Dar-es-Salaam

The Upanga Road Bungalow:

This large, rambling and rather dark bungalow was in Upanga Road*, Dar-es-Salaam. Built in the time when Tanganyika was a German colony, it was rented from the Custodian of Enemy Property by the African Mercantile Company, for which my father worked. It was the house to which I was brought home in January 1945 after my birth in the European Hospital, and where my brother joined us two and a half years later.

When I was born Tanganyika Territory was still a League of Nations Trust Territory administered by the British since 1918. In 1946 it became a UN Trust Territory.

I must have been four when we moved to another house but I do have some recollections of the old bungalow and something from it. This nativity set, along with an Imperial German flag and various other things, was found in the roof while we lived there, presumably put there by a German family in 1918 in the hope they would return. It was kept by my parents. On occasion we have used it at Christmas but most of the time it lives.... in the roof.

* Now Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road.

The First Beach:

In a small book called 'Baby's Days' is this picture, the first photo of me. It contains just three others and some records, like my weight over the first four months and the date when I cut my first tooth. The photo was taken some three months after I was born and the little book illustrates how relatively unimportant photos were in those days. How the world has changed!

The rest of our early photos are in a single album and, once the small baby pictures are done with, a disproportionate number of those that follow....

....show my brother and I on Dar-es-Salaam's beaches. This one is the first.

While my father wasn't keen on beaches, my mother loved them and would spend as much time on them as possible. Little wonder that my brother and I grew up loving beaches, and little wonder that I have always thought that beaches are very, very special places.

Beaches, Beaches:

My mother worked full time, and had commitments in charitable areas as well, but we seemed to go to the beach at every opportunity. Little wonder: the Dar-es-Salaam beaches had white sand and palm trees, were protected from the great waves and the sharks of the Indian ocean by a reef as mile or so out, the water was warm, and, in those days, there were very few of the tourists who crowd them today.

In the album, the above picture has the caption "First Steps", so even that important event in my life happened on a beach.

My father didn't really like beaches - I only have one picture of him in a swimming costume, and he looks uncomfortable in it - but in these early photographs he was frequently there. Here, he is with Richard and I and a model dhow, the traditional cargo ships of the East Coast and Arabia.

The pictures often show us with friends. This raft, called Kon Tiki, was owned by Christopher Hall, who is punting it, with me as his passenger.

The beaches were usually in bays, with headlands between. These were formed of old coral reefs which had been uplifted, and into them the sea had cut rock pools which were filled with sea creatures, places of fascination for a small boy. My mother captioned this picture, "The Fisherman".

Richard:

My brother Richard was born in September 1947, and came home to the Upanga Road bungalow. In one way, Richard's arrival must have been as much of a disappointment as mine. My mother used to say that my father always wanted a daughter, and the child she miscarried early in their time in Dar-es-Salaam was the daughter he should have had. The miscarriage happened because my mother went down with a bad go of malaria and was treated with quinine.

Not that we have ever had too many complaints about our father though we did have one: he used to tease us that he would swap us for the two daughters of some family friends, two girls whom we thought were horrible. At least early on in our lives, he used to come down to the beaches which we so loved. The object Richard is reaching out for is a cigarette tin. These carried fifty cigarettes but, filled with stones, made a great toy for a small child.

As far as I recall, Richard and I got on well together but he was very different. In her 'Life', my mother wrote that, "Richard was very determined and Jonathan was very good with him." In this picture we're on the drive with the big mango tree behind us.

One of the things Richard did was to get hold of my mother's button box and swallow several of its contents. My anxious mother called the doctor and was assured her that they would, in due course, appear at the other end. He also rode this tricycle down the magnificent flight of steps at the front of the bungalow in an accident which drew blood.

Fatuma:

My mother continued to work for the Tanganyika government in Dar-es-Salaam as she was a first class shorthand-typist. My parents therefore employed an ayah to look after Richard and I. Her name was Fatuma, and shortly after I was born she joined the existing staff at the Upanga Road bungalow, a cook and what was called a 'house boy'.

This picture was taken in front of the bungalow, probably in 1948. The front drive circled a large mango tree, and Fatuma and the other ayahs used to sit under the tree while the children played around them. The bungalow was raised on concrete stilts, and I can remember playing in the dark area underneath it.

Ayahs had many uses. This is my third birthday. My mother is holding Richard, I am to the right of them, and Fatuma is helping. I rather assume that all the other parents had left their children in their charge.

Fatuma was a lovely lady, a cheerful soul with infinite patience. I remember a truck full of workmen passing us on the road near the house and calling out to us. Fatuma was laughing but said they were admiring my red tricycle. I'm quite sure they were admiring Fatuma.

Most of the European families seemed to have ayahs, and they lurked on the edge of proceedings ready to leap forward when needed. This is the Crole Rees' birthday party on the beach. I am at right, separate from the other children. There are several later photos of me slightly to one side of everyone. At that stage I don't think I wanted to be antisocial, I just felt.... shy.

Home Leave:

My parents hadn't been 'home' - that is, to the UK - for years because of the war, and they were fortunate to get away in 1946, on a Harrison Line ship. This was my first experience of England, and of the English and Scottish relatives. The picture shows me with my mother, with Lex Wilson, left, my mother's cousin and always referred to as Cousin Lex, and his wife Nell, right.

Getting back to Dar-es-Salaam wasn't as easy. My father went ahead of us and we had to stay with various relatives until we could get a passage, which we did on a ship called the Malda, on which we had a fairly rough voyage back - and, to add to the fun, the children, of which there were thirty aboard, began to go down with measles.

My father's company gave him home leave every three years, so we were back in the UK in 1949, sailing 'home' on the Llanstefan Castle, after which, once again, we did the round of relatives. My cousin Carolyn is at left, then my mother's mother, holding Richard, then me, my mother's sister Noel, my cousin Michael, and David Wallace, Noel's husband.

On this trip we had to contend with rationing, British beaches in British weather, and with my cousin Carolyn, who thought she owned us. My impression from this, and from subsequent 'home' leaves, was that Britain was cold, grey, poor and miserable.

A Cat & A Tray:

There are few objects of which I have very early memories but this is one. It's an Arab tray, made of brass and exactly three feet across. According to the carefully typed lists of her important possessions which my mother made towards the end of her life, it had an "origin uncertain," but "came with C. when we set up house in Zanzibar," 'C' being my father, Cecil.

It's most likely to have been bought by my father in Port Sudan, Zanzibar or Dar-es-Salaam, all places where he had worked before he met my mother. I don't know what the Arabs, who came down to East Africa in their ocean-going dhows to trade and settle, used these trays for, but have always imagined it piled with rice on top of which was a whole, roasted goat, all swimming in fat.

As far as I'm concerned it never did anything except prop up a wall in all of my mother and father's houses until I inherited it, since when it has propped up our walls - except it did once do something very, very special.

When we lived in the old German bungalow in Upanga Road, Dar-es-Salaam, the tray was kept in a small, dark, room at the back of the house. One day - and I remember this vividly - my father told me to come with him, leading me to the little room and pointing at the tray. After a minute or two, from behind it emerged....

....the most beautiful black-and-white kitten, my first cat, who went by the name of Tinker MacKellar Haylett.

I don't recall where the 'Tinker' came from, but he had the name MacKellar because he was given to my father by the captain of the Clan MacKellar, a Clan Line ship which came in to the African Mercantile agency. Tinker was the only remaining kitten of the ship's cat, all his brothers and sisters having been taken by gulls. One thing was never explained: how the ship's cat found the tom who sired the gorgeous, placid, affectionate cat whom I loved dearly.

When we moved to Mombasa, where this picture was taken, Tinker came too. For some reason, he couldn't travel with my mother or father so my father's boss, a very pleasant man called Cyril Hunt, took Tinker with him by air, sewn into a large kikapu, a basket woven from palm fibre, which was placed at the back of the 'plane's passenger compartment. At some point in the flight Tinker walked up the aisle and jumped up onto Cyril Hunt's lap.

The Kingsway House:

In the latter part of 1949 or early in 1950 we moved from the old bungalow in Upanga Road to a new house which my father's company leased in Oyster Bay, an area which was being developed along the coast to the north of Dar-es-Salaam. My mother was obviously very pleased with the house but, having been used to the shaded garden and lush vegetation of Upanga Road, I found the rocky area which served as a 'garden' very bare and unfriendly. I remember spending a great deal of time collecting lumps of the coral rock on which the house was built and piling them up to make homes for the local lizards.

The firm provided my father with a very smart new car, a Ford Mercury, so he could travel round Tanganyika promoting the company's interests. The African Mercantile, as well as being a shipping agency, was the agent for a large number of commercial goods. My father's interests were, and always continued to be, his work as a ship's agent, so he disliked this part of his job. Fortunately, it didn't last long because later in 1950 he was transferred to Mombasa.

School Reports:

My mother kept all sorts of odd things, many of them in the old Arab chest, including a muddle of family papers. Occasionally, I dip in to it and find something I didn't know was there - like a small package which contains my first school reports.

The earliest is from the Junior European School in Dar-es-Salaam, dated 5th April 1950. At the time I would have been just over five so, since my birthday was 2nd January, this is my first school report. One of the lessons is 'Handwork & Art' - I assume 'Handwork' is crafts.

The next report is also from the Dar-es-Salaam school and is dated 9th August 1950, which must have been just before we moved to Mombasa. In it I am described as 'inclined to be slow' and to 'worry unduly'. Mmm, yes, Mrs Walker, you were quite right about the worrying: I still do.

Dar-es-Salaam to Mombasa:

We had only been in the Kingsway house six months when Dad was transferred to Mombasa to take over the shipping section at the African Mercantile there. My mother had to vacate the Dar-es-Salaam house but there was nowhere for us to live in Mombasa so we went on an extended tour. We started by travelling up to Kongwa, inland from Dar-es-Salaam, by train, where friends were opening up a farm on which they hoped to grow tobacco. They lived in fairly primitive conditions out in the bush: we heard leopard coughing at night and our hosts had to lock up their two great danes at night as otherwise the leopards would have eaten them. Richard and I enjoyed ourselves. In the picture we're helping with the washing up.

After travelling back to Dar we flew across to Zanzibar where we visited the beaches where our parents had spent so much time when they met.

While we were there our mother had this studio photo taken of us.

From Zanzibar we flew to Tanga, to the north of Dar, where we stayed just inland from the town with a man we always knew as 'Bwana Bartlett'. Mum had come to know him when he had been brought out to Zanzibar to sort out some major problems in the clove-growing industry, a dispute which ended in a riot. She had also worked with him on the Zanzibar rationing board during the war. Bwana Bartlett now worked for the Tanganyika Sisal Corporation, and his bungalow, called 'Geiglitz', was a typical old German one.

By this time a house had become available so we travelled north to Mombasa.