53) The Vumba
In the Eastern region of Rhodesia along the border there is a range of mountains called The Vumba Mountains. It is a very beautiful part of the country; it is cool and damp and stays green all year round. The altitude and the mountainous terrain make it a perfect place to grow coffee, apples and pine trees. We had always liked it there and thought it would be a wonderful place to live.
In 1980 Jonny was working for a car sales company called Puzey and Payne. One of the men who had worked with him there named Craig Mac Giles had left and bought a coffee farm in the Vumba a short while before. When the terrorist war ended he was able to fell the timber to sell it commercially and he needed someone to help him. He offered the position to Jonny and we went up to stay with Craig one weekend to discuss it with him. That weekend Veronica Campbell Howard, who had also worked with Craig at Puzey and Payne and her four children, Melinda, Clyde, Luanne and Brett, who were good friends of Jonathan’s and Dominic’s were also invited. We had a wonderful weekend in this truly lovely area and so we did not need a lot of persuading to take Craig up on his offer.
We decided that we would not sell our Hatfield house but rent it out in case we wanted to come back and live there again and we set about finding a tenant packing up our belongings getting ready for yet another move in our lives. I suppose this was the most impulsive move of our lives. There was no real reason to leave Hatfield, we were happy and comfortable there but the thought of living in such a beautiful area was very tempting. To live in the country, on a large plot of land away from the city was a life style that we had always thought would be good and maybe we rushed into the discission. But that is in retrospect, at the time we were sure we were doing the right thing.
The Vumba was about 25km from the town of Umtali and a bit far for the boys to travel to and from school every day so we arranged that they would become weekly borders, Jonathan at Umtali Boys High and Dominic to do his last term of Junior school at Umtali Junior school.
Craig’s wife Laura was given the task of finding a house for us to rent. There were not many houses available to rent in the area and we were a bit worried at first that we would not find anywhere to live. But eventually Laura found somewhere, by then it was so close to the time we were supposed to move we did not have the time to go and see it so we just had to trust Laura’s judgment and anyway there was not much choice.
As Jonny would be working in forests he needed a vehicle that would take him there. He bought a second hand reconditioned Land Rover that was in very good condition.
Laura rang me and said that she had been approached by the couple that ran the local store in the Vumba with an offer to run the store for them for two months while they went on holiday. While the terrorist war was on they could not ask anyone to take on the job so they had not had a holiday for many years. Now that there was peace they felt that they could take some time to go and visit family in England. Laura said that she was not prepared to do it on her own but if I was willing to help her she would do it. I thought it might be fun and as it was only for two months I agreed.
Mike Harris kindly lent us a truck and so we piled all our belongings on board, collected together our kids, our dogs, our bird, our servants and off we went again. We had thought we would move on 1st August (always a special day for us all) but were delayed a week and did not manage to get away until about 6th of the month. I always feel that our furniture was just thrown on to the truck but I don’t really think it was. I think I get that feeling because our coffee table was not well secured and fell off on the Umtali Road, getting rather badly damaged but Jonny stuck it together again and we had it for quite a few years after that.
Laura had given us directions to our new home and when we arrived there it was raining, it often was in the Vumba. Leaving the main road and going down the hill on the wet dirt road to the house was a bit scary but it was to prove worst when we had to come back up the hill. I was driving the VW, Jonny the Land Rover and we had a driver in the truck. The furniture was all off loaded and the truck driver tried to get back up the hill. The road was very wet by then and the wheels just kept spinning and he was getting nowhere. Fortunately for us our new neighbour Jim Taylor, an apple farmer who owned a tractor, came and with his tractor and pulled the truck up the hill and we sent it on its way.
The house we were moving into was called Kalsie, and was in Nyahamini Rd. It had been empty for about four years. Because the war had intensified in that area the family had insisted that their mother who at that time had been living alone in the house move and go into town to live. I believe she had lived there with her family for some time but they had grown up and moved away, leaving her and her husband alone there. When he had died she realised that she could not live there alone and agreed to her family’s request to move into town.
It was a large house, built in a U shape with a wide veranda right around the inside of the U. The rooms all opened on to the veranda. The veranda was enclosed in the front with a short wall topped with wrought iron screening so there was very little protection from the weather there. It was really a house designed for a warmer climate than the Vumba. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, dinning room, lounge, office, a huge kitchen and a walk in linen cupboard. My linen looked a bit pathetic in there but it was a wonderful storeroom. There was also a one bed roomed cottage at the back of the house, so we had plenty of space.
One thing that worried me when we got there was that there was no place to connect my electric stove, the house was fitted with a wood stove that was for the cooking and to heat the water. I had never used one before and was rather nervous about it. The house had been empty for over four years and with that open veranda it did need a good clean but it had obviously been left very clean when the owner moved out, as it was really only surface dust.
Another problem we discovered was that was that there was no water in the taps. The water for the house came from a small dam, fed by the stream that ran through the property. When the owners had left the house they had taken the water pump and the motor to our neighbour Jim Taylor for safekeeping and it had not yet been replaced. So on our first night there we could not have a bath or do any of the cleaning that was so necessary. We made up our beds, just left everything where it was, took our toilet bags round to Craig and Laura’s house and got cleaned up and had supper there.
The following morning with the rain stopped, the sun shinning and so much beauty around us we felt more up to the task of getting the house straight.
In 1980 Jonny was working for a car sales company called Puzey and Payne. One of the men who had worked with him there named Craig Mac Giles had left and bought a coffee farm in the Vumba a short while before. When the terrorist war ended he was able to fell the timber to sell it commercially and he needed someone to help him. He offered the position to Jonny and we went up to stay with Craig one weekend to discuss it with him. That weekend Veronica Campbell Howard, who had also worked with Craig at Puzey and Payne and her four children, Melinda, Clyde, Luanne and Brett, who were good friends of Jonathan’s and Dominic’s were also invited. We had a wonderful weekend in this truly lovely area and so we did not need a lot of persuading to take Craig up on his offer.
We decided that we would not sell our Hatfield house but rent it out in case we wanted to come back and live there again and we set about finding a tenant packing up our belongings getting ready for yet another move in our lives. I suppose this was the most impulsive move of our lives. There was no real reason to leave Hatfield, we were happy and comfortable there but the thought of living in such a beautiful area was very tempting. To live in the country, on a large plot of land away from the city was a life style that we had always thought would be good and maybe we rushed into the discission. But that is in retrospect, at the time we were sure we were doing the right thing.
The Vumba was about 25km from the town of Umtali and a bit far for the boys to travel to and from school every day so we arranged that they would become weekly borders, Jonathan at Umtali Boys High and Dominic to do his last term of Junior school at Umtali Junior school.
Craig’s wife Laura was given the task of finding a house for us to rent. There were not many houses available to rent in the area and we were a bit worried at first that we would not find anywhere to live. But eventually Laura found somewhere, by then it was so close to the time we were supposed to move we did not have the time to go and see it so we just had to trust Laura’s judgment and anyway there was not much choice.
As Jonny would be working in forests he needed a vehicle that would take him there. He bought a second hand reconditioned Land Rover that was in very good condition.
Laura rang me and said that she had been approached by the couple that ran the local store in the Vumba with an offer to run the store for them for two months while they went on holiday. While the terrorist war was on they could not ask anyone to take on the job so they had not had a holiday for many years. Now that there was peace they felt that they could take some time to go and visit family in England. Laura said that she was not prepared to do it on her own but if I was willing to help her she would do it. I thought it might be fun and as it was only for two months I agreed.
Mike Harris kindly lent us a truck and so we piled all our belongings on board, collected together our kids, our dogs, our bird, our servants and off we went again. We had thought we would move on 1st August (always a special day for us all) but were delayed a week and did not manage to get away until about 6th of the month. I always feel that our furniture was just thrown on to the truck but I don’t really think it was. I think I get that feeling because our coffee table was not well secured and fell off on the Umtali Road, getting rather badly damaged but Jonny stuck it together again and we had it for quite a few years after that.
Laura had given us directions to our new home and when we arrived there it was raining, it often was in the Vumba. Leaving the main road and going down the hill on the wet dirt road to the house was a bit scary but it was to prove worst when we had to come back up the hill. I was driving the VW, Jonny the Land Rover and we had a driver in the truck. The furniture was all off loaded and the truck driver tried to get back up the hill. The road was very wet by then and the wheels just kept spinning and he was getting nowhere. Fortunately for us our new neighbour Jim Taylor, an apple farmer who owned a tractor, came and with his tractor and pulled the truck up the hill and we sent it on its way.
The house we were moving into was called Kalsie, and was in Nyahamini Rd. It had been empty for about four years. Because the war had intensified in that area the family had insisted that their mother who at that time had been living alone in the house move and go into town to live. I believe she had lived there with her family for some time but they had grown up and moved away, leaving her and her husband alone there. When he had died she realised that she could not live there alone and agreed to her family’s request to move into town.
It was a large house, built in a U shape with a wide veranda right around the inside of the U. The rooms all opened on to the veranda. The veranda was enclosed in the front with a short wall topped with wrought iron screening so there was very little protection from the weather there. It was really a house designed for a warmer climate than the Vumba. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, dinning room, lounge, office, a huge kitchen and a walk in linen cupboard. My linen looked a bit pathetic in there but it was a wonderful storeroom. There was also a one bed roomed cottage at the back of the house, so we had plenty of space.
One thing that worried me when we got there was that there was no place to connect my electric stove, the house was fitted with a wood stove that was for the cooking and to heat the water. I had never used one before and was rather nervous about it. The house had been empty for over four years and with that open veranda it did need a good clean but it had obviously been left very clean when the owner moved out, as it was really only surface dust.
Another problem we discovered was that was that there was no water in the taps. The water for the house came from a small dam, fed by the stream that ran through the property. When the owners had left the house they had taken the water pump and the motor to our neighbour Jim Taylor for safekeeping and it had not yet been replaced. So on our first night there we could not have a bath or do any of the cleaning that was so necessary. We made up our beds, just left everything where it was, took our toilet bags round to Craig and Laura’s house and got cleaned up and had supper there.
The following morning with the rain stopped, the sun shinning and so much beauty around us we felt more up to the task of getting the house straight.
posted by JC at
9:46 pm
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