17) Settling Into Rhodesia
When we arrived from South Africa we stayed with Ray and Jill for a few days but our other friends Sonny and Isabel offered to put us up for a while so we moved on there. We did not want to out stay our welcome anywhere so as soon as Jonny got a job we started looking for a house to rent. Rental accommodation was very scarce at the time and as we were going to be in our house pretty soon we did not want something that we would have to sign a long lease for.
The first thing we did when we got back was to see about applying for our home loan. We had already paid our deposit and chosen our land but now we had to sign all the papers and we had to choose the plans for the house we wanted. We had a choice of about eight plans I think but as our plot was a rather strange shape, a bit like a triangle, we had trouble getting the house to suit the plot. We eventually solved the problem by asking the architect if we could mirror the design and then altering the position of the front door. This gave us a front door in the right place and a view from the French widows of the lounge down the greenway in front of our plot so we also asked to have a large covered veranda leading off the lounge and we were very pleased with our new design.
Jonny got a job with the Portland Cement company. It was good that he was employed again and we had a regular income. We managed to find a house to rent not far from Sonny and Isabel; it was 3 Prue Close Greendale. We moved in at the beginning of September. It was only for three months and we thought that as we would only have another month before our own home was ready we might be able to persuade the owners to let us stay for another month or that we could go back to stay with Ray and Jill or Sonny and Isabel until our place was finished.
We put the Jaguar onto blocks and did not drive it. We had brought it into the country as an investment and we did not want to put too much mileage on the clock before we sold it. If we sold it before we had been in the country for six months we would have to pay the customs duty due on it so the plan was to wait until our six months was up so that we could make a good profit on it. All our capital was now tied up in the car and so we did not have the money to replace the furniture that we sold before leaving Zambia. We had our lounge suite and our stove our radiogram and all our kitchen utensils and appliances and our friends lent us the things we were short of. So we moved into the rented house and got our dogs out of the kennels. 3 Prue Close was a three bed roomed house on a large piece of ground. I remember it had a huge mulberry tree in the back yard that was so big that the boys could not reach the lowest branches to get fruit off it, so they would wait under it when Jonny got home from work with their mouths open and Jonny would pick the berries and pop them into their mouths. It was like feeding little birds in a nest. We had an acre of ground but it was not fully fenced. Our dogs had never lived on a plot that was not fenced before and we did not want to go to the expense of fencing it when we were only going to be there a few months. We kept our eyes on the dogs most of the time that they were outside, and they spent a lot more time in the house than they had been used to but every evening after they had been fed they were put out for a while and Saint would go for a little walk around the neighbourhood. In the morning there would be a collection of dogs dishes at our back door and someone would have to go up and down the road and return them to their rightful owners.
After living in such a small town as Chingola, Salisbury was a huge city to us and we loved to explore it. We loved to go window shopping at the weekends. To see so many shops full of lovely goods was a great treat. Jonny loved the tool shops and the boat yards, I liked the furniture stores and the antique shops the kids of course loved the toyshops. We found things we had not had in Chingola like well equipped playgrounds and parks. There were art galleries and a museum that we could visit. We went to the drive in cinema, a real novelty for me. We went to the lakes and dams around the city and Jonny did some fishing.
Knowing that we would probably have to move out of this house at the end of December we were very anxious to get started with our house and we rang the building society often to see if our loan had been approved. We were told that it had been approved in principle but had not been finally granted yet and to ring back next week.
I previously mentioned that as a consequence of UDI the boarders of Rhodesia were being infiltrated and in order to prevent this, the government required that all men under 38 do one week a year compulsory army service. Jonny was keen to volunteer for his army service. We knew that he would be called up to the reserve army soon so he decided to get in first. He had done his four and a half months basic army training in Bulawayo in 1957 and the army still had his file and his original army number. He was told that they would be in touch with him soon. I don’t think at that time we knew enough about the history of the country to make an informed decision about it but we supported the government and wanted it to remain in power. Although political restrictions did apply, Rhodesia had never had the strict apartheid that South Africa had and for the most part the indigenous people were economically far better off than they were in Zambia. Southern Rhodesia had been granted self-government in 1927 and seemed to have been doing a pretty good job of it.
There were mines and agriculture and industry that were thriving and contributing to the economy and things looked good there. Before UDI most of the farming had been tobacco but once sanctions were imposed most of the crop could not be sold so lots of farmers diversified into other crops and they were now growing crops to feed the people. Industry before UDI had been rather limited but now that there were sanctions more and more things that could not be imported were manufactured locally and it was a great benefit to the country and created jobs for people. When we first arrived there some of the locally manufactured items were very poor. I remember the biscuits and the wine were two things we particularly noticed as not good quality but after a while they got much better, or maybe it was that our palates had been deadened and we just got used to them. They were eventually exporting wine to South Africa so it can’t have been too bad.
Looking at the problems in Zimbabwe at the moment maybe Smith was right all along in not wanting to hand the country over to the indigenous people but it is a very complex problem that I am not qualified to give judgement on. I only know that I thought then and I still think now that if colonial powers all over Africa had spent more money on education the problems would not have been so bad. But this is only my personal view and there are many people I know who would not agree with me. Generally white and black people did not mix so they did not get to know about each other’s beliefs and customs, they both feared what they did not understand and that fear caused aggression on both sides. I don’t think we thought too much about it though we just wanted our good way of life to continue. But that is enough politics for now.
One other thing I remember clearly about that time was the very cold snap that we had in November. November is supposed to be a very hot month so when it turned incredibly cold it caused untold problems. Wild animals in the bush that had lost their winter coats just could not cope with it. We read about hippos and rhinos dieing of the cold. Cattle and sheep died too and we were so cold that we just wanted to go back to Zambia where we had never been cold. We really did not have enough warm clothing, as we did not need it normally and being mid summer there was not much available in the shops either. We wore all our winter things one on top of the other and lit a fire in the grate; fortunately it did not last too long, only about a week but it was bad while it lasted.
When it got to the beginning of December and we were still waiting for our loan to be granted we realised that we would have to look for somewhere else to live. We had asked for an extension of our lease but the owners wanted to come back to live in the house so it was refused. We used to get up very early in the morning and rush out for the paper, turn first to the “Houses to rent” and ring anything that looked like a possibility. I did not like to ring anyone before 8 o’clock and by that time everything was taken and we were getting desperate so we had to start ringing earlier.
I remember one house I had rung about and said I would go and see it latter in the day but when I got there it had just been taken. The lady who owned the house was very friendly and we got chatting she told me that she had 17 sons, ranging in ages from 22 down to the baby who was 2 ½. She said that she had really only wanted one son and one daughter but when baby number two was another boy she was disappointed so she kept on hoping for a daughter. She told me that she was now resigned to the fact that she would never have a daughter.
One morning I found an advert for a two bed roomed house in Mabelreign to rent for 4 months from the 1st January I rang straight away, apologised for ringing so early and told the lady who answered that as long as it had four walls and a roof I would take it. She must have thought I was a little odd but promised to keep it for us. I got Jonny off to work threw the kids into the car. I was there with my deposit before 8.30 am and secured the house for us.
Prue Close is in Greendale on the north east of Salisbury and Portland Cement where Jonny was working was even further east and Mabelreign was on the west of Salisbury so we knew it would be an awful long way for Jonny to travel to work every morning and he started looking for a more convenient place to work. I got a telephone call one morning asking him to come for an interview the next day so I rang Jonny and told him so that he could ask for the day off. We are pretty sure that our conversation was overheard because when he went back he was given a weeks notice. Yes, he had intended to leave but he had planned to work until New Years Eve and not finish off on Christmas Eve. At least it gave us more time to organise our move to our new house.
The first thing we did when we got back was to see about applying for our home loan. We had already paid our deposit and chosen our land but now we had to sign all the papers and we had to choose the plans for the house we wanted. We had a choice of about eight plans I think but as our plot was a rather strange shape, a bit like a triangle, we had trouble getting the house to suit the plot. We eventually solved the problem by asking the architect if we could mirror the design and then altering the position of the front door. This gave us a front door in the right place and a view from the French widows of the lounge down the greenway in front of our plot so we also asked to have a large covered veranda leading off the lounge and we were very pleased with our new design.
Jonny got a job with the Portland Cement company. It was good that he was employed again and we had a regular income. We managed to find a house to rent not far from Sonny and Isabel; it was 3 Prue Close Greendale. We moved in at the beginning of September. It was only for three months and we thought that as we would only have another month before our own home was ready we might be able to persuade the owners to let us stay for another month or that we could go back to stay with Ray and Jill or Sonny and Isabel until our place was finished.
We put the Jaguar onto blocks and did not drive it. We had brought it into the country as an investment and we did not want to put too much mileage on the clock before we sold it. If we sold it before we had been in the country for six months we would have to pay the customs duty due on it so the plan was to wait until our six months was up so that we could make a good profit on it. All our capital was now tied up in the car and so we did not have the money to replace the furniture that we sold before leaving Zambia. We had our lounge suite and our stove our radiogram and all our kitchen utensils and appliances and our friends lent us the things we were short of. So we moved into the rented house and got our dogs out of the kennels. 3 Prue Close was a three bed roomed house on a large piece of ground. I remember it had a huge mulberry tree in the back yard that was so big that the boys could not reach the lowest branches to get fruit off it, so they would wait under it when Jonny got home from work with their mouths open and Jonny would pick the berries and pop them into their mouths. It was like feeding little birds in a nest. We had an acre of ground but it was not fully fenced. Our dogs had never lived on a plot that was not fenced before and we did not want to go to the expense of fencing it when we were only going to be there a few months. We kept our eyes on the dogs most of the time that they were outside, and they spent a lot more time in the house than they had been used to but every evening after they had been fed they were put out for a while and Saint would go for a little walk around the neighbourhood. In the morning there would be a collection of dogs dishes at our back door and someone would have to go up and down the road and return them to their rightful owners.
After living in such a small town as Chingola, Salisbury was a huge city to us and we loved to explore it. We loved to go window shopping at the weekends. To see so many shops full of lovely goods was a great treat. Jonny loved the tool shops and the boat yards, I liked the furniture stores and the antique shops the kids of course loved the toyshops. We found things we had not had in Chingola like well equipped playgrounds and parks. There were art galleries and a museum that we could visit. We went to the drive in cinema, a real novelty for me. We went to the lakes and dams around the city and Jonny did some fishing.
Knowing that we would probably have to move out of this house at the end of December we were very anxious to get started with our house and we rang the building society often to see if our loan had been approved. We were told that it had been approved in principle but had not been finally granted yet and to ring back next week.
I previously mentioned that as a consequence of UDI the boarders of Rhodesia were being infiltrated and in order to prevent this, the government required that all men under 38 do one week a year compulsory army service. Jonny was keen to volunteer for his army service. We knew that he would be called up to the reserve army soon so he decided to get in first. He had done his four and a half months basic army training in Bulawayo in 1957 and the army still had his file and his original army number. He was told that they would be in touch with him soon. I don’t think at that time we knew enough about the history of the country to make an informed decision about it but we supported the government and wanted it to remain in power. Although political restrictions did apply, Rhodesia had never had the strict apartheid that South Africa had and for the most part the indigenous people were economically far better off than they were in Zambia. Southern Rhodesia had been granted self-government in 1927 and seemed to have been doing a pretty good job of it.
There were mines and agriculture and industry that were thriving and contributing to the economy and things looked good there. Before UDI most of the farming had been tobacco but once sanctions were imposed most of the crop could not be sold so lots of farmers diversified into other crops and they were now growing crops to feed the people. Industry before UDI had been rather limited but now that there were sanctions more and more things that could not be imported were manufactured locally and it was a great benefit to the country and created jobs for people. When we first arrived there some of the locally manufactured items were very poor. I remember the biscuits and the wine were two things we particularly noticed as not good quality but after a while they got much better, or maybe it was that our palates had been deadened and we just got used to them. They were eventually exporting wine to South Africa so it can’t have been too bad.
Looking at the problems in Zimbabwe at the moment maybe Smith was right all along in not wanting to hand the country over to the indigenous people but it is a very complex problem that I am not qualified to give judgement on. I only know that I thought then and I still think now that if colonial powers all over Africa had spent more money on education the problems would not have been so bad. But this is only my personal view and there are many people I know who would not agree with me. Generally white and black people did not mix so they did not get to know about each other’s beliefs and customs, they both feared what they did not understand and that fear caused aggression on both sides. I don’t think we thought too much about it though we just wanted our good way of life to continue. But that is enough politics for now.
One other thing I remember clearly about that time was the very cold snap that we had in November. November is supposed to be a very hot month so when it turned incredibly cold it caused untold problems. Wild animals in the bush that had lost their winter coats just could not cope with it. We read about hippos and rhinos dieing of the cold. Cattle and sheep died too and we were so cold that we just wanted to go back to Zambia where we had never been cold. We really did not have enough warm clothing, as we did not need it normally and being mid summer there was not much available in the shops either. We wore all our winter things one on top of the other and lit a fire in the grate; fortunately it did not last too long, only about a week but it was bad while it lasted.
When it got to the beginning of December and we were still waiting for our loan to be granted we realised that we would have to look for somewhere else to live. We had asked for an extension of our lease but the owners wanted to come back to live in the house so it was refused. We used to get up very early in the morning and rush out for the paper, turn first to the “Houses to rent” and ring anything that looked like a possibility. I did not like to ring anyone before 8 o’clock and by that time everything was taken and we were getting desperate so we had to start ringing earlier.
I remember one house I had rung about and said I would go and see it latter in the day but when I got there it had just been taken. The lady who owned the house was very friendly and we got chatting she told me that she had 17 sons, ranging in ages from 22 down to the baby who was 2 ½. She said that she had really only wanted one son and one daughter but when baby number two was another boy she was disappointed so she kept on hoping for a daughter. She told me that she was now resigned to the fact that she would never have a daughter.
One morning I found an advert for a two bed roomed house in Mabelreign to rent for 4 months from the 1st January I rang straight away, apologised for ringing so early and told the lady who answered that as long as it had four walls and a roof I would take it. She must have thought I was a little odd but promised to keep it for us. I got Jonny off to work threw the kids into the car. I was there with my deposit before 8.30 am and secured the house for us.
Prue Close is in Greendale on the north east of Salisbury and Portland Cement where Jonny was working was even further east and Mabelreign was on the west of Salisbury so we knew it would be an awful long way for Jonny to travel to work every morning and he started looking for a more convenient place to work. I got a telephone call one morning asking him to come for an interview the next day so I rang Jonny and told him so that he could ask for the day off. We are pretty sure that our conversation was overheard because when he went back he was given a weeks notice. Yes, he had intended to leave but he had planned to work until New Years Eve and not finish off on Christmas Eve. At least it gave us more time to organise our move to our new house.
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