1967: Decision

Sometimes one can picture the moment when a decision that affected the rest of your life was made, in this case on a rainy day while sitting at the kitchen table in a friend's flat into which we had moved from 14A Radford Street in Stone. As the end of my last year at Keele approached we had to decide what we were going to do next. I had been offered an MSc in the geology department at Keele; we had the opportunity of doing a teaching qualification and two years in schools in Zambia or Uganda; or I had the offer of a three year teaching contract at Bernard Mizeki College, where I had spent two terms in 1963.

We made the decision to go to Bernard Mizeki. I had such good memories of my time there, of the place and the people, that it was too much of a temptation; and Gill was keen to see Africa.

We left England with every intention of making a new life in what was then Rhodesia. Our heavier possessions, including all our books, went out by sea via Cape Town. We flew, and began to appreciate that the decision to go to Rhodesia had consequences, for the country had declared its independence under Ian Smith's white minority regime and was subject to UN sanctions, which meant that the only airline which flew direct was South African Airways. We flew from England to Salisbury Rhodesia via Las Palmas - picture - and Luanda in Portuguese Angola.