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.
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