Centenary Park

Growing up in Bulawayo there was one particular avenue of childhood magic that transfixed us in our growing up years. Such was the plethora of delights it contained it is impossible for me to do it justice in one short session. One of its attractions, the National Museum, was such a wonderland that it will enjoy a chapter all of its own.

Selbourne Avenue was the main artery that sped traffic from Bulawayo's Central Business District to its sprawling eastern suburbs. Like most of the city's main boulevard's it was originally designed with the intent of allowing a wagon dragged by a full team of sixteen oxen to turn around within its confines.

Being a town planner in Bulawayo must have been a joyful occupation because the city was left with enormous thoroughfares that could cope with any amount of traffic. Selbourne Avenue was no exception, allowing for six lanes lined by a never-ending canopy of broad-spreading Jacaranda trees. The trees provided always-shaded parking and in spring would erupt into a riot of purple flowers that would willow and wisp down to the ground and form immense swathes of bee-strewn carpet. Driving east, the right side of Selbourne Avenue contained a massive garden area, gravel paths meandering through great groves of Jacaranda trees and their cousins and my personal favourites - the crimson topped Flamboyant Trees. The limbs on these trees would start spreading low and would be enormous - allowing for hours of adventurous climbing and exploring amongst the closely packed canopies. The flamboyants also produced massive black pods that would crack open to reveal a row of carefully nurtured seeds. They would litter the surrounds of the trees and would be great for vivid young imaginations seeking swords and guns to slay dragons and communist terrorists. The gardens were a magnet for the city's bridal parties - Saturday afternoons becoming a monotonous parade of blushing brides in stark white dresses posing with grooms sweating in suits completely unsuited to the tropical garden surrounds. It was here that I had to pose through endless photographs as a page boy in kilt at my brother's wedding in 1977 followed by a gig as ring bearer in concert with Fiona Dewar at my sister's rushed wedding two years later. Posing bridal parties would slowly work their way towards the centrepiece on this side of the road - the fountains, creating a traffic jam of hot and bothered citizens waiting for their turn in front of the splashing white jets spurting to the heavens. No matter how hot it was though, no one ventured into the cooling waters. I presume this was something of a no-no and strictly enforced. The fizzing spires cascading into the crystal blue moat were certainly an inviting proposition. On the pavement before the fountain was a large granite monolith bearing the city's coat of arms and in front of that were the obligatory ice-cream boys. The were astride a bicycle that propped up an ice box packed with smoking dry-ice and a plethora of ice-creams devoured by hungry children. They would add to the noise of the guffawing chatter and splashing water, with the peals of their bells, rung just in case you'd missed their presence. If this side of the street was magical, the other side was a mystical wonderland, particularly for young boys. This was the main parklands and one entered through two austere stone pillars and into a ceaseless parade of attractions that saw families from all over the city flock to the park as often as possible. Up on the right side were the obligatory parkland attractions - jungle-jims, see-saws, swings and roundabouts. However, what made this place particularly special was what seemed like an array of large weaponry that we were free to play on. There was a massive tank on large tracks with a huge turret that would swallow us in our multitudes and we'd peer forward through little slits in the metal at our parents, pretending that we were about to mow them down with top gun blazing shrapnel all around. There was a sky-high globe of some description that was made from wrought-iron bars that encouraged us to climb all over it, inside, atop and throughout. Perhaps my sense of perspective is forever from childhood but it seemed that this structure was reasonably high off the ground and not something that you'd want to fall from. The occupational health and safety police obviously weren't a blight on our developmental years. There was also a steam train, and with the paternal side being something of a railway family (Dad had been a fitter and turner in the Bulawayo rail workshops while his dad had retired after many years as a guard on the Umtali-Beira line) the train held special attraction. Again we were allowed to climb all over it. The cabin still had a large gaping hole for fire and the coal trays behind, while empty, were still fuel for vivid imaginations as we pretended to stoke the engine's belly and in our longings prod it speeding down tracks winding through vast granite outcrops and spreading flat-topped acacia trees. We could hang out wide from the stairs of the train and clamber onto the train’s barrel, peer down its smoke stack and jump off the front and stare at its impressive front guard intended to shift stray buffalo, rhino and elephants from its path. In amongst these various amusements our parents would spread blankets over immaculate green lawns, unpack picnic hampers and gossip the afternoon away (probably majoring on kill-counts and the political situation) while we kids would speed from ride to ride, thoroughly entertained and exhausted by day's end. As the shadows lengthened we would wind our way down the hill towards the hooting and barking of the duck pond which was enclosed by a miniature train track serviced by its very own station. While we could drive our imaginary engine up the slope, these little engines were the real deal - with steaming boilers and genuine chugging and steam-driven tooting. This part of the park always had its distinctive smell. The acrid taint of roasting acacia wood and the particular pungency of heated metal. But it was not an unpleasant smell. It was one that made the nostrils flare with expectancy at what lay ahead. There were several little trains and they were all named after the mythical heroes of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. I presume the idea for this came because they were housed in a brick shed that had a turntable out the front which would swing the trains onto the tracks ahead of waiting children. The train that was used most often was King Arthur and Lady Guinevere would often get a run. Sometimes there would be so many clamoring children that they'd run both trains to cope with demand. There were several other engines but they seemed to enjoy a mystery status, hiding in the back of the shed and presumably only used when one of the main workhorses needed repair. The trains would always run around the tracks in an anti-clockwise direction. After departing from the station the track would curve off to the left and continue that way. We would peer at the ducks slowly traversing the pond on the inside. Towards the end of the circuit the defining moment being where we would plunge through the blackness of a tunnel and the little train would toot its horn, something that was deafening in the confined space of the tunnel and sometimes completely unexpected. Another memory of the train station was one day where there was a product launch for a new soap - Kel 77. Of course the year was 1977 and it was the era where everyone was wearing Trade Fair T-shirts with a similar 77 logo if they weren't wearing the obligatory shirts of a cartoon elephant holding a sign proclaiming "Rhodesia is super!" We were all given free rides and at the end of our circuit would be handed a large bar of green soap. Instantly Kel 77 became one of the coolest commodities amongst us kids though in hindsight it was probably a nasty provision forced on us by sanctions. That one bar seemed to last in my shower for well over a year. Perhaps another reason why Centenary Park seemed to have a particular kind of magic is because it was the centrepiece of the civic Christmas celebrations and it therefore enjoyed the rarified air that is Christmas anticipation for a child. The park would come alive with a forest of twinkling lights strewn through the trees, great big neon candles would be erected and spinning stars would light up the night sky. One tree would become the Christmas Tree - a riot of sparkling fairy lights below a giant star perched at its top. With Dad now the National director of Youth for Christ (YFC) it also meant that the YFC mob would descend on the park for the annual Christmas concert. YFC drew its ranks from nearly every teenager in every "alive" protestant church throughout the city and its numbers would rank in the hundreds. November was always marked by the tech gurus, those strange animals with long hair and beady eyes, obsessing about the sound equipment required for the night's show. Chief amongst their concerns would always be the weather because the event was held in the outdoor amphitheatre, not far from the Centenary Park miniature train station. The amphitheatre was essentially a large raised concrete stage at the bottom of a bowl of black tarmac that stretched up the surrounding hill. Along this ridge were long series of wooden benches that could hold a significant crowd. And every year we'd take over the amphitheatre for a concert of some description and nervously peer up at the heavens at an encroaching thunderstorm of monolithic proportions. Bulawayo had the knack of attracting the most frightening of thunderstorms, great big anvil-heads of cumulonimbus clouds billowing in and announcing their advance with cracks of lightening and long growls of thunder. And inevitably one of these monsters would roll in as we scurried around the amphitheatre preparing the annual show. I remember one year the torrential rain managed to get into the box-like speakers, blowing them out and forcing us into watching an acoustic show under a canopy of raised umbrellas. The next year we came prepared and as the clouds rolled in and large drops of rain started to pelt around us we smiled knowingly, nodding approval towards a sound desk and speakers enveloped in bright yellow tarpaulins. The show went on but at the end of the night show participants and audience alike (which would number in what seemed like their thousands despite the murderous weather) were drenched. Thankfully it was warm and it didn't much seem like hardship. Inevitably the show would take place on Christmas Eve and we would wend our way out of the park, past trains, tanks, roundabouts and trees gaudily painted with flashing and flickering lights, unbelievably excited with the thrill of an impending Christmas morn. Magic!

1979 Part II

The Rhodesian academic year consisted of three terms that were separated by school holiday blocks of four weeks which allowed for lengthy periods of annual leave. This was just as well because the nearest “safe” beaches for us were a good two days’ drive away in South Africa. With the war raging around us South Africa was also one of the few places that would take us. Our neighbours on every other side were hostile. In the autumn of 1979 we crossed the border into South Africa and made our way to that closest beach, Durban. We had done a jaunt around South Africa a few years previously with our good family friends the Jenkinsons where we’d spent some time on the Garden Route, holidaying a few weeks in George, taking in the Kango Caves and spending Christmas Eve in Port Elizabeth. This time we went to Annerley, just south of Durban and north of Port Shepstone, a base that was central to my Mum’s extended family in both of those centres. Being born fifteen years behind the previous sibling meant that I was practically raised as an only child - my two older siblings leaving for national service and nursing college respectively when I was still in nappies. Going to Shepstone meant that I was in close proximity to my cousins, my first, and really only experience of having family close in age around. Mum’s younger brother Eric had six children, one boy just a few months older than me. Uncle Eric was a commercial fisherman and my memory of that holiday was of us being inundated with fresh fish and crayfish and of rollicking on Annerley beach with the extended Bowden clan. One day when we were there a surfer flirted too closely with a rocky buff and was dumped on the barnacles and was bought up onto the beach a bloody mess. I did make another friend on that holiday. His name escapes me but I do distinctly remember that I spent several days on the beach with a boy my age. This may not seem remarkable except that his skin was black and this was South Africa at the height of apartheid. South Africa definitely had a different atmosphere between the races than Rhodesia. Though we were in the midst of a pitched civil war in our country, there was a large battalion of black troops known as the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) that were feared and revered by the insurgents. In Kindergarten the RAR band had come to play at school and had entertained us with renditions of “one banana, two banana” etc and had also called a girl out from our class to “conduct” them which resulted in inevitable chaos and much mirth. While Rhodesia had echoes of apartheid in its segregated schools and some facilities, there did seem to be an easier relationship between the races than in South Africa where it was very clear that hatred smouldered and the segregation was institutionalised. To get to Annerley beach we passed the large “Net Nie Blankes” signs that proclaimed it to be a whites’ only beach. So my friend was playing roulette by being there and quite possibly it could have meant trouble for us too. Not that it would have been the first time we’d usurped the authorities in aid of a black child. When our house-maid had given birth to a son sometime in 1973 she’d had to send him out to family in the townships where he clearly became neglected. So we used to hide him away at our property for extended periods in defiance of the edict that children of the house-help were not to live in the “white” suburbs and nurse him back to full health. Eventually he was allowed to stay with us and we grew up together as "brothers" and playmates. His name was Weatherley (named after the surname of a policeman colleague of his father). A year ago he passed away. He was walking home one day and simply collapsed in a gutter. In preceeding months he had lost a lot of weight and was in ill-health. Sadly he had managed to reach the new median age for males in the "new Zimbabwe". He'd lived his alloted lifespan under the Mugabe regime and probably fell victim to the AIDS pandemic. 1979 was a year that saw the ignition of several life-long passions. Obviously writing featured prominently under the controlling hand of Mrs Mcaninch but this joy in written expression was being fed by a voracious reading regime. Sometime in 1979 I crossed the line from Enid Blyton (who my librarian aunt despised) to the wonderful world of the Willard Price Adventure series and Paul White’s iconic Jungle Doctor books. Bulawayo City Council ran several libraries including a mobile library on a bus. Once a week it would roll up to our closest shopping centre (Retreat on the Matopos Road) and open the doors to a large collection of children’s and adult books. Our entry into the general school population also meant that we started to participate in the various sporting activities on offer. Our school day would end at 1pm and we’d have lunch at home before we’d go back to school for several afternoons each week for sport. The Standard One boys were all expected to play soccer and I remember our first training session involved a rigorous regime of sit-ups, press-ups and even as many chin-ups as we could do off the goalposts. We had our first taste of inter-school competition that probably didn’t amount to much more than a ball, twenty bodies and a cloud of dust. I’d soon found out that I was happiest on the wing. Not right or left wing though. I’d start on the wing closest to the adjoining rugby field and swap over at half time to remain so which enabled me to keep half an eye on the rugby action. It would be politic of me to not go into the gory details of why one so young was already indoctrinated in the knowledge that soccer is an inferior game to rugby. Suffice to say that Dad and his best mate, Uncle George (who coached the Northlea 1st XV for a few years during their only period of success) were avowed rugby men. It was fitting then that 1979 saw me take my first pilgrimage to one of my favourite places on earth, the rather grandly titled Hartsfield Rugby Stadium in northern Bulawayo. In actuality it was little more than a few ramshackle grandstands (one covered) on the western edge, some concrete piered steps on the eastern sideline and hills on the northern and southern edge. However, for me it was a field of dreams and the stadium is still firmly etched in memory. In those first few visits we would sit in the cheaper section of the concrete steps on the eastern terraces, staring directly into the sun and surrounded by a loud crowd that was well oiled by Lion Lager. Immediately to our left was a fenced section that was reserved seating for the Bulawayo Lions Club. I never saw it used. The southern edge had the scoreboard, a massive structure that had people inside it, watching through holes and manually changing the score. Opposite us was the “posh” seats in the covered grandstand and across the player’s tunnel was another grandstand that was not covered but generally always full. The northern end was next to a bike racing track underneath huge spreading trees and this was the domain of the vocal schoolboys that were there to support their teams in the curtain-raisers. Hartsfield’s moment of glory had been in 1949 when it hosted the only victory the Rhodesian side recorded over the All-Blacks. Apparently the 10-8 victory had prompted scenes of pandemonium and when Rhodesia went on to draw the second leg in Salisbury 3-3 they’d managed the impossible, a series win over New Zealand. The game I distinctly remember from 1979 was a clash between Rhodesia and Griqualand West, visiting from South Africa. It was a game of some portent, my understanding was that the loser would be eliminated from the top-tier of South Africa’s provincial competition - the Currie Cup. Uncle George’s son, Neville, has just broken into the national team and was playing out of position that day at flanker. The national stalwart, Ian “Buccy” Buchannan would most likely have been captaining the side from scrum-half. The side that year had also contained other prominent players including Ray Mordt and Dave Smith who would go on to represent the Springboks the following year when they locked horns with the British Lions. The match was tense for the best part of an hour before the Rhodesians managed to get in front and powered home, probably on account of playing at home in front of a large, boisterous crowd (maybe 4000)! There was a post-game traffic jam that we managed to avoid on account of the fact that I was riding on the fuel tank of Dad’s rather small motor-bike, though we were later pulled up by police who advised Dad to not let me ride that way in future. The start of my own rugby career was two years away, and I eventually had the thrill of playing on the hallowed Hartsfield turf, but the competitive instincts were certainly stoked. In a sport-obsessed school, the athletics program was taken very seriously. We were all assigned to school houses named after the great English sea captains. I was assigned to the emerald green ranks of Raleigh which was fitting as I’d already developed a fetish about the green and white hooped jerseys of the national team. The other teams were Drake (red), Gilbert (blue) and Hawkins (yellow). We were identified by a green square sewn on the front of our red school singlets. The athletics program was a progression of new wonders. The school ovals were watered by recycled water from the city sewage system and they were always in immaculate condition, the tracks painstakingly marked out in crisp, white starch. We didn’t have mattresses to land on in the high jump competition. Our landing place was a high bed of sawdust flakes that would get inside our singlets and itch all day long. We were taught the “scissors” jump though some of the seniors were illegally trying out the new-fangled Frisbee-flop. We had several sandpits all marked out for both the long and triple jump. I found the before-race anticipation invigorating and loved the thrill of competition. From aged eight we were involved in pitched battle. This was not about competing against one’s own times, or doing one’s best, this was all about winning. That year we received a lot of rain just before the inter-school athletics competition and the event was moved from the spacious bottom ovals that were waterlogged and onto the top ovals. The rain had compacted the sawdust in the high jump pits and there were several broken arms on the day. Urged on by the chanting of the various House teams I’d had a good day, jumping a good distance in the long-jump and finishing top-two in the sprint events to make the school team. From there we went to an intra-school, triangular carnival held at arch-rival Hillside Primary. This was a warm-up for the big day, the Bulawayo and district inter-schools carnival. Henry Low were very strong in the triangular event and we headed to the inter-school carnival confident of a good display. This was a big step up in class and experience and the oval at the Hugh Beadle School was studded with officials and track-markings that we hadn’t encountered previously. I was involved in the sprints and the long-jump but the big event of the day was the relay. Mum and I took a lift to the carnival with the daughter of Mum’s boss at Stansfield & Ratcliffe and her son. He was first runner off in the relay and I was to receive the baton from him to run the second leg. And much to Mum’s horror I spent the entire trip exhorting him to run his fastest. The gun fired and we were off and racing. Perhaps we should have spent the trip talking about tactics rather than motivation. At our change I was quick out of the blocks and it took an eternity. After passing the baton the runner that had finished was required to immediately sit down to mark where the baton change had taken place. Our baton change had cost us time and we were running third when I passed the baton at the halfway mark. However, our final two runners scorched around the field and Craig Fitzgerald hit the tape marginally in front of Hillside. It had been a battle royale down the home straight. We went berserk. We’d just won a relay at the inter-schools and this guaranteed that we’d receive our athletics colours, a patch sown onto the sports tracksuit that was a badge of honour that could be paraded around school. However, unbeknownst to us each baton change needed to take place within a specified distance and the change between first and second runner had overstepped the boundary by a metre. We were cruelly disqualified. So close and yet so far. It still rankles (the curse of a retentive memory). Not that the day was a complete loss. Henry Low dominated the carnival and we made off with all three cups - boys, girls and obviously overall! In some respects we were living in a fool’s paradise with our running as we were only competing against the other “white” schools. Within a few years when the races began to mingle the white kids were blown off the park much as we see in the Olympic sprint events today. But that was yet to come. We enjoyed our glories while we had them.

1979 Part I

Entry into what was then known as “Standard One” meant that our class made its way down the hill at Henry Low and entered the general school population which also opened up the window to a number of new experiences and adventures. The first academic change we encountered was that we were “streamed” according to academic ability. While the practice of grouping students according to their academic ability is somewhat derided these days (particularly in the supposedly egalitarian Australia) I have always been grateful that we were placed in class with our academic peers and taught accordingly. The streaming was held fairly loosely in Standard One, and changes made to the class groupings in subsequent years, but it did mean that those of us in the more academic stream were certainly pushed in those early schooling years. And if there was pushing to be done then we certainly had the woman for the job in our Standard One teacher, Mrs Mcaninch. In our first week she drummed into us the spelling of her name and proudly proclaimed that hers was the only Mcaninch household in the entire Rhodesian telephone directory. She was very particular about us getting the spelling of her name right too! It wasn’t just her name that made her one of a kind. Mrs Mcaninch had a frightful reputation as a firebrand who would put up with no nonsense whatsoever. By today’s standards her methods were far from politically correct (I somehow doubt they’d allow her to teach in most school around here) but she did get results. This is the teacher that didn’t threaten to wash the mouths of swearing children out with soap. Upon hearing an expletive she would grab them by the ear and march them into the nearest toilet and do the deed herself. I distinctly remember her doing that with several trembling children, and not just those from our class. Inside the classroom she was the master of using illustration to hammer home a point or foundational rule. These were times when we were learning how to change words such as breathe to breathing and a few of us had a tendency to scribe it as “breatheing”. Very soon we entered a regime where we were encouraged to “drop the e in the dustbin”. And after that if we were found to do the wrong thing we ourselves had to stand in the dustbin to remember that’s where the “e” goes. It didn’t take long for us to get that part of the English language right. With Standard One being such a foundational year in spelling and punctuation it seemed that Mrs Mcaninch was absolutely determined to brand the basics into our developing brains. To the important essentials she also added some of her own peculiarities and preferences. For some reason she despised the word “got” and sometimes we’d spend hours playing the “got box” game where we were asked questions by someone standing up the front and had to find an answer that steered around the use of the word “got”. If we didn’t we would be sent up the front (to the “got box”) to do the asking until someone else fell into the “got” trap. We were banned from using imperial measurements such as “mile” and “inch” (which did lead to some back-of-the-hand snickering whenever her name was mentioned). One of our class reported in class news that he’d stayed at the “Golden Mile Motel” in Que Que and we all gasped expecting a tirade of fire and brimstone for the use of such a heinous word. One of us even piped up (I suspect it was Robert Goldie) to correct him that it must surely have been the “Golden Kilometre”. Her other pet hate was the starting of a sentence with the word “and” or “but”. In her opinion this was bad English and lazy. I have to admit that thirty years later, and in a position where writing is a daily staple, the rules of grammar, punctuation and expression hammered into me from Mrs Mcaninch still ring vividly in my brain. I cannot take short cuts and find it nearly impossible to use the word “got”. I see many advantages to starting the odd sentence with “and” for the sense of fluidity it gives to a piece of prose, but whenever I do it I still feel a twinge of guilt and expect to see the ghost of Mrs Mcaninch wagging her finger at me in disapproval. Despite the ferociousness of her desire for discipline and perfection I have to admit that I didn’t have much of an issue with Mrs Mcaninch. If anything she was precisely what I needed – someone who wouldn’t give me an inch (haha) and who extended me beyond mediocrity. If Mrs Eyre had won me with fun, laughter and encouragement, Mrs Mcaninch did so with respect. And if any further proof was needed one simply has to leaf through the school Year Book from 1979 to see the kind of impact Mrs Mcaninch’s demand for excellence had upon our class. That year in the Bulawayo Eisteddfod Henry Low School received thirteen awards for prose at the Honours or First Class level. Seven of those awards were given out to students from Standard 1.30 – Mrs Mcaninch’s class. Included in that list were national awards in writing for two of us, myself and Bridget Campbell. It’s still unclear why we were so feted but I do recall that to receive our award we had to go to a cocktail party at the Bulawayo Municipal Library and our framed certificates were handed over to us the new Minister for Education in the just-formed government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I do recall during that year that the class next door would start off each morning with a loudly shouted rendition of all of their times tables while we’d be beavering away at the latest grammatical imperative. I’ve often wondered if our peers from next door ended up our superiors at mathematics whilst we had the edge in English. Not that we didn’t cover mathematics. I distinctly remember wrestling with fractions and it was also the year we were taught how to tell time using the old analogue clocks. This seemed to coincide with the year that digital watches took the world by storm. My sister purchased a watch for my birthday but it had taken her hours of shopping to find an analogue clock so it would assist me with my time-telling. I remember thinking that we were wasting our time learning the analogue time when it was obvious digital would take over and seemed to make much more sense. How wrong can one be? Speaking of the next door class, it does seem strange that we had relatively little to do with them (or that’s my recollection anyway). We might have shared the same playground but we didn’t seem to mingle much. All the photos from my birthday parties were pretty much made up of the group from our class and my recollection is that the vast majority of parties I attended were also kids from our class. One that particularly stands out is Bridget Campbell’s party where there must have been one of the very first video machines in the country because we were kept amused for hours by vision of the film running backwards and in varying speeds. It was a wildlife film and a giraffe looks ungainly running normally, let alone backwards at warp speed. That was also that party where I suffered the ignominy of being so good at hide and seek that I wasn’t discovered until after the prize had been given out to the last person found – my absence in the tool shed unnoticed. We did combine with the other Standard One class for scripture and I recall one infamous lesson in our classroom where the kids from next door were perched on our desks and, right up the front and in full view of everyone, one of the boys (who shall remain nameless) lost control of his bladder and flooded the inside of the desk he was sitting on – with pools of water forming on the floor underneath too. Mrs Mcaninch wasn’t impressed with that display. Perhaps the cause of his misfortune was the daily milk-runs that were then in operation. In an effort to make sure that all the country’s children were receiving a good intake of calcium the government was providing a subsidized milk service and the milk would arrive in little triangular plastic packages that we sometimes placed in wire cages specifically designed to hold them. We’d stab a straw in the corner and suck down the contents gratefully. Our milk back in those days was not processed to within an inch of its life. Before using the bottled milk it was necessary to hook a good inch or two of thick, fat cream from the top of the bottle with one’s finger. We’d receive our daily milk by pedal power. We’d leave empty glass bottles near our gate with a coupon for the number of replacement bottles we required and they’d be replaced by the milk man on his bicycle who would peddle cheerfully around the neighbourhood, delivering bottles and topping up from white lock-up cages that dotted the landscape as a drop-off and collection point for the daily supply. Occasionally our milk-run at school would include a few packets of “Bengal Juice” which was a chocolate flavoured milk with a Tiger on the plastic cover. If one of us spotted the precious Bengal juice there’d be a rush for it like pigs rushing a trough, the victors emerging with the spoils to the moans and groans of the rest. We were just eight after all. But not as most eight year olds. This was also the year where the cruel little civil war we were born into reached its crescendo. During 1979 our country changed name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and the first indigenous-led government installed under the leadership of Bishop Abel Muzorewa. We all stood to attention late that year as a new national flag was raised on the flagpole near our marble patch, just outside the main hall. The new government was dismissed by the international community as a puppet regime and the bloodshed contiunued. The kill count on both sides mounted and even at that age we were made vividly aware of the dangers around us. Our school had two sirens - the normal siren for what most people would know as the normal fire drill. But we had another, more urgent one, that wailed out and required an entirely different response. This was known as the "terrorist attack" alarm and our response was to immediately fall to the floor under our desks where we would supposedly be safe from incoming mortar fire. I never quite figured out how this routine was going to keep us safe from shrapnel grenades and the inevitable invaders that would follow their arrival. I suppose it gave us a greater chance than we'd have if we all went screaming for the exits. This was around the time where two commercial flights of Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount airplanes had been shot down by SAM7 Heat seeking missiles flying out of Victoria Falls and Kariba. The survivors had been cruelly finished off by the waiting guerrillas. So the spectre of a mortar attack did hang heavily over us - particularly as the odd rocket propelled grenade (RPG) had been known to lob into the metropolitan surrounds of Umtali. There was a distinct feeling that it was only a matter of time. Horror came to our city when a bomb went off in downtown department store, Haddon and Sly. It led to a new policy where we were required to paint a large, white St Andrew's cross on all of our school suit cases to identify that they were not parcel bombs. It's sad to say but even at eight years old the cynic in me could not understand why people who would stoop to bombing innocent citizens in a department store would give us fair warning by leaving a bomb without a white cross on it. It's interesting to leaf through the year book from that year. An entire page is devoted to musings on war and peace from the older kids at the school - but I think it captures well the undercurrent that floated throughout the school population. We were too young to really understand the reasons for the fight, or the rights and wrongs of either side in the conflict, but we did know it took our fathers away for extended absences and sometimes they didn't return. Part II to include:

• Athletics carnivals and the swimming pool.
• Holidays to South Africa.
• Rugby at Hartsfield Stadium.

The Cure in Melbourne

"And tired disguised oblivion Is everything I do" Filing into the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on Sunday night it was hard not to think that these might indeed be Robert Smith's sentiments ahead of yet another concert in yet another city. It seemed the crowd was largely made up of thirty-somethings who'd ditched the suit and tie of their current corporate endeavors for a weekend of reminiscing about those angst-ridden teenage days when Robert crooned their pain away in his indomitable style. So they filed in:

• The Patrick Bateman look-alike possessing big hair complete with flick;
• The foppish new romantic resplendent in pastel rouge;
• And an army of obligatory Goths, black lipstick and eye shadow crusted with age and disuse.

Indeed, you could nearly be fooled into believing that a time capsule had arrived from destination 1985 and purged this crowd into Melbourne's Twenty-First Century streets. If it weren't for the fact that the lathering of gel, mousse and make-up could not conceal the encroaching wrinkles and the tan lines left by removed wedding rings. And as the strains of "Open" burst around the arena, followed by a play list containing the usual smattering of Cure favourites, all delivered pitch perfectly by the driven and innate Robert Smith the mind starts to wonder - is this Groundhog Day, the Cure style? I'm being harsh there perhaps. Because the opening "set" was still one helluva show. Sure it only contained two songs from the Cure's latest releases, but it's pretty darned hard to complain when for the first two hours they drew heavily from stand out albums like Head on the Door, Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me and Wish. The Cure present something of a conundrum best encapsulated by a comment from one of the Goths on the show's exit - "every blonde teenager should be made to listen to that concert". The obvious insinuation being that this was no Gwen Stefani sugar pop offering. Except that 50 percent of the crowd were indeed the blonde cheerleader types from twenty years ago. And therein lies the strange attraction of the Cure. Dressed up to the eyes It's a wonderful surprise To see your shoes and your spirits rise Throwing out your frown And just smiling at the sound And as sleek as a shriek Spinning round and round Always take a big bite It's such a gorgeous sight It's Friday I'm in love! Truth is the Cure have churned out more than a few pop gems in their time. Given his aptitude with the catchy riff it's hard not to think that Robert Smith could have taken the Cure to a Beatle-like status as purveyors of catchy and accessible pop. And the frat girls had shining eyes as they sung along to a veritable soundtrack of sunny skies and happy memories, Friday I'm in Love, Close to me, Hot,hot,hot and Boys don't cry. The most noticeable thing about this concert was the inventiveness of the three themed encores and one of them churned out the pop mania in a way that bought the crowd alight. This though was not the high point for the hardcore Cure fan. I will count myself with those that waited patiently for the fluff to vaporise before we could get our teeth into the meat of that other cure staple. The one that has confounded the commercial critics - the anthemic dirge. Never never never never never let me go she says Hold me like this for a hundred thousand million days But suddenly she slows And looks down at my breaking face Why do you cry? what did I say? it's just rain I smile Whiping my tears away I wish I could just stop I know another moment will break my heart Too many tears Too many times Too many years I've cried over you How much more can we use it up? Drink it dry? Take this drug? Looking for something forever gone But something We will always want? And as these majestic dirges churned out, the sound thumped around us, vibrated amongst us. Simon Gallop continually crouched over his bass guitar, Boris Williams thumped the skins, Porl Thompson making up for a lack of synthesizer with deft lead guitar work or standing admiringly as Robert strutted his stuff. But always it was Robert centre-stage, howling into the wind, giving voice to the agony, the ecstasy and the urgent hoping for more than the present of the human condition. Anthem followed anthem - From the edge of the deep green sea, Pictures of you, The blood, Push, Open and Close. And it was around this time it became glaringly apparent that behind the gloomy melodrama there still lies a deep enjoyment of the task for these boys of the Cure. Musically they are tight - each song rendered close to album-perfection, but with blaring intensity. And watchers of the various Cure concert releases would have showed a new level of interaction with the crowd that has always been amusingly absent. Robert ditches guitar to serenade the wings of the audience, Boris flashes a huge smile to a cheering crowd just before the final encore, Robert even manages to dance a little jig! They're enjoying this task and this is never more evident than during the final encore - a collection of pre-1985 stalwarts, some of which haven't been performed in years. Maybe this three and a half hour concert is more than delivering a Greatest Hits package for Generation X. It's a celebration of thirty years of giving voice to the human yearning for more than our current lot in life. Of giving recognition to the fact that even the highest attainments will not appease the pain of the messiness of our condition. Never is this more evident than in the final song - a cheeky rendition of Killing an Arab that was "naughty" on release but now rendered politically fraught by events since September 2001. Cure as political activists perhaps? Who'd have thought - there's life in those old chords yet.

1978

Now that I live in a country that has not known war apart from a few Japanese missiles landing on two minor cities in World War Two, there is a genre of my childhood tales that are generally greeted with disbelief or horror. It as though the only ones that really understand the peculiarities of growing up in a war-zone are your peers from the time. While “western” in appearance and education, us Zimbabweans have a defining characteristic in that we grew up in a country and era where danger apparently lurked behind every tree and had the potential to invade any backyard at any time. Perhaps “every” and “any” is a little misguiding, but there is no doubt that there were very real dangers in our land. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, I don’t have any childhood memories of the kind of hysteria that seems to surround children these days, where the biggest risk they face appears to be to fall on the wrong side of the Occupational Health and Safety police. Yet the stark reality of my first several years of life was that I was witness to a number of events that would send today’s parent rushing their cherub to the closest therapy unit. Perhaps chief amongst these was the death of our next-door neighbour’s son. My recollection is vague, but my impression is that he was on “call-up” or National Service when the vehicle he was in hit a landmine, callously planted by the “communist insurgent terrorist” (terrs) troops that were flooding across the borders to seek soft targets in the “Second Chimurenga” war. Miraculously he survived the blast, but when he was being airlifted in a “casualty evacuation (Casevac)” his plane was either shot up or hit trees on the runway to claim his life. He’d been married a few short months. Sometimes in the school holidays Mum would leave me with my sister when she went away to work. My sister was doing her nursing training at the Bulawayo General Hospital. Several times my sister would be called away following the “thwack thwack” of the helicopter blades bringing in the latest Casevac. When an emergency like that happens the whereabouts of a seven year old boy, and what he witnesses, becomes a secondary concern. Our country became a vivid map of “no-go” zones. This was basically anywhere outside the four major cities and the highways between them. We regularly visited farming friends in West Nicholson and their majestic farm-houses became surrounded by eight-foot razor wire whilst fly-screen mesh boxes were placed over their windows to repel mortars. Later they installed bunkers and “safe rooms” with control panels that detonated grenades sprinkled throughout their pristine gardens. These stick grenades used to make great markers for childhood games such as Rounders or “stuck-in-the-mud”. Whenever we went north or south we did so in “convoy”. A typical convoy was a congregation of cars that gathered in Essexvale at the sleepy hour of 7.30am. Three “buckies” (utes to Australians) with heavy machine guns mounted in their trays would be waiting for us . One would take the front position, another would sit in the middle and the third would bring up the rear, waiting to repel any attack that might come our way. My father hated the convoy as it’s speed was dictated by the lowest common denominator, generally around 80kph. We’d dawdle through the tribal trust lands (TTLs) staring at goats, wizened mealie (corn) crops and empty buildings pocked by numerous bullet holes. Every now and again we’d pass signs advising us to only travel in daylight hours, preferably with the convoys. We’d never pass any cars coming in the opposite direction. They’d all be in Beit Bridge awaiting the armored buckies on the turnaround home. The blasé approach to death and destruction was all around us when you think back. Every morning we’d wake to the daily score on the radio. The “score” being the names of the Rhodesian troops killed in the previous day’s action followed by the number of “terrorists” slaughtered to make it happen. The roll-call of “our” names seemed to grow by the day. With a father and brother on regular “call-up” there was always a pile of oblique brown boxes scattered around our house or in our shed. These were the infamous “rat-packs”, a day’s ration of food for the men in the field. Half of the food in those rat packs was practically inedible so the older males in the house would stash them and bring them home for me. And whenever a friend visited we’d explore the darkest vestiges of our yard, rat-packs in hand, and gorge ourselves on “dog-biscuits”, cans of bully beef and myriad tin tubes of condensed milk, jam and greasy butter. They also used to bring home bullets. These were great fun because we could get a pair of pliers and wrench them open to reveal the internal gunpowder which we’d lay in long trails all along the cement of our car-port. Put a match to the gunpowder and it would erupt in a sizzling display of fire that would sometimes last for minutes and leave great big long black trails of burnt cordite. The empty bullet (“dorpie”) would still have a live firing mechanism so we’d put that in a clamp, get a nail and hammer and detonate it with a loud crack. I suppose the definition of blasé is your father bringing home a faulty but still “live” mortar with it’s cone head removed but otherwise intact. The mortar stood at our back door and smoked into the heavens for several days before it was deemed sufficiently “safe” to throw it in the school bag for the day’s “show and tell” session in Grade Two. Which happened to be the class of Mrs Eyre. This was a fun class where it seemed the sun always shined and the pleasures of learning broke upon us in ever increasing waves. My abiding memory of this classroom is of a chipper Mrs Eyre up the front cajoling us and inspiring us to excellence, particularly in English. It became a badge of honour to be the seven-year old to spell “approximately” correctly and Rodney Minter-Brown was the first to achieve the feat. While my mortar may have been amongst the more unusual of “show and tell” events it was by no means a lone stand-out. I distinctly remember one of the boys, possibly Rae Da Silva, bringing a baby banded cobra in a jar so we could look at the stripes that resembled a zebra crossing. Of course I wasn’t too enamored of snakes at the time because it was in that year that Fiona Dewar and I returned to my house after a school day and stepped out onto our verandah only to have a seven-foot spitting cobra shoot under our leading feet. We bolted away as fast as we could leaving the front door wide open to the snake to enter the house should it choose to. Thankfully it didn’t but it did attract a coterie of knob-Kerrie wielding “garden-boys” from surrounding homes who battled with it for the best part of an hour while it flung itself at them, hissing and spitting and promising instant death to the unwary. When it was finally killed they took it away for burning to make sure that its spirit didn’t return Rae’s cobra inspired something of a race to bring in any embryo that could be found and we had a shelf in the classroom that was lined with jars of embryos preserved in methylated spirits. I remember one reading session out on the lawns in front of the classroom where Mrs Eyre was impressing the importance of phonics on us and the need to sound out words. And I just happened to be reading a book about an earthworm that could only hear through the vibrations in the soil. Except that I was sounding words and pronounced it “Vib Rations”. But there was no derisory snort from Mrs Eyre or quick correction. Rather it was “that’s excellent that you’re sounding out the words Andrew, and you’re actually correct to sound it out that way, but sometimes English breaks the rules and the correct way to say it is “Vy Brations”. Such was the nature of the woman. And looking at the work we generated in those days, it was certainly of the highest order. My scrapbook is filled with relatively long tomes on measurements and mothers and fathers. Neat writing, perfect punctuation and the first stirrings of expressive writing. Excellence didn’t stop at English however. There was one girl in the class (whose name now escapes me) that was a budding artist and produced works that were a cut above the rest of us. My impression was of the fringes she gave her portraits - a zig zag effect that we were all trying to emulate by the end of the year. I’m certainly no artist but two paintings I generated that year, of a ship and an airplane, hung on my walls for years afterwards as the best works I’d ever produced. I recall that one of our class (who shall remain nameless) swallowed her mother’s wedding ring and for the best part of a week had to be escorted to the toilets by Mrs Eyre who would then have to sift through the “droppings” until the ring was found. And I used to despise line-ups at the front of the classroom because Michael Collins would maneuver himself to stand behind me and pull my ears - that was until Mr Phillips came out of his office and caught him in the act. I’m pretty sure we heard a bit of thwack thwack through the office door shortly afterwards. The year flicked past and our time in the “top block” of the school was nearly over. Most mornings a crowd of students from the older classes seemed to flood our classroom to “visit” Mrs Eyre. They seemed to come from another world, the realms of the big school and the “Standard” classes. I determined that I too would be one of those visitors to Mrs Eyre in future years. She’d left her mark.

1977

I remember my first day of school because I was trotted over to the next-door neighbour’s house (the Povey's) for a rendezvous with Fiona Dewar who lived a little further down the road and around the corner. With her being an eldest child and me being a virtual only child, born 15 years after my last sibling, we were photographed, standing resplendent in our immaculate new Henry Low uniforms. No doubt our mothers had eagerly snapped them up from Saunders Bazaar in previous weeks, a shop that ended up becoming something of a scourge of our school days as we hid in the myriad dressing rooms and cupboards while parents updated our wardrobe. I suppose it was tolerable seeing as we were taken to Haddon & Sly or Meikles afterwards for a Brown Cow or waffles. Our new uniforms consisted of a dull grey ensemble of socks, shorts, button up safari shirt, navy tie with red stripes and immense floppy sunhat for me. The sunhat must have been de rigueur for all of us as Fiona sports one too, atop a short green dress and small white bobby socks. It beats me why my suitcase of the day looks so battered, perhaps it had been hoarded since my sister last used it. We’d have been driven to Henry Low in the Dewar’s saloon-like Volvo Station Wagon, windows up while Fiona’s Dad smoked up the cabin with his chain smoking. This would be the story for us every morning as our parents entered a car-pool arrangement where Ian Dewar would take us to school in his battered old VW Beetle and Mum would pick us up in our Renault 10. Most of that first year of school is something of a blur. Of course we were an all-white class in those days, drawn mainly from the surrounding lower-middle class suburbs clustered around the impressive Morningside Shopping Centre. The houses in our suburbs weren’t the impressive mansions found in Hillside and Burnside though we certainly didn’t lack for space or functionality. Our house was a multi-extended and rambling double-brick three-bedroom affair on three acres stuck square on the top of a hill with impressive views to the north looking over the City. We were something of a target for those impressive spring thunderstorms that would roll in with monotonous regularity. The house had a massive black cable out the back of the kitchen to “ground” it and we were regularly the recipient of direct hits from lightning that would crack down on the tin roof and light up the scenery as well as any Hollywood special effect. The southern edge of our house was quite literally on the edge of town. Across the road from us was a farm (I think dairy) and beyond it was a large reserve that became a game park accessible from Matopos Road. We could vaguely hear the dull roar of the traffic on Matopos Road whilst most mornings we’d awake to the comforting pumping and tooting of the steam trains shunting in the railway yards in Bellevue. It was probably our proximity to Bellevue and Barham Green that meant our little part of suburban paradise wasn’t quite as well-regarded as those on the east side of Matopos road. Barham Green was then "notorious" as a place for the “coloureds”, the vibrant half-caste population that was then looked down upon by the “Europeans” and shunned by the “blacks”. Kindergarten was something of a cloistered existence. At the time the experience was a two-year affair of KG1 and KG2, and we were pretty much prevented from mingling with the rest of the school population. Our classroom block was at the southern end of the school, on top of the hill and looking down on the remainder of the class rooms and the main sports fields. The headmaster’s office was at the end of the corridor of our block, next to Mrs Eyre’s (KG2) room. Behind his office lay the school reception, from memory a genuine switchboard affair with lines being plugged in to reach various locations about the school, the administration section and a staffroom. At the other end of the corridor was the school tuck-shop where we’d buy Willards chips for the bargain price of 10c a packet. In Kindergarten the flavour of choice seemed to be the benign Tomato Sauce though many of us later graduated to the more fiery spice and vinegar by virtue of its attractive purple packaging. Our seclusion was guaranteed by a specific sports field that was kindergarten-only and the older kids would enter under fear of the cane. I remember it had a line of swings, an enormous climbing jungle-jim and not much else of interest. The netball fields were also marked out in the area. Our classroom was a large brick affair with large windows opening out to the south and very little on the northern side, I assume to reduce the glare. Mrs Hahn was a doddery old lady and I quickly gained the impression that my parents didn’t have a very high opinion of her. I think the perception was that she was too old and was hanging on for a pay-cheque. Perhaps it was just that she suffered by comparison to some of the excellent teachers that lay ahead of us. She certainly didn’t create much of an impression on me. It seems like she must have done an adequate job of teaching us the alphabet (thankfully using the phonics method) and installing the basics of maths so that by year’s end we could all add up anything that would get us to ten or under. We did have a student teacher that year who I seem to have better memories of though she must have only been with us for a maximum of six weeks. She was Miss Hunter and was in her final year at the Bulawayo Teacher’s College. She had long brown hair and seemed to inject a level of life and vibrancy into the classroom that was lacking most of the time. With Miss Hunter learning seemed fun and I was sorry to see her go. Two or three year’s later I did bump into her at a braai at my sister-in-law’s house but she was relatively snooty when with her peers. No doubt I was a vague memory of another snotty-nosed little brat from years ago but somehow Miss Hunter had more of an impact on that year of schooling than my actual teacher! Here are some of the scattered memories I’ve retained from that year:

• The rods that we used to learn our maths with. They were metrical in length according to the number they represented and each number had a different colour too. I do remember that “7” was black and for some mysterious reason there was only one of them, the rest vanishing before we’d arrived in that class.
• There was an array of abacus up the front of the class and Mrs Hahn’s desk was also at the front of the classroom, next to the blackboard and to our left.
• We started on alphabet on our first day because I remember thinking “oh, so there’s some purpose to all those squiggles seen everywhere. This could be interesting.”
• In the first part of the year we had little notebooks that we started writing the letters of the alphabet into, followed by “spelling words” that were checked on a daily basis.
• Once we’d demonstrated sufficient command of our spelling words we reached the big occasion of taking home our first reader. Our readers were a fascinating (not) series that focused on the relatively benign exploits of three children named Sally, Dick and Jane. I named my two bantam hens and rooster after them.
• At some point in the year we were asked to say what we wanted to do when we grew up. I said I was going to be a surgeon so I could work with my brother (who would then have been doing his national service before embarking on a Science degree that culminated with a PhD.)
• School finished earlier than the older grades. The Zimbabwean school day was short as it was, starting at 8am and finishing at 1pm so we must have been finishing around 11.30am I would think.
• We were picked up from a large shelter on the southern school boundary and we’d all sit on these little wooden benches that ringed the walls, suitcases under our legs, waiting for our parents to drive in to pick us up.
• Being rigorously taught how to do a Windsor knot in my tie because the easier slip-knot was lazy and for the “scumbies”.

Towards the end of that year I was page-boy for my brother’s wedding, resplendent in a Grant kilt that has been passed down through many generations. It took place in the impressive surrounds of Main Street Methodist Church. I am certain it was the only time I was ever in the building but I recall it had an enormous brass pipe organ out the front. I had to carry the rings on a cushion and the wedding photos were taken in the main Bulawayo Park, opposite the National Museum. Another stand-out from the time was that all of us regularly lost our father's to "call-up". With a nasty civil-war raging around us it was all-hands-on-deck and every man under the age of fifty was expected to do his duty tofight the communist terrorist hordes flooding over our borders. This meant that our dad's were on a constant rotation of six weeks home and 4-6 weeks on "call-up". With the nature of the war being similar to that of the Vietnam conflict it means the vast majority of my classmates from that era would have grown-up with "Vets" for their fathers, and the statistics of suicide and other forms of self-harm amongst the children of Vietnam Vets is well-documented. Thankfully Dad was on the older end of the spectrum and saw little of the actual fighting serving as a Chaplain. But he was still required to leave home for extended absense and as our neighbour's son had been shot-up and then killed by a landmine early in proceedings I was very aware of the dangers our men faced. It was always a teary farewell when Dad left for call-up and after that I'd run inside and lock myself in his cupboard for an hour or so whilst I sobbed my heart out and took deep breaths to draw in the smell of him. It would also have been around this age that I was taught how to fire a pistol and a .22 rifle on one of our regular trips to West Nicholson. It was in the middle of a "hot-zone" and the threat of attack meant we wore a pistol and holster wherever we went there. I'm relieved my six year old doesn't need to sleep with a pistol on his bedside table at night!