4) Our Very First Home

Jonny and I went back to Chingola and stayed with Cecilia and Derrick while we waited to be allocated a house by the mining company. It was a time of nervousness in the town and people felt that there might be some trouble when Independence Day came in October and it was thought that it would be safer in the main township rather than further out in the suburb of Kabundi. When we went to the mine office to put our name on the housing list the young lady told us that they were only issuing houses in Kabundi and we said that if that was the case we would not accept it so she told us to come in the next day to officially refuse it, we would then have to go to the end of the queue and wait our turn again. Most people were doing this, as houses in Kabundi were not popular at that time. When we went in the following day were told that we had been allocated 82/13th Street, right in town where we wanted to live, and that we should go and see it and see if we wanted it. We were very pleased. When we got there it was being painted and we of course were thrilled with it. It was an older style house. It had three good size bedrooms, two with built in cupboards, a large lounge, a dining room, a rather bare kitchen and a large pantry. The bathroom and toilet were separate and it had a large enclosed veranda at the front of the house. It was a plain ordinary house but it was on a large plot of land and had an outside room with a shower for a servant and a carport. We were told we could move in when the painting and repairs were finished and that that would be in about a week’s time.

When we had arrived back from our honeymoon Cecilia told us that our “wedding present” had been born on 31st July. Cec had a Doberman pincher dog called Prince and he had sired a litter a little while ago and the puppies had arrived the day before our wedding and she wanted us to have our pick for a wedding gift. We had a house now so we were very pleased to have a dog too. We went to see the pups and they were all adorable, we chose one that although small showed great courage in pushing his brothers and sisters out of the way for him to get to the food. We called him Saint and were looking forward to being able to take him home when he was six weeks old. Not long after friends of ours, Bill and Cath asked us if we would look after their little puppy for them. They had decided to leave the country and go back to Australia where Bill came from. The pup was a small dachshund cross, called Mitzie. Because Mitzie was too young to have her rabies injection she could not be taken into South Africa and so Cath asked if we could keep her until she was the required six months, get the injections done and then send her to Cath’s Mom in South Africa. We agreed to do this but before they had actually left the country we had grown so fond of the little dog we asked them if we could keep her. They could not take her to Australia because of the quarantine regulations and Cath’s mom did not know the dog at all so we thought it would be better for her if she could stay with us. So now we had a house and two dogs.

Many years later I was asked to write an article for The Doberman club magazine about the first Doberman I had owned. It fits into this part of the story so I will put it in here.

How we nearly didn’t get our first Doberman

I arrive from the U.K. to stay in the home of my future sister-in-law, feeling very strange and rather overwhelmed by the wonderfully kind welcome I received, when I saw my first Doberman. “What a lovely greyhound” I said, showing my complete ignorance. But maybe ignorance IS bliss. I had no idea they were supposed to be “vicious animals” and dear Prince was the gentlest and sweetest of animals and by the time I had learnt how vicious they were supposed to be I had been shown by Prince that it just couldn’t be so. He loved all the children in the neighbourhood and hated nothing more than being left out of their games, his favourite game being tug-of-war with any old rope or rag.

Well the day of my wedding drew nearer and I took my beautiful gown, that I had carefully carried all the way from Wales in a large brown box, to a local dry cleaner who had agreed to press it for me. I duly picked it up two days before the wedding and not wanting to crease it again I laid it on the back seat of the car. As I carried it over my arms into the house and the long sleeve hung down dear Prince decided that it was a rag and that I wanted to play tug-of-war. No one else was at home so no one heard my screams as I followed the dog around the yard my arms too full of dress to remove the sleeve from the playful dogs mouth. After what seemed like hours he gave me up as a dead loss. I wasn’t playing properly; I was supposed to pull not follow him around crying my eyes out so he dropped the sleeve. I started to run for the house but Prince thought maybe I wanted to play chase and nearly knocked me over. So I walked slowly to the house, never had a door seemed so far away.

I hung up the dress and had a good howl even though there was only one tiny tooth mark on the sleeve.

Feeling a little silly I dried my eyes before the family came home for lunch. My sister-in-law seeing I was rather unhappy decided to tell me of the wedding present she planned to give us. Prince had sired a litter of pups a few weeks previously and she wanted to give us the pick of the litter as a gift. Poor girl, she couldn’t understand why I ran to my room crying “The last thing in the world I want is a Doberman” But fortunately she didn’t take back her offer when she heard my tale.

So I walked down the aisle with a tiny tooth mark on my sleeve and came home from honeymoon to the best wedding present of all. He outlasted all the tea-sets, towels and sheets, gave us much more pleasure and left a hole in my life when he died seven years later that only another Doberman could help to fill. But his father very nearly put me off Dobes for life.

It was a pity we did not have any furniture though. All we owned was a radiogram, a coffee table; two grass chairs and a bed. The mine supplied a fridge with the house and some friends lent us a stove. We moved our things into the house when the painters had left. Cec had lent us some curtains for the bedroom but that was all we had. We took Moses to see the house, where he would be working and he looked it over and gave it his approval. Between the lounge and the closed-in veranda there was a door with a glass panel on the top part of it. Moses after seeing our few sticks of furniture said “Boss, I think you should have a curtain on this window” How we laughed, we did not even have curtains in the bathroom but he thought it was very important to have a curtain on this internal door.

Some of our friends, a group of single men, had moved from their single quarters into a house together so they had more stoves than they needed and agreed to lend us one. It was not a success, the plates would only get mildly warm and so I could not cook on it. When we had battled with if for a week, Jonny said that I should go to town and see Cecilia who was working for a firm called Radio Ltd at the time, they sold furniture and electrical appliances, new and second hand. I was instructed to get a good second hand stove and to spend about £20 I went to town one Saturday morning while Jonny was at work, but Cec did not have any good second hand stoves, they were all very dirty and dilapidated and the asking price was £20 My sister-in-law was a good sales woman and she convinced me that it was a waste of money to buy that rubbish, the sensible thing to do was to use my £20 as a deposit on a brand new stove, it only cost £85. and could be paid off on Hire Purchase over 12 months. It did not worry her that none of the paper work was sorted out; only Jonny could sign the hire purchase agreement, as I did not have an income at the time. She phoned Derrick got him to deliver the stove in his pick-up and to connect it all up and have it all sorted out before Jonny came home. Jonny was understandably furious with his sister and me and said the stove would have to go back. He often told people the story of how he had put his foot down right from the start of our marriage and how the stove was still there in our kitchen. We eventually sold the stove when we left Rhodesia in 1983, we had 19 years of trouble free service out of it and it was worth every penny we paid for it. But it was very wrong of me to tie us up in a debt that we had not discussed before hand.

Moses having helped us to move into our house now wanted leave so that he could go back to his village to get married too. So off he went. He asked us to lend him some money to pay his Labola (bride price) but we did not have the amount he wanted and just lent him what we had. A few weeks later we heard from Cecilia’s servant James that Moses had not been able to get the girl he wanted because he did not have enough money. Fearing that we had ruined his life we sent him some more money. When he came back we asked if he had received the money and he said he had and that he had been able to get the girl of his choice. Of course we wanted to meet his new wife but he told us that she would only come to the town after her baby was born. After about a year and no sign of his wife we asked him what the problem was and he told us that she did not want to come and live in the town. Jonny asked if it would not be possible to get his Labola back but Moses said that the girls mother was a widow with no one to support her so he did not like to take his money back. Jonny asked if she had a sister who he could wed instead but Moses said that she did have a sister but “Lo face ka henna ikona moeshi” (Her face is not nice).

I don’t know why in both Northern and Southern Rhodesia it was customary to have male house servants. I know in South Africa it was normal to have female housemaids. In the Rhodesias women were usually employed to look after the children, but the men did the housework. It was Moses’ job to keep the house clean, do the washing and ironing and to do the garden work. He was a pleasant young man and I remember that he showed me my first chameleon. He came in one day with a small brown lizardy sort of thing on his arm. He showed it to me and then put it on the grass, whereby it turned green. I was fascinated, I had heard of chameleons before but had never seen one and to see it change colour was great fun. Moses was not a very political person and in his room he had a picture of Kenneth Kaunda, of the UNIP and one of Simon Kapepwe of the ANC and for good measure he had one of Queen Elizabeth and one of Prince Phillip. There was a lot of inter party violence at that time both supporters of Kaunda and Kapepwe used strong arm tactics to canvas votes and Moses did not want to be seen to be favouring anyone.

We started getting a few bits and pieces of furniture together, one of Jonny’s work mates was selling a lounge suit so we went and looked at it. I think it was the ugliest suit I had ever seen, it was two shades of bright blue and a hideous shape. Jonny was all for buying it because it was cheap and I don’t remember how but I managed to talk our way out of there without it. We went through to Kitwe to look at second hand furniture in the Kitwe branch of Radio Ltd, as they did not have anything we liked in the Chingola branch, and there I fell in love with an imported lounge suit. A customer had ordered it specially form the U.K. but it took longer to arrive than had been expected and by the time it arrived he had left the country. It was just the kind of style I liked, but it was not cheap. They wanted £135 for the settee and two chairs and another £30 for a third chair. We did not have that kind of money so we could not have it. Having seen that suit, I did not like anything else so we went home without buying anything. I was very good though; I did not sulk, not much. I don’t think I said a word all the way home. The next morning Jonny rang me from work to tell me to please stay home as he was arranging for his work mates bright blue lounge suit to be delivered. Then about half way through the morning a Radio Ltd van arrived with the lounge suit that I had liked so much. Jonny had arranged it with his sister as a surprise. I really did not deserve to be spoilt so much but it was well worth it as I have never found a lounge suit that I like as much as than one and it has been recovered about four times and has travelled all round the world with us. It wont be long and it will be an antique and worth a fortune.

Jonny started work at 6.00 am and finished at 3.00 pm. and being a small town it only took him about quarter of an hour to get to and from work, so he was home every afternoon at about 3.15 and we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We loved to go into the bush. We would explore all the little roads and footpaths that we could find. I remember once following a narrow road for miles and miles through the bush. We eventually came to a little clearing and met an old man cutting wood. We stopped and asked him where the road went to and he told us “Lapa” which means “here” So now we know that all roads go to “Lapa”

Jonny was also busy fencing our garden, our new puppy was to arrive soon and we did not want him to run out on the road. I had never owned a dog before, Jonny was the expert and I had a lot to learn. We brought our ‘baby’ home and he kept us awake all night the first night as he was missing his brothers and sisters. I suppose it would have been easier just to put him in the bed with us but we did not want to start a habit that would be hard to break. I had suggested that I should start looking for a job but Jonny was not keen for me to work outside the house, “Who will look after the puppy?” so I became a puppy sitter. I don’t think I really minded, I took him everywhere with me. He sat on my lap while I drove the car but as he got bigger he would not fit so he used to sit on the passenger seat and put his paw on my lap. It seemed very important to him to have physical contact with me. Eventually he was too big to even be comfortable on the front passenger seat, so he went and sat on the back seat. So that he could continue the physical contact with me he used to put his head on my head. People began to know us, they used to say “Have you seen that woman who drives around with a dog on her head?” He and Mitzie played well together but she usually got the better of him, she was a couple of months older so I supposed that was to her advantage but I think that the fact that her centre of gravity was lower was also a help. She could run and turn on a sixpence but when Saint who was all legs at the time, chased her he was inclined to fall over when he went around a corner. We thought he was definitely the best-looking Doberman around and were planning to put him on shows when he was old enough.

On 24th October 1964 Northern Rhodesia was granted independence from Britain and was renamed Zambia. No one knew what to expect, there had been a fair amount of violence in the lead up to independence and during the voting so everyone was rather nervous. On Independence Day everything shut, it was a public holiday and most of the white people stayed at home just in case there was trouble. Jonny had a small bottle of mercury in the house and we were looking at it and Jonny put a little drop into the palm of my hand, I played with it for a while and then put it back into the bottle. When I looked at my wedding ring I saw that it was coated with the mercury inside and outside and looked completely silver in colour. We tried everything we could think of to get it off but nothing we tried worked. The only person we could think of who knew all about cleaning things was Aunty Edna, so we got in the car and drove to her house. We were amazed how quiet it was, we did not see a single person on the streets going there or coming back. We could hear the African drums being played in the African township but no one was out and about. Aunty Edna did not know how to fix my ring nor could anyone else we asked for advice so I just had to accept that I might have a silver wedding ring for ever but it did wear off eventually and go back to it’s original gold colour, but it took a long time.

In November the rains came. Coming from Britain I never thought that I would ever be pleased to see rain but by the time November came I was glad to see it. The weather had got progressively hotter and hotter and it was very dry and dusty. They called October ‘Suicide month’, if one had any intention of committing suicide the October heat would drive you to it. Everyone started looking for the clouds and wishing for the rain. We would be able to smell it before it actually arrived. Then there would be the lovely big warm drops. The first rains would have people running outside just to stand in it, it was so good. I have never known rain like that. Most afternoons the cloud would build up the lightning and the thunder would crash across the sky and it would pour down in buckets. The smell of the wet earth was great. Then the thunder would rumble off and the clouds would disappear and the sun would come out, the steam would rise and pretty soon the place was dry again and you could go about your business. It hardly ever drizzled but during the wet season it rained nearly every day always about the same time and never for long. When the rain stoped the sun would come out and warm the wet ground and the steam would rise and it would be lovely and warm again.

With the rains came the flying ants. The wet weather would bring them out of their holes by the millions. They would be attracted to the lights and they would swarm around the street lighting. They would then drop off their wings and crawl around like little fat worms. The African people who could often be seen collecting them thought them of as a delicacy. I was told that they tasted like butter but I was never game enough to try. If one left the windows or the doors open or unscreened they would fly in and drop their wings all over the place. Then the geckos (lizards) would come in after them.

Jonny arranged a trip down the mine for me. It was very interesting. I had seen photos of coal mines in Wales that showed men bent over working at the coal face and I was expecting it to be a little like that but we walked along wide, white washed, well light, air conditioned haulages. There were tracks and trains that moved the ore, there were workshops underground were repairs and maintenance to equipment was carried out. Nchanga also had an open caste mine and we went and saw that too. When one stood at the top and looked down the trucks working in the bottom looked very small. Mining had been carried out on the Copperbelt since about 1925 and it was the mainstay of the Northern Rhodesian economy. The other mines that formed the “Copperbelt” were Bancroft, Mufulira, Nkana in the town of Kitwe, Chibuluma in the town of Kalulushi and Roan Antelope in the town of Luanshya. Jonny’s grandfather had been on the Copperbelt in the early days. He had been a contractor building houses for the labourers.

I had my 21st birthday on 16th January 1965. I suppose I had always looked forward to that day and when I was single I thought it would be nice to have a great big party. When I got married I thought it might be nice to have a small party with some of our friends but when it turned out that I was pregnant by then I settled for a night out at the Edinburgh Hotel in Kitwe. Supper and dancing with Jonny, Derrick and Cec. That day Jonny sent me a message with one of his workmates to say that he had not forgotten that we were going out but he had to work a bit late and he would be home as soon as he could. I waited and waited, Derrick and Cec arrived and we sat around and waited until it was really too late to go, so they went home. Eventually the VW pulled into the drive way but it was not being driven by Jonny. I rushed out to see what was the matter; Jonny was in the passenger seat with a broken leg. He had been working underground repairing some steel when there was a big mud rush and he could not get out of the way so the mud piled up on his lap. He managed to get his right leg out of the way but the weight of the steel and the mud on his left leg was just too much and it broke his leg. It must have been very frightening to be pinned there and unable to move but fortunately his helpers who had all run when the mud rush started came back and as the steel still had a sling attached to it they were able to hoist it up and take it off Jonny’s leg. They helped him to surface and he was taken to the first aid station. He was told that they were pretty sure that it was broken but he had to go to the hospital in the morning for x-rays and for it to be put in plaster. We spent ages at the hospital the next day and his leg was put into plaster of Paris and he was leant a pair of crutches.

We did go to the Edinburgh Hotel the next night for supper but there was no dancing for Jonny, in fact we were all so tired that we ate our meal and went home early. Not much of a twenty-first for me, but it could not be helped and we were just very grateful that the accident had not been worse.

I think Jonny was off work for about six weeks. He tried to teach me to play chess at this time. I learnt the moves but I don’t suppose that I was interested enough as I never really learnt the tactics of the game and he always beat me. One afternoon we were sitting in the lounge playing chess, Jonny with his broken leg up on a stool and a storm came up. Zambian storms are really scary and this one was a hum dinger. I went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and as I put my hand on the socket to switch off the kettle lightening struck the house. I felt as if it had gone right through me. I screamed and ran into the lounge and jumped on poor Jonny’s lap. Because I got a fright the puppy Saint got a fright too so he also jumped on to Jonny’s lap. Poor thing, it is amazing that we did not re-break his leg for him. When we inspected we found that the lightening had gone right through the house. It had blown the TV set and had blown a hole right through the radial plate on our brand new stove. I had never been scared of storms until then but after that I did not like them and having given Saint such a fright he did not like them either, he and I would hide under a blanket if we were on our own during a storm.

We were very pleased when we realised that we were going to have a baby. I was young and healthy and there was no reason to delay starting a family. Baby was due on 27th May, three days after my Dad’s birthday and one day before my sister Adele’s so we were sure that we would have a gift for one of them. I kept pretty well during my pregnancy except for a bit of morning sickness to start with. One thing I do remember was how I enjoyed tomato soup while I was pregnant but as soon as I ate it I would be very sick, but I enjoyed it so much I ate it anyway. I put on a lot of weight and as I am less than five foot tall I got the nickname Mrs. Five by Five. People used to say that they could not tell if I was standing up or laying down.

I used to read books and articles about the progress of my baby, I would tell Jonny that his child was now three inches long, covered with hair or whatever my books told me but Jonny did not like to hear the things I had to tell him. He was not really keen to hear about his child and was in fact rather put off by the whole pregnancy thing. I thought, “What kind of Dad have I got here?” I knew he liked children but I imagined that he would only like this one when it got a bit bigger, and could go fishing with him. I was very wrong and he loved his little son right from the very first moment he saw him but not really before that. I went to the anti natal clinic at the Mine South Hospital. Anglo American, the owners of Nchanga Mine provided their employees with very good health services. North Hospital had traditionally been for the black employees and South for the white employees but now that the country had gained independence that was changing slowly. South Hospital was a lovely little hospital, fully equipped but small. I think there was one male ward, one female ward, one children’s ward and the maternity section. If there were not many sick children the children’s ward would be closed and they would be put into the female ward. We paid a small subscription for hospital services and a few extra pound for a specialist service. The Specialist service insured that if we had any complaint that could not be dealt with in the local hospital the patient would be flown to wherever that complaint could be treated.

About the middle of May, one week before baby was due we moved house. It was six months after Independence and the fears that there would be attacks on the white people had proved groundless and the houses in the outer suburb of Kabundi were much more popular. They were newer houses and a more modern design. A man that worked with Jonny told him that he and his wife wanted to move into town from Kabundi and asked if we were interested in swapping houses with them. Jonny took me to see the other house and we liked it so arranged with the mine housing department for the swap to take place.

Moving house is always hard work, even if you don’t have much furniture, and Moses and I worked very hard to leave the house in 13th Street as clean as possible but I am afraid that could not be said of the lady with whom we were swapping so we had to work hard to clean that house too. I remember that the house was infested with cockroaches. Jonny and I worked hard to get rid of them; we sprayed and sprayed tins of insecticide into every crook and cranny of that house and eventually got on top of them and had a nice clean vermin free house.

5 Gardenia Street, Kabundi was a lovely house, we were very happy there. Both our children were born there and we lived there until we left Zambia in 1968. I have many happy memories of that house.