaria, probably caused by prawns that were not too fresh. He said it would just work itself out quite quickly and just to call him if it was still there in a day or two. When Jonny arrived to visit after he had finished work he took one look and his swollen fiancée and laughed and laughed. I was not impressed with him and if I could have removed my engagement ring from my swollen finger I would have thrown it at him. Just as it has started the rash started clearing from my forehead first and working it’s way in a straight line across my body.

We often went to have braai’s with friends. I had never been to a braai before. I had heard of barbeques but thought that they were just things that Americans did. Many of the white people who lived in Northern Rhodesia at that time were from South Africa and many of them had Afrikaans backgrounds so many Afrikaans words were used in every day English and braai was the Afrikaans word for a barbeque. It was wonderful to sit out on a balmy African night under the stars around a fire and cook ones food.

We planed to get married on 1st August and set about preparing for the great day. Bernice was going to be my flower girl and as she had lovely red hair I chose to have her dressed in emerald green. When I took the material to the dressmaker who I had organised to make the dress for me she said that green for a wedding was unlucky and she refused to do the job. I had never heard of that superstition before and would not have worried if I had. I got someone else to make the dress and she looked lovely in it. And as we have been happily married for over 40 years I think one can forget about that superstition.

We were to be married in the Catholic Church by Father Cornelius. He had been in Northern Rhodesia for many years and had many tales to tell. As Jonny was not a Catholic he had to agree to have religious instruction. I am sure we spent more of our time with Father Cornelius talking about the old days in Northern Rhodesia than we did about religion. I remember he once said to me something about when he first came to Africa and was travelling from Kitwe to Chingola “it was 40 miles in those days” This puzzled me. I knew that the distance between the two towns was only 32 miles, when I asked why the difference I was told that in the old days they did not bother to cut through the ant hills they just went round them and so the road was longer. Father Cornelius remembered Jonny from when he had been a student in Ndola Convent many years before. Father had been the soccer coach there at the time.

We organised to hold our reception in the Catholic Church hall. Some friends of Jonny’s who had a band agreed to play for us. I had never been to a wedding in Africa before. The only weddings I had gone to were in England, where everyone just sat and ate a meal, no one ever danced. I was amazed to think we were going to have a band. Aunty Edna made the wedding cake and we got some caterers to make plates of snacks for us. A friend of Jonny and Cecilia’s called Colleen Kerr was commissioned to take the photos and we bought liquor through the mine club. A local florist made my bouquet, a posy for Bernice and corsages for Aunty Edna and Cecilia and buttonholes for the men in the party. I don’t remember that there was much more to it than that. When I see the fuss that is made at weddings today I realise how lucky we were, we had a wonderful time and did not spend the next five years paying it off.

One thing we had to do before we got married was get a reliable car so that we could go on honeymoon. We looked around and I fell in love with a bright red VW beetle. Jonny was not fond of VW at that time and it was not really running well. The salesman told us that it could do 70 miles per hour but agreed that that would be down hill with a strong wind behind it. Jonathan said he would buy it if an engine overhaul could be done first the salesman agreed so we ended up buying it. It was small and light to drive much easier than the old Rover that I battled with. Once I took Bernice through to Bancroft for a fitting for her flower girl’s dress. I turned into the street I thought I needed and realised it was the wrong one so I tried to do a three point turn and go back the way I had come. I reversed, but when I tried to pull forward I found the car just would not move forward. I could not make out what was the matter. I got out and found that I had bumped into the ‘Stop’ sign and the car was now hooked to the sign by the bumper. The pole was between the body of the car and the bumper. I did not have a clue what to do. A young man came along and got out of his car to help me. Obviously he did not have a clue what to do either. He asked if I had a jack, I gave it to him and he started to jack the car up. I wondered if he intended to jack the car up right over the top of the sign, but being a mere woman I just kept quite and did not show my ignorance. Another man came along stopped his car and looked at this lot and asked what on earth he intended to do. The second man grabbed hold of the sign, pulled it towards the ground therefore releasing it from behind the bumper and then pushed it up straight again. Knowing that she could not keep a secret I told Bernice not to tell her uncle Jonathan about it but of course she did as soon as she saw him. Her inability to keep a secret was a big joke with all of us. I remember her once greeting her father as he came in the door with “Dad I am not going to tell you the secret, we are have strawberries and ice cream for pudding”

Once when her cousins Jeremy and Maurice, Sally’s boys, were visiting they all had a game with their Uncle Jonathan’s chess set. When Jonny found that there were quite a few pieces missing he was not too happy with them. Cecilia and I defended the kids and said that they would never have taken the pieces but Jonny was not convinced. A few days latter we were all sitting outside in the sunshine and Jonny noticed something on the roof. He said “that looks like a chess piece to me” and sure enough when he climbed onto the roof he found all the missing pieces and the kids had to admit that they had thrown them up there. It certainly made Cecilia and I feel very foolish for saying “No the children would never take your chess pieces” He still has that chess set and is very fond of it.

Aunty Edna’s husband Uncle Van had been roped in to give me away. He was known to be a very frugal man and in his speech at the wedding he said that he had never been know to give anything away before. Derricks cousin Bernard had a lovely old red convertible and agreed to drive us to the wedding. I felt rather like the queen, being driven with the top down and all the little black children lining the road to give me a wave. I waved back to them all and kept telling Bernard to go slower as the wind was going to blow my headdress off. When I entered the church it was full of people that I did not recognise. I asked Uncle Van who all these people were and he told me that he had no idea they must be my friends as we had invited them. I later discovered that they were just our friends all dressed up smart for the wedding. People tended to dress pretty casual in Chingola and the men usually wore shorts and I had never seen any of them in suits.

It was very popular in those days to nobble the bridal couples car, fill it will confetti, write “Just Married” on it in lipstick, or tie tin cans to it. We of course wanted to avoid this and Jonny came up with a brilliant idea. He parked the car that by now had been nicknamed ‘The Little Red Devil’ in a used car lot straight across from the church. He paid the security guard to keep an eye on it. All his friends searched throughout the town for it but none of them thought to look for it there.

We had invited about 100 people to the wedding, none of my family or friends were there and I was very sorry about that. I wish now we had made more effort to get them there but my Mom was still caring for her aged and sickly parents and for my Dad. Dad could not come alone as he was blind, my older sister Dulcie had two small children and Adele was still at school. We thought that it would be better for someone to come on a visit later on when we were back from honeymoon and had our own place to put them up. But none of them ever came to visit me in Chongola

Our reception went well, we had a lovely time surrounded by Jonny’s family and our friends. Eventually people began asking if we were going to go so we thought it was time to head out. We had intended going as far as a town called Bwana Makubwa on that first night but we left so late we only got as far as Kitwe. That meant that to make our next stop, where we were booked in for the following night we had to drive very fast and without any stops.

We had arranged to spend a week in the Kafue Game Reserve and had booked into the Main Camp from the Sunday night. We knew we had a long trip ahead of us so we started out from Kitwe bright and early and drove as fast as we could to the Kafue River to cross into the game reserve. We knew from the brochures that we had to be there before nightfall. We got to the pontoon to cross the river just in time, as it was about to leave. We drove the car on behind a big truck and we were all hauled across the river. Ropes connected the pontoon to both the banks and pulled across by an engine We drove off on the other side just as it was beginning to get dark but we were then told at the main gate that we were not allowed to travel in the game reserve after dark and as the camp we had booked into was still a few hours journey away we were rather stuck. The camp we were going to had full hotel facilities but the one at the river was just a campsite and we had not come equipped to camp. We did have a small primus stove and the equipment to make a cup of tea but that was all. We went into the little shop and bought some tins of dehydrated vegetables and some tinned meat. We then wandered around the place and got talking to a man near a building site. He was a contractor employed to erect some more buildings there. We told him our plight and he asked us if we had come across on the last ferry. We told him that we had and he said that his partner Lionel had gone to Lusaka for the day and if he had not been on that last ferry he would not be able to get back at all that night so we could have his room if we liked. He said he had just been fishing and his cook was busy making fish and chips for his supper and would we like to join him. He took us to his home; it was two rondavels (round, thatched huts) joined together by a thatched roofed building that was open on one side. He showed us Lionel’s room and said that he would hold supper until we had had time to get cleaned up. We both needed a bath after that long dusty journey and I was directed to what was little more than a bathtub in the bush with a grass screen around it, but the water was beautifully hot and very welcoming. The holes in the grass screen were a bit off putting but it was dark by then so I coped. We got the bottle of champagne that we had brought from our reception from the car as our contribution to the feast. And what a feast it was, bream fresh from the river, chips and chilled champagne. We ate on an open veranda under the starry sky, the noises of the wild animals in the distance and the river lapping almost at our feet. It was a meal I will always remember. The old guy was obviously pretty hard up for company and loved to talk. Jonny asked him if his wife ever came out to the camp and he replied, “She has gone before me” Jonny had never heard that euphemism and asked “Where did she go?” and I had to kick him under the table. When the champagne was finished our host asked if he could have the cork, we said of course he could have the whole bottle if he wanted it. He wanted to show it to his partner to prove his story and said “Wait until I tell Lionel that a honeymoon couple slept in his bed”. I was amazed that anyone could be so kind to two complete strangers, but I found that kindness in just about everyone in the country at the time. No one would have thought of driving past someone stopped at the side of the road, hitchhikers were always given a lift. People were always given trust and friendship up front and only mistrusted when they proved to be untrustworthy.

In the morning we started off for Main Camp in the centre of the park. We were now in real wild Africa and seeing a lot of game, mostly buck of many kinds, eland, springbok, bushbuck, sable and duiker. There were also lots of zebra, and giraffe. We saw wildebeest and buffalo. Monkeys and warthog were a wonderfully funny to watch. When one startled a family of warthog they would stick their tails straight up into the air and run off in a line following the father warthog. Monkeys, mostly baboon, would wander along the roadside in large family groups; if one stopped and watched them they just got on with the business of eating and grooming each other. The little babies riding on their mothers’ backs were really cute and I loved to see them. The bush was thick and the animals were not always easy to see. Jonny was much better at spotting them than I was and told me that there were probably many animals that had seen us, that we had not seen. The roads were just dirt and it was hot and dusty. August is winter in central Africa and very dry, as the rain would not start again until November. It was wonderful to see wild animals so close but just to be in the bush was great, I loved it. I was very pleasantly surprised when we arrived at Main Camp, I am not sure what I expected but I was amazed that there in the heart of that wild country we had such beautiful accommodation. Lovely little well furnished, clean chalets. The food was well cooked and served in a dinning room with crisp white linen and sparkling crockery and cutlery. It was hard to imagine that such standards could be maintained so far away from civilization. Electricity was from there own generator and water was straight from the river I suppose. I think they grew a lot of there own vegetables and had a large staff to keep the place so well maintained.

In the dinning room we talked with other holiday makers and of course the talk was always “what did you see today?” We for some reason had not seen any elephants, lion, rhino or hippo, lots of the smaller kinds of animals but none of the really big ones. We were told to go to Meshie Teshie. Apparently at Meshie Teshie there were always hundreds of hippo, so if we wanted to see hippo Meshie Teshie was the place to go. Off we went determined to see some hippo. We found the spot and parked next to the wide sparkling river, lying glinting in the sun. The surface was completely unbroken by sign of any animals and it was very quiet there. We got out of the car to look around and heard a hippo grunting further down the river. We walked a little way towards the sound and stopped and listened again, the noise seemed further down so we walked a little bit further and stopped again. After doing this a couple of times Jonny said that we were getting too far from the car and it could be dangerous, we were not supposed to leave the car in the game park, so we turned and started to make our way back. I was just about to say, “Doesn’t that rock look like a hippo” when the “rock” stood up and looked straight at us. I had my camera and took a photo but I got such a fright it did not turn out well. Luckily Mrs Hippo was not in an aggressive mood, she looked for a moment then turned and went back into the river. We must have walked right passed her a few moments before. We never did see any elephant in the Kafue Game Park

The only Rhino we saw there were in an enclosure. There were a pair of them that were in the process of being resettled in the park from somewhere else and one of them was sick. The vet from Livingston was there to treat the poor animal and the mate was obviously distressed and worried about her partner. He lay on his side in one part of the pen and she was kept away from him by a fence but she stayed as close to him as she could all the time. The vet told us he was constipated, not an easy job for a vet who did all that he could but it was not enough and the poor animal died.

After a week there we moved on to Livingston to see the Victoria Falls. Livingston is a small town on the northern banks of the mighty Zambesi River were the rail and road bridge crosses. The railway is part of Cecil John Rhodes’ dream of linking ‘The Cape to Cairo’. Rhodes had been so impressed by the lovely falls that he had asked that the bridge would be close enough to the falls for the passengers to feel the spray as the train as it crossed over. I can’t explain how wonderful the falls are, I had seen photographs of course but seeing it close up and real was so thrilling and one just had to agree with David Livingston’s reaction on first seeing the falls he said “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed on by angels in their flight”. We crossed the bridge to the Southern Rhodesian side and walked into the Rain Forest. The view of the fall from here was unbelievable. The Rain Forest juts out in front of the main fall of water and you get to see it from a very advantageous angle. This was the dry season so the volume of water was less than normal but this was the best time to view it and take photos, as there was not so much spray as during the wet season. Still it thundered over the edge of the huge crack in the earths surface, tumbling down and down into the cataract. No, I am not going to try and describe it, there is no way I could do it justice, one has to see it to believe it. On our way into the Rain forest we met a young American coming out, he was wearing a long raincoat, a sou’wester (a waterproof hat) gumboots and carrying and umbrella. We were casually dressed shorts and tee shirts and we laughed at him. We spoke to him and asked if we could take his photo. We had not gone very far when we realised that the laugh was on us. We were drenched from head to toe, but the weather was warm and the view was well worth getting wet for.

It was in Livingstone that I saw my first elephants. We were told that every evening the elephants came up out of the river and crossed the road at a particular place so we went along to see them. There were quite a few cars parked along the road waiting for a glimpse of the heard. We parked too and waited. Soon we heard them coming up out of the water and making their way through the bush to the road. The largest one in the front got to the edge of the road, hardly stopped to look at the people watching, just strode forward with head held high. The second animal was a little smaller; she hesitated as she saw that there were a lot of onlookers, she looked from side to side and as if to say, “If he can do it so can I” she held her head up and walked quickly across. Then came baby, he looked from side to side nervously, he was not happy about all those people but so as not to let the side down he put up his head and started to walk across too but when he got to the middle of the road the tension was too much for him and he broke into a run and hurried to catch up his parents. While we were in Livingstone we went every evening to watch the little group on their daily return from the river.

In Livingstone there was a small game park, the animals were not caged they were free to wander around the park but it was fenced and there were none of the big cats there. We visited the park and as we came round one corner we saw a zebra with his back to us. We slowed down and kept as quiet as we could, not easy in a VW Beetle, but we managed to get quite close and then the zebra turned round trotted towards us and put his head through the window of our car. We fed him a packet of biscuits that we had in the car and enjoyed the close encounter with a wild animal but when the biscuits were gone and we wanted to move on our friend wanted some more to eat and put his large mouth over the half open window and I think he would have bitten it and broken it if Jonny had not been quick thinking and given him a tap on his nose. He let go and I quickly wound up the window. He was obviously was very used to the tourists and when we thought we were creeping up on him, he was actually waiting for us to see what we would give him. We later found out that he was called Neddy and was a favourite with the public.

From Livingston we moved on to Kariba we wanted to see the dam but when we got there we found that there was no place to stay on the northern side of the river so we needed to go to the southern side for more than just a day trip. We had our passports with us, which were needed if we intended to stay across over night. Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia as they still were at that time were two separate countries with border control between them. My passport was of course still in my maiden name and was stamped with a single entry visa that allowed me to enter the country once to marry a Northern Rhodesian citizen but if I left the country before that marriage I might not be allowed back. We went to the immigration people in N. Rhodesia and told them that we had not thought to bring our marriage licence but that we would like to go across the border for a few days. They were very understanding and gave us a letter to say that they would allow me back into the country when I had had a few days in S. Rhodesia. We took this letter to the immigration people on the other side but we were not well received. The officer asked how he could be sure that we were married. We explained to him that it did not matter if we were married or not, all that should matter to him was if Northern Rhodesia would accept me back or not. He tried to give us a hard time but he knew that he did not really have any authority to refuse us entry so we were allowed to carry on but I think he told us that we had to be out by a particular time.

We stayed in a place called the “Boating Motel” I wonder if it is still there. They had geese there and they were rather aggressive. One morning Jonny went down to breakfast before me, as I was not quite ready. When I did not arrive in what seemed like a reasonable sort of time Jonny came looking for me. I was back in the bedroom, I had tried to go to breakfast but the geese barred my way and I would not go past them. The huge dam had been built to hold back the Mighty Zambesi River, to generate electrical power for industry in both Northern and Southern Rhodesia. The lake that had formed was at the time the largest man made lake in the world. The story of the building, the rescue of the animals displaced by the water and the relocation of the tribes people is a fascinating tale and should be read. There are quite a few books on the subject. Most of the skilled workmen on the project were Italians as an Italian firm had got the main contract. The men had built a beautiful little chapel so that they could hold church services. It was called St Barbara’s. We saw the prefabricated houses that had housed the Italian workers. We were told that because of the great heat during the summer and because the water pipes had not been buried very deep into the ground the water coming out of their cold water taps was as hot as the water coming out of the hot water taps.

We went to the crocodile farm while we were there. One of the guides showed us a very young croc, not more than 12 inches long and he put a stick in front of its nose and he snapped it in half without any problem. I was glad that it was not my finger he had had in his jaw. The crocs were very interesting but they have an evil look about them and I must admit I could not feel the same about them as I did about the other animals we had seen.
After about two weeks it was time to go home again. We had had a wonderful time but Jonny had to get back to work and we wanted to put our name down with the mine for a house and start our life together, it was all so exciting.