Southern Rhodesia to Mombasa

I bitterly regret not having a camera with me on my trip to Southern Rhodesia in 1963. This is the only picture I have of the young VSOs with whom I worked - Michael Atkinson at the back on the left and Malcolm Harrison at the front. Michael, an Etonian who was going up to Cambridge, had a full timetable while Malcolm worked on the estate. The three of us shared a bungalow, and the agreement with the school was that they provided all our food and soft drinks and a man to cook and clean, and enough pocket money to keep us in gin, beer and tobacco.

At right is Jonathan Farrant, son of....

....Jean and Basil Farrant (photo courtesy Bernard Mizeki College Facebook page here). Jean, who taught at the school, had written a biography of Bernard Mizeki, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's first African martyr, after whom the school was named: his shrine was close by. Basil was the school's estate manager and kept a fatherly eye on the VSOs. It was Basil who, after I had worked at the school for some months, thought I deserved a holiday so took me for a tour of eastern Rhodesia.

When I left England in January I had no plans for what I would do after my months at Bernard Mizeki but while I was there my mother acted as my 'agent' in England to organise applications to several universities, and I finally obtained a place at the University of Keele in Staffordshire.

By the time the summer term ended, Michael Atkinson and I had decided to set off back to the UK by hitch-hiking north, through Zambia and Tanganyika to Kenya, a distance of some 1,700 miles. We slept by the side of the road - not without some qualms as much of the journey was through wilderness Africa - and began to learn the art of long-distance hitch-hiking. Michael ended up in Dar-es-Salaam, from where he flew home, while I continued my journey to Mombasa where I still had many friends.