While We Were Away....

My brother Richard, who was a student at the University of Kent at Canterbury, had married Mary, the daughter of a local property developer, and had moved into a smart flat outside the city. Mary ran a small boutique selling ladies' fashion so, as soon as we arrived back, she took Gill in hand and kitted her out with some trendy clothes.

Richard and Mary's daughter, Samantha, was born before we arrived back, and Gill's sister Pauline had had two sons, Dickon and Simon, so we returned to a much expanded family.

My parents had sold Gawthorpe, the large house on the outskirts of Hastings, and had moved in to a small flat in the old town, in All Saint's Street. It was dark and only had a tiny garden, and anyone who stayed a night had to sleep in an area curtained off from the living room. The only advantage of the flat was that it was within staggering distance of a lovely little pub, the Cinque Ports, run by a husband and wife couple who were very good to my father. My father met friends there every weekday lunchtime for a drink.... or two.

Mangapwani Beach

In my mother's photograph album is this picture of a beach in Zanzibar, taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s. It looks a perfect beach, with white coral sands, coconut palms to shade the sun, a small sheltering headland, and warm, shallow water to bath in, yet it's also a working beach, for the sleek boats pulled up on it are ngalowas, the lateen-sailed, outrigger canoes used by villagers all along the East African coast for fishing.

It's called Mangapwani which, translated from the KiSwahili, means 'Arab Beach'. My mother refers to it in her writing, for example, "After church, Sundays were often occupied by picnics, out to Fumba or Mangapwani for bathing in a lovely warm clear sea." My father also visited the beach - this a man for whom beaches were not his favourite places - for his album has several pictures of him at Mangapwani with a group of friends, in the time before my mother arrived in Zanzibar.

Mangapwani is also the name of the nearby town, which lies close to the northwest coast of Zanzibar. One would expect, these days, that such a perfect beach would be crowded with tourists but a look on Google maps shows it deserted - both of people and fishing boats.

The Antelope Carving

For many years this was one of my most treasured possessions. The antelope is typical of the stylised carvings of animals that one could buy from the WaKamba carvers who for many years have displayed their wares in the central reservations along Kilindini and Salim roads in Mombasa. I can't recall when I bought it, or perhaps it was bought for me, but it travelled back and forth to England through my school years, wrapped in a kikoi in my small brown overnight suitcase.

This carving was finished by being polished with boot polish. Many of the 'ebony' carvings were the same wood, finished with black boot polish. Compared to some WaKamba carvings, it's crudely done, and over the years it has sustained some damage - for example, the tip of its left horn was broken off. Other than this, the little antelope is as good as the day it was carved some sixty years ago.

Buying these carvings was always fun. We would ask the price of an object and then gasp with horror when it was given - perhaps, even, walk away shaking our heads. The vendor would then suggest a slight reduction, which was greeted with more head shaking and expressions of disgust, but, perhaps, a suggestion of a price - ridiculously low. Finally, the bartering would end at a price somewhere in the middle which was acceptable to both sides.

Departure

As the time for our departure approached, David and Bibi moved to Umtali, in the east of the country, so we visited them there, on one occasion staying at Brown's Hotel in the town. On our last visit we drove north, back to Inyanga National Park, stopping at the Pungwe Falls. The view may have been spectacular but Gill felt terrible, so we hurried back to Marandellas and took her to the doctor, who announced that she was pregnant. For the next few weeks she was almost incapacitated by morning sickness, to the extent that I had to administer a daily injection. In tutoring me in how to do this, our lovely doctor said, "Imagine her bottom's a dart board...."

Finding a job back in the UK from Rhodesia might have been difficult so, since I was determined to continue teaching, we decided that I should apply for a teaching qualification, accepting a place at the Bristol School of Education, part of Bristol University, to do a Postgraduate Certificate in Education.

We began the miserable process of getting rid of the things which couldn't travel back with us. The two cats went to Bibi and David while we found Marx a home with a neighbouring farmer, who renamed him Mark. Sadly, Marx died of canine distemper soon after moving to the farm. The picture shows us with Marx very shortly before he left us.

We had gone to Rhodesia with all our possessions with the intention of settling permanently in this beautiful country amongst the warm, generous people we had come to love. When we decided to leave it was like a defeat. I remember weeping bitterly as we drove away from the college.

That we left was, in retrospect, a wise decision. After years of agony as the civil war drew out, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe with the prospect of developing into one of the richest and most advanced countries in Africa, a hope which was ruined under Robert Mugabe.

We left on 21st September 1970. We flew Air Rhodesia to Blantyre, Malawi, where we picked up our BOAC VC-10 flight to London - pictured. Although we remained in contact with some until 1975, steadily, sadly, we lost touch with all the dear friends we had made, and the memories of our attempt to settle in Africa faded.

Leaving Bernard Mizeki

Things began to go wrong when we heard the tragic news that David and Bibi Witt's second son, Jo-Jo, left in picture, had been killed in an accident while riding his bicycle. What made the incident so terrible was that the Witts had left their remote school near Wedza to move to Salisbury so that the two boys, Pom-Pom and Jo-Jo, could enjoy the social aspects of school instead of being home-educated. David had taken a post in a Salisbury secondary and they had rented a suburban house surrounded by a high, pig-wire fence, so very different from the free life they had lived in the 'bush'.

Gill had had problems with her hearing for years so was referred by our very good doctor in Marandellas to a surgeon in Salisbury, who operated on her left ear - with disastrous results. Gill lost six pints of blood and nearly died. She needed to return to the UK to have her hearing sorted.

The bush war between Ian Smith's white regime and the guerrillas of ZANU and ZAPU was becoming more and more unpleasant. Rural roads were being mined and rural schools found themselves on the front line. One of my early colleagues, Michael Pocock, who was head of a school in the remote northeast of the country, was forced at gunpoint to hand over his food and medical supplies to a group of guerrillas, and was then jailed by the regime for assisting the enemy. To make matters worse for us, the boys in the college supported the guerrillas, many joining them as soon as they left school.

So, as our three-year contract drew to an end, we decided we had to leave.

Autumn Garden Insects

It rained all day yesterday and the temperature plummeted below 10C, so the insects were out with the sun this morning, a female Common Darter surveying the scene from the top of the bay tree.

Just below her a ladybird scurried around minding her own business, which is what ladybirds do unless they're diverted, while nearby....

....one of many hover flies was sunning itself on a leaf.

Below the bay the broad leaves of the rhubarb are a fine place for another hover fly to sit and catch the sun, this one seeming to be mostly eyes, where it was joined by....

....a small and very pretty grasshopper.

Next to the rhubarb the flowers of  a late toadflax draw the pollinators, like this little bumblebee. Below him....

....a crane fly, all legs, had become rather entangled in the toadflax's seed pods.

No autumn insect assemblage is complete without the arrival of one of the wasp army, busying about its business and getting in the way of everyone else's.

So many insects on a warm autumn morning, and so many potential breakfasts for the garden's patient spiders.

Bernard Mizeki - Inyanga Holidays

As so often happens, we have little photographic record of the good people with whom we worked on a day-by-day basis, the Armstrongs, Katedzas, Davises, Chapandamas, Mutambanengwe, Garnets, Coutts, Ferrars, and Hunts. Instead, the photographic record is mainly of those we saw on holiday. The Witts, David with his wife Bibi and their three children (above), had left Bernard Mizeki and moved to a school miles out in the bush, St Mary's at Wedza. We visited them often, and they came in to see us. Conditions at Wedza were a little primitive. The only power came from a generator which David ran, and which switched itself off at ten each evening. So we would be plunged into darkness and 'Sergeant Pepper' would as suddenly die.

David introduced me to fly fishing. Cecil Rhodes had stocked his country estate at Inyanga, in the eastern highlands, with American rainbow trout, and they had thrived in the fast-flowing rivers, so we would drive up to what was now a National Park for a week or so, either camping or renting....

....one of the Park's cottages by the ford over the Pungwe river.

The countryside was like highland Scotland, open hills with rushing burns, and empty of people. As well as the Pungwe, we....

....fished one of its tributaries, the remote and beautiful Matenderere, and because the rivers were grossly overstocked the Park required that we keep all the trout we caught. Eating small trout lightly fried in butter is no hardship.

Later we introduced my cousin Charlotte's husband Keith to the sport. David and Keith had been at opposite ends of the political spectrum while at university together in South Africa but they forgot their past differences in their enjoyment of the sport. In this picture, Keith is cooking fresh trout and washing them down with a dumpy of beer.

The Rhodesian Soapstone Carvings

On our 1970 visit with my parents to Victoria Falls - see earlier post here - we stopped to buy soapstone carvings from some men in a small open-air market. Soapstone is an unusually soft metamorphic rock, a schist formed largely of the mineral talc. It's easy to carve and as easy to scratch, so it's a great material for carving but not so good for keeping.

Having always had a soft spot for chameleons I couldn't resist this one. He's less than 5cm high and is out-of-proportion and crudely carved, though he does show a chameleon's main features, like his two-toed feet.

The other carving is of a man's head. It's a little larger and we bought him because, although he's poorly finished, whoever carved him has captured a man deep in thought, perhaps a wise man and, perhaps, quite old.

Like all our mementos, they've bumped their way around the world with us and survived various purges when we've moved house and felt we had to get rid of at least some of our clutter. We don't have much else still with us from our three happy years in Rhodesia, so the man and the chameleon are rather treasured.

Autumn Colours

We no longer have the magnificent Ardnamurchan views we lived with for twenty-one years but Suffolk does its best to impress. This was the sunset seen from our back garden a few days ago.

The hedgerows too are at their most colourful with masses of berries, and the fruit trees are laden. We've had to prop up one branch of the pear tree in our allotment and the crabapple at the front of the house is so heavy with fruit that one of its branches has broken, which is a shame as, last winter, its fruit attracted fieldfares and redwings.

Whites and spotted woods are the most common butterflies at this season but we've seen red admirals, peacocks, blues, a small copper, and commas (above). While some butterflies are abundant, it does seem as if the range of species has reduced: we've not seen a single clouded yellow.

I'm now finding the local dragon- and damselflies increasingly interesting, as well as surprisingly abundant. Almost without exception they are difficult to identify with any certainty, and then only if I manage a photograph. For some time I thought this was the relatively common Emerald Damselfly but I now think it may be a much more unusual Willow Emerald. They're the devil to photograph because they're so insubstantial that the automatic focus can't find them.

This is the fearsome Southern Hawker, a large dragonfly which can be quite aggressive even towards a passing human. He's a fine hunter but I do wish he wouldn't snack on the local damselflies particularly as I suspect that his meal is a Willow Emerald.

Bernard Mizeki - Visits & Visitors

An early visit was to the Markwe caves with the Ferrars - he was was the school's bursar. The caves were high on one of the distinctive granite outcrops, called kopjes, near Marandellas, which featured....

....a mass of beautiful drawings dating back to the age of the Bushman, before they were displaced by the coming of the Bantu.

We made several visits to my cousin Charlotte and her husband Keith and their three children at Donnington Farm, near Norton. Keith ran a terrific operation there, specialising in....

.... maize and beef cattle - Aberdeen Angus crossed with local Afrikanders. He was the third generation to farm Donnington Farm, which Keith 'shared' with game animals such as kudu. Picture shows me with my cousin Charlotte.

Charlotte's mother Christian, my mother's older sister, who, after the death of her first husband had run a small bookshop, had remarried and lived on a large ranch near Bulawayo. Her husband, Basil Frost, had made his money from running small shops in the African 'reserves'. They were very good to us on our one visit but they strongly disapproved of our educating 'the blacks'.

In late 1969 my mother and father arrived out from England to visit us. They sailed from Southampton on Union Castle's Vaal, arriving in Cape Town and then travelling up by train to Bulawayo and on to Salisbury. They spent Christmas with us, after which we....

....went to the Victoria Falls, flying from Salisbury airport on a day trip. The falls themselves were in full spate and we were suitably soaked.

Having inspected the falls we took a river boat upstream, stopping at an island where my mother managed to disappear: we feared she had met a hippo but I think she went for a wander and didn't notice the time. The flight back was unpleasant as we passed through a series of intense thunderstorms.

Twisp

It happens very quickly and very suddenly, a flash of memory usually of a place - and for no particular reason. Sometimes I have a photo which helps recall the memory, sometimes I have nothing or, as in this case, I took a picture a few minutes before.

This is a pull-in off US Route 97, somewhere near Okanogan in Washington State, in October 2008, when we were driving from Edmonton, Alberta, to Seattle to visit my brother. Gill and I sat on the edge of a pond and ate a light meal while we watched a muskrat going about his business. It was a few minutes in the weeks we spent in Canada and the US yet, somehow, today it jumped back at me.

We spent that night at Twisp, a small town just to the east of the Cascade Range. It seemed to represent everything that was enviable about American life, from the boardwalked stores to the slow-speaking but friendly people who lived....

....in enviable surroundings. It was fall, the aspen trees had turned and begun to shed their leaves, and we walked miles along trails without seeing another soul. We spent the night in a small cabin in a slightly run-down motel before....

....following Route 20 high into the Cascades, each turn of the road revealing a yet more magnificent panorama.

This road closes for much of the winter and we followed it shortly before that happened. The GMC Yukon we had hired was a brute of a car and not one that seemed at all suited to the conditions, yet I enjoyed the challenge of driving that frozen road surface.

Surely it should have been a picture of Twisp or the Cascades which I should have recalled so vividly, not a small roadside pond?

Marx & the Cats

One night when we were out our house was burgled. While it was a horrible experience, the intruder puzzled us. For example, he had a good taste in records, taking some of our favourite LPs, but he took the electric kettle without the flex. After consulting the headmaster, we called the police. A white officer sat drinking coffee in our sitting room leaving a black constable to poke around for evidence. Had the officer looked at our shelves he would have found books on and by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and various anarchists as well as the English version of Mao Tse Tung's 'Little Red Book', and I would have spent far longer in jail than any petty thief.

To guard our property we had already bought a dog but the puppy was so cute we had taken him with us when we went out to dinner on the night of the burglary.

He grew up to be a very handsome dog. Marx was a De Beers alsation, bred to guard the diamond mines, and rather prejudiced against black people. Since the boys had to come to our house to renew an exercise book when it was full, they filled them very full indeed before they ran the gauntlet of Marx.

Marx needed huge amounts of exercise so he very much appreciated the school's 4,000 acres of bush. We both walked with him, but Gill took him many more miles. One of the fruits of a local tree was called a kaffir orange, and we threw these for him to chase, so for every mile we walked Marx ran five.

Marx did have his less endearing side. He would disappear from the house and return later having eaten something disgusting which he had found in the bush. He also rolled in filth, after which he was bathed, which he hated.

The cats were not amused by his arrival, and took to navigating the rooms via the tables, chairs and the tops of the room partitions. Later the three made friends, and when Nhata (above) had her kittens, which she produced one morning on our bed, her family shared Marx's basket.

When Nangatanga damaged his right front leg I had broken the scaphoid bone in my right wrist, so both of us were in plaster. My damage occurred while playing for the school's staff team. We travelled all over the place, playing teams such as the local Public Works Department and the police. All the other players were black, and some, particularly the police side, took some pleasure in being particularly rough with me. The wrist damage occurred when I was tackled by a very large police sergeant.