A New Life

 I struggle to imagine what my wife thought as she travelled with me to Africa for the first time, just over a year after our marriage. Since I had already spent time at the school where we were to teach for three years she did have some idea of what to expect, but the reality of what she found when we arrived in Rhodesia must have been overwhelming. Not that I recall her being in any way worried - she seemed to take everything very much in her stride.

We were very privileged. In this view of the Bernard Mizeki campus the bungalow at top right was ours, along with a large garden which included glorious flowering shrubs like bougainvillea and passion vine and a well developed vegetable plot.  The other five bungalows were home to some of our colleagues and their families, including Pauline and Les Davis, Jeff and Pat Armstrong, Herbert and Elizabeth Katedza, and the headmaster. The school buildings, including the classrooms and boarding houses for the students, were a short walk away to the left of the picture.

One of the things which Mrs MW took to was the countryside which surrounded us. The school's lands extended over some two thousand acres, most of it bush, which featured these great piles of granite stones called kopjes - a line of them ran along the ridge behind our house. She thought nothing of walking for miles alone through this beautiful landscape with, soon after we arrived, Marx, the alsation we acquired who is seen at bottom right in this picture.

It was wild country, its main hazard being a range of quite unpleasant snakes, including cobras, puff adders, pythons and boomslangs, and there was also reputed to be a resident leopard. This was Africa. Some might have been intimidated. She loved it.