tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11315598319753119572024-03-20T09:35:27.442+11:00Cypress DriveMzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-41701005495766769302008-07-05T16:08:00.027+10:002008-07-08T16:03:24.198+10:00Weekends with Rodney<div align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUy_Ol5EQqGu7K-9MlVB_Grl5hSBFuzJ_r_v-mqV4WfPWTRU6VAFoHvc2LHp59dukgm8mwaY_uNVlN_BB0AhEN8dbQftiazclLODVLtQxDQyMhntcWrzlZQuvWqYfj9RZ2PyfsFgl-0q2/s1600-h/Fi+and+me.jpg"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219423007360551858" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUy_Ol5EQqGu7K-9MlVB_Grl5hSBFuzJ_r_v-mqV4WfPWTRU6VAFoHvc2LHp59dukgm8mwaY_uNVlN_BB0AhEN8dbQftiazclLODVLtQxDQyMhntcWrzlZQuvWqYfj9RZ2PyfsFgl-0q2/s320/Fi+and+me.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">My brother and sister both left home when I was eighteen months old. I think it was to get away from me though they assure me otherwise. What teenager wants their weekend sleep-ins interrupted by a toddler? </span></div><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Thus the hunt was always on to provide me with a proxy sibling. From an early age this role was admirably filled by Fiona Dewar. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"></span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDIVN-JQkhiqv8RPGqNtlCHC8f1C9X7x8XdV4MnpUjxn_ssj_UIIQCiiAUrgUya80nMt8Ecx6_jhUmry6zHLdFKZAnT9wYae63zT6O4JRDJkfDVrGr8qK980iQkVh7LvprbNSPHrPRjdty/s1600-h/Fi+and+me2.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219422721430221058" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDIVN-JQkhiqv8RPGqNtlCHC8f1C9X7x8XdV4MnpUjxn_ssj_UIIQCiiAUrgUya80nMt8Ecx6_jhUmry6zHLdFKZAnT9wYae63zT6O4JRDJkfDVrGr8qK980iQkVh7LvprbNSPHrPRjdty/s320/Fi+and+me2.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">The Dewars lived just down the road from us in Mason Close and our mothers were of a similar "advanced" age (in those days) to be having children. Fiona and I spent ou</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">r preschool years in each other's pockets, often visiting "Queenie", a dear old lady that lived next door.
She used to refer to Fiona and I as her "twinies" and despite ailing health when we were toddlers she would welcome us over for playtime. One day she passed away peacefully as I played at her feet. In that same driveway Fiona and I had our first day of school photos taken together generally Aunty June Dewar would pick me up from school and look after me at her house until Mum returned. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">The Dewars had a massive avocado tree in the back yard that we'd often climb between playing "doctors and nurses" with some of the other kids from further down our street, Cypress Drive.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">However the influence of school soon saw me develop the boyhood affliction of a terrible fear of "girl germs" (and no doubt vice versa). Perhaps the onset was accentuated by the belief we developed that our mothers had us betrothed from an early age, a scenario we started to studiously discourage. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Our friendship was not helped one day in Kindergarten Two when we were waiting to be picked up from the shelter in the special Kindergarten car park at Henry Low. Aunty June slid up in their Volvo just as Fiona and I were bickering over something. Fiona (who was often seemingly absent-minded) accidentally picked up my school suitcase and started marching towards the car. Meanwhile I had what is these days termed a "brain-snap", picked up her suitcase and ran up behind her and hoofed her up the backside.
</span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaEvr46pZnRPmS574db_Aq3Er_Usu_SpPXQMz30ramBiZKuwMhqvHU6ZNG5-zZNcJMgDuZ6Qg_Q5J96S02kryvFjBESfcZ9RonGrJtkr7VraLOwyJqHOd3ppbCz-LjEpZllJrtdc1O3cI-/s1600-h/IMAGE0031.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219422001272855314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaEvr46pZnRPmS574db_Aq3Er_Usu_SpPXQMz30ramBiZKuwMhqvHU6ZNG5-zZNcJMgDuZ6Qg_Q5J96S02kryvFjBESfcZ9RonGrJtkr7VraLOwyJqHOd3ppbCz-LjEpZllJrtdc1O3cI-/s320/IMAGE0031.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">A steaming Mrs Dewar drove me home and dropped me at the bottom of the terraced garden, ordered me out the car with a curt "next time you kick like a donkey you can walk home like a donkey." Mum overheard this and extracted out from me what had happened and administered a solid whopping.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Dad probably did the same when he returned home that night and the next morning I was told that Mr Dewar had rung the previous night to demand what kind of a son was being raised in the Grant household. The Dewar/Grant relationship went through a period of cool after this – perhaps even the car pool was suspended for a while. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">It must have been around this time that the net widened to find some male company for me to enjoy. I started spending some afternoons at Robert Goldie's house – my recollection being he had a gigantic chicken pen that sometimes doubled as a cubby house.
Gradually I started to gravitate towards another boy in my class, Rodney Minter-Brown and soon we were inseparable. Thus it was that Rodney became my regular companion, joining the family whenever we had an outing and me spending many long afternoons at his house which seemed much more fun than mine.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTYbPYEBlCC6RfUVYUtXj1Ysp8hyphenhyphen4vlMbHdExRxyXgchoiK6sWmFT-fzbiR6hcqG-w0kLcAtnYgK028bb2OeVJU9ZzT8_k-dlH5Ye36Y2GbuJfqVjsoHvQy0_VAC_x2t6txvKijMAASF-F/s1600-h/IMAGE0085.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219421709767343378" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTYbPYEBlCC6RfUVYUtXj1Ysp8hyphenhyphen4vlMbHdExRxyXgchoiK6sWmFT-fzbiR6hcqG-w0kLcAtnYgK028bb2OeVJU9ZzT8_k-dlH5Ye36Y2GbuJfqVjsoHvQy0_VAC_x2t6txvKijMAASF-F/s320/IMAGE0085.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">The memories that include Rodney are myriad, though I doubt I could recount them in chronological order. His house was highlighted by a large backyard swimming pool that we practically lived in through summer. Rodney had older brothers and the pool had inflatable water polo goals and sometimes a volleyball net strung through the middle.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The Minter-Browns were also very talented at tennis, a sport that did not feature prominently in the Grant household. We'd often hit up in the backyard or play totem tennis – Rodney generally giving me a fearful hiding.
One day the action moved indoors. I suspect this would have been when we were quite a bit older (well, 10). My recollection is that we were at home alone so we decided to trawl through the phone book and make prank calls to various business houses. With nervous,</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"> squeaky voices I highly doubt that we managed to genuinely "trick" anyone and the "wit" of our jokes could hardly be rated as first class. But it passed by a dull afternoon and no doubt presented the Minter-Browns with a larger than usual phone bill.
One weekend I had a sleepover at their house and I was asked if I minded going to church with the Minter-Browns. To my way of thinking this was no big deal. Having grown up s</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">afely within the evangelical Protestant fold of Rhodes Street Baptist I assumed all churches would be the same and accompanied the family to the large Catholic church on Matopos Drive.
Thus I was totally unprepared for the rituals and customs of a smells and bells Catholic Church. Sometimes as we'd driven past the Catholic Church on our way home to Newton Estate Dad would make dark mutterings about "heresies" and some of this came flooding back to me as we maneuvered our way through the crowded car park.
The building was adorned with strange statues but on entering it I was confronted by the same uncomfortable pews that were the bane of my existence during the long services at Rhodes Street. I sat down and looked around to see the Minter-Browns kneeling in the aisle and genuflecting – something I'd ever seen before. It was then that it dawned on me I was probably just a little out of my depth here.
I sat transfixed during the service, dumbfounded by the rituals and liturgy, </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">mumbling along as best I could with well over a hundred people who knew every prayer and reading by heart. Directly behind us was a curtained box that people were entering on a regular basis with a very serious demeanor. Just audible from beyond the curtain were two whispered voices – confessional.
It was then time for Holy Communion and the people went forward one by one to receiv</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">e their bread and wine. In the Baptist Church it was a great taboo for the children to partake of the elements, so serious an undertaking being the domain of understanding adults. So when Rodney and his brothers went forward for their communion I was aghast that children could be allowed to participate in so holy a ritual.
Luckily I remained glued to my seat or the poor priest would have been confronted with the delicate situation of what to do about denying communion to an upstart Protestant in front of a large crowd of onlookers.
Rodney had an experience of the Rhodes Street Baptist way of doing things when he joined us for the Baptist Camp at Willow Park. Willow Park was one of the few "safe" campsites we could go to during the war years, being relatively close </span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">to Bulawayo on the Essexvale Road.
</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZhxEeYREb3shl9kGEQzoEEF9p6Ox0NfYxC2pfQAcbnHgvDyZj7vwHamQNKSeeWZowRYKVYSN76jT7jtu5PxNyv0WI-NAorlmlx-u7M_b50LbKutSdYbF9LRgq_Kn10yNdfzuUiZ4x3Ie/s1600-h/IMAGE0291.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219421131237965810" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZhxEeYREb3shl9kGEQzoEEF9p6Ox0NfYxC2pfQAcbnHgvDyZj7vwHamQNKSeeWZowRYKVYSN76jT7jtu5PxNyv0WI-NAorlmlx-u7M_b50LbKutSdYbF9LRgq_Kn10yNdfzuUiZ4x3Ie/s320/IMAGE0291.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">However, no precautions were taken and each night a grou</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">p of church members kitted up in their army gear, donned their guns, climbed the nearby kopjes and sat watch over the campsite through the night.
Sanctions were also biting hard and on our way out to the campsite we'd stopped at one of the iconic African trading stores that dotted the highways to try and find some coffee. The only coffee there was a large tin of International Roast at an ex</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">orbitant price. At best International Roast tasted like the floor sweepings but there was a very strong suspicion that this tin had received some supplementation from the dusty paddock at the back of the store.
Rodney slept with us in one of the camping cabins, graciously giving me the top bunk which came back to bite me when I fell out of bed in my sleep. Apparently I hit the ground with a shuddering jolt that woke everyone in the cabin but me. Quite possibly I knocked myself unconscious because I had no recollection of the incident the next morning when three worried faces appeared next to my mattress to see if I'd made it through the night.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUQN8NJh8w70ZO8hivwzAAOn6MXMll1w81gJf-yjzgL-dwuA-qVBbAuJSIyZVaNfQUeUw_BymcsHs-rsAsx1MXnue7A0q2fZvt4FrmHZrxDlNIGDhU2Y6rosZfliXhm2aa7plj63ekmPGl/s1600-h/IMAGE0086.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219420617832183074" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUQN8NJh8w70ZO8hivwzAAOn6MXMll1w81gJf-yjzgL-dwuA-qVBbAuJSIyZVaNfQUeUw_BymcsHs-rsAsx1MXnue7A0q2fZvt4FrmHZrxDlNIGDhU2Y6rosZfliXhm2aa7plj63ekmPGl/s320/IMAGE0086.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">There was a wealth of entertainment to be had at Willow Park. In the morning all the children were taken off to a tent for Bible Stories preceded by far too many renditions of the incredibly tedious "Father Abraham" song. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">We were left to roam free in the afternoons. There was a games room at the top of a hill where we could play table tennis and all manner of wide games and kiss-chasey with th</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">e other kids.
Willow Park also had a</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"> bizarre putt-putt course that consisted of one central hole in the ground encircled by a radius of eighteen obstacle courses to guide the ball through. Nearby was a large swathe of lawn used for rugby that led to a large lake.
</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Rodney and I had our fishing gear (I suspect it was Rodney's because I can't remember owning any) and we set up camp and fished for hours, completely happy with our company.
We were not what you would call spectacularly fortunate fishermen. Another boy cast in his line 25 metres away from us, started reeling it in and took a bite from a Bream that he</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;"> dragged in with much excitement. He also had a fishing knife that was the envy of all of us encased in a block of cheap pine that was used to measure the catch.
The "enormous" fish stretched the entire 10cm length of the fishing knife.
</span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVT7qL3xhlO6TuN4CNgKXHy7AOrQT4nvDZxV0-TOevu9jg7fi-h70sV7YfPI1k2BQVlIh7PWgvBhj7cgDdIhUDxAWsSi2S2cr7EUpUWR9JdH0PizAqVwF9f6ju6vlJwdBdkF9XCDzO8-vd/s1600-h/IMAGE0094.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219420177058562434" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVT7qL3xhlO6TuN4CNgKXHy7AOrQT4nvDZxV0-TOevu9jg7fi-h70sV7YfPI1k2BQVlIh7PWgvBhj7cgDdIhUDxAWsSi2S2cr7EUpUWR9JdH0PizAqVwF9f6ju6vlJwdBdkF9XCDzO8-vd/s320/IMAGE0094.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Rodney and I had no such luck. We persisted for hours and days and eventually ran out of worms (that could be purchased from the canteen in a tin for 10c) so we started using bacon rind leftover from breakfast in the hope it would look like a worm. We were distractedly playing rugby when we looked around to see one of our rods was madly bobbing up and down signifying a catch.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">We excitedly raced over to the rod and started to reel it in entertaining visions of our own bream that would stretch the length of two knives – it certainly seemed heavy enough. To our disappointment we hauled a turtle out of the water that had been attracted by the salty bacon. The turtle was thrown back into the lake and we returned home catchless.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">After independence there was a brief respite from rural violence until Mugabe decided it was a good idea to genocide the Matabele tribe. It meant that we were able to cautiously return to the magical expanses of the Matopos National Park, a wonderland of granite outcrops, balancing rocks, big game, swooping black eagles and verdant bushland just south of</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"> Bulawayo.
We took Rodney with us on our first weekend away in the Matopos when we stay</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">ed overnight at a guest lodge at Maleme Dam. The Lodge had a wealth of plaster cast animals to pay homage to the big game that roamed close to Dam and regularly came down for a drink.
</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiND8dg_VFG5dv4mH1TE0DBUKNwZZdVW87adNR493FWk601BXeo6CFfv1eKRM8PcbOCzA7EHVrbBNdgZU-zc7sPbXRbgNGm4S7TOA4WQoipAsi_nqmsIMTBrO19qOhDXkgNMkLdP0jW3U13/s1600-h/IMAGE0095.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219419783631741730" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiND8dg_VFG5dv4mH1TE0DBUKNwZZdVW87adNR493FWk601BXeo6CFfv1eKRM8PcbOCzA7EHVrbBNdgZU-zc7sPbXRbgNGm4S7TOA4WQoipAsi_nqmsIMTBrO19qOhDXkgNMkLdP0jW3U13/s320/IMAGE0095.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">We came well stocked and Rodney and I have the obligatory photograph sitting on a rock that must have surely graced every child that grew up in Bulawayo at some time. We sat eating chips and drinking coke under a great big blue African sky surrounded by breathtaking beauty and the world's most amazing fauna.
</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Not long after came a second trip to the Matopos, this time with Rodney's family. Rodney's brothers had gone camping in a game reserve that was accessed by a bumpy dirt track that turned right as you headed south along the Kezi Road.
This was land that had been completely deserted during the war years a</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">nd there was still the risk of land mines on any dirt track around the country. Silozwe and Silozwane, the largest of the granite monoliths that guarded the Matopos reared up in the distance. And we bumped and jogged our way slowly on the dirt track to a rendezvous and braai with Rod's brothers.
We found them camped near a brackish pan of water that was acting as a magnet to large herds of impala and kudu. After boerwors on the braai the brothers all clambered into the car for the return home and as we were doing so a beer bottle was passed around. Alcohol was a taboo in the Grant household and beer w</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">as a mysterious "evil" that seemed particularly glamorous in the television adverts that promoted it.
So mysterious and glamorous that it was inevitable that I was going to take a swig when it was my turn to see what all the fuss was about. I do recall a slight disappointment that it was a bottle of Castle Lager as the Lion Lager looked far cooler in the adverts and was emblazoned all over the advertising hoardings at Hartsfield Rugby Ground.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">So my first taste of beer came from a lukewarm bottle of Castle la</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">ger bounding around on a bush track with the Minter-Browns. The logic of my expectations of such a taboo drink was that if we were constantly being told that "Coke was bad for us" then for beer to be so taboo it must be several grades sweeter. Thus I was unprepared for the bitter taste of my first slug and I genuinely wondered what all the fuss was about.
</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfVuFvaSK0jHrjMLjWrsOyvilBevv9qEbythmD66P8vaXky69c1bxGTfM5EI3Wln213U2mViyaK306pLA84gsjKeM7o3MopMBDkJR0vz7nNFgrUTgQxKo0Y3jtBHcAn-GvTAbZteWEoQIZ/s1600-h/IMAGE0087.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219419275709605154" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfVuFvaSK0jHrjMLjWrsOyvilBevv9qEbythmD66P8vaXky69c1bxGTfM5EI3Wln213U2mViyaK306pLA84gsjKeM7o3MopMBDkJR0vz7nNFgrUTgQxKo0Y3jtBHcAn-GvTAbZteWEoQIZ/s320/IMAGE0087.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Rodney had several sleep overs at my house too. By this stage my brother had already completed his Bachelor of Science and was well on the way tow</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">ards his Honours and eventual PhD. To similarly enthuse his little brother in the joys of science Kevin put together a large chemistry set that was set up on a bench in a little corner in my room.
Much of the kit was relatively harmless. A Bunsen burner, test tubes of many shapes and sizes, beakers and watered down acids. One of the drawers had a variety of ground metals in stopper bottles. My favourite was the little blob of mercury that I used to take out and push all over the floor of my room, amazed at its ability to evade capture as well as its general texture. Perhaps I can blame my adult madness on this early brush with heavy metal?</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Given the purpose of the chemistry set was experimentation it was only a matter of time before I worked out some more entertaining activities than are found in the text book. My favourite past time was to place a large quantity of drain cleaning crystals into a beaker and then pour in some higher strength hydrochloric acid that I'd managed to source. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5DDKEPcSX_YOckL08My79umXlOZxWqYRG1nKIUZvWpDJoHbYP0hKXhKwbvi_YbqzpLqclh3u7NlJ1PYZkUBWRyLaduwHRg4n30dXwOTnaQ7HKVjInYTgSBGbK7wHmsoi7x58pdMVhnca7/s1600-h/IMAGE0088.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219418602773010418" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5DDKEPcSX_YOckL08My79umXlOZxWqYRG1nKIUZvWpDJoHbYP0hKXhKwbvi_YbqzpLqclh3u7NlJ1PYZkUBWRyLaduwHRg4n30dXwOTnaQ7HKVjInYTgSBGbK7wHmsoi7x58pdMVhnca7/s320/IMAGE0088.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">The resultant reaction saw the drain cleaner heat up and it started to bubble and froth volcano-like to the top of the beaker and then start cascading all over the plate placed underneath. Hissing, spitting and eventually large tendrils of "steam" rising up to permeate the whole room with the putrid smell one associates with metal being cut by metal.
I was in the early stages of setting this up for Rodney's benefit when this photo was taken. The stronger bottle of hydrochloric acid would not have appeared until all adults were well clear. </span></span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">One sleepover Rodney had at our house st</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">ands out profoundly in memory as it was an incredibly sad day for both families. We again went out to the Matopos, this time in a bus with all the teenagers from the Youth For Christ group in Bulawayo.
The bus was not enough for all of us so several cars accompanied us. It had been raining heavily and some of the granite outcrops pooled water and released it </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">slowly down a series of grooves running down their rock face. These were ideal as natural water slides.
</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYBaLXjJA2-Zf2wtd0dYR1Y9kBZFUOu-Sp8vcop9UMQV0T3CX22EqxV32e4BYwm9XQiMEsZuwa37R6GV63i3r0otGMNa_7RgstsyTd5_fOjq-ksNPYV_98ETICRIF9vH1vOVrIKU-vkDf-/s1600-h/Matopos+slide.jpg"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219418119364470882" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYBaLXjJA2-Zf2wtd0dYR1Y9kBZFUOu-Sp8vcop9UMQV0T3CX22EqxV32e4BYwm9XQiMEsZuwa37R6GV63i3r0otGMNa_7RgstsyTd5_fOjq-ksNPYV_98ETICRIF9vH1vOVrIKU-vkDf-/s320/Matopos+slide.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">The day was spent madly running up the granite hills, jumping into the rock channels and careening down their steep slopes before crashing into large pools at the bottom. Some of the channels had large drops in them and the rock was abrasive so we finished the day with bruised bottoms covered by torn and threadbare denim. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">We headed home just on twilight and just as we approached a bend close to the old Matopos Hotel we were flagged down and brought to a stop by one of the leaders of the YFC grou</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">p. One car load of teenage boys had driven out of the driveway to the Hotel, and didn't see the car coming on the road. It clipped them and sent them careering off the road and then the car started to roll, flipping three times before it came to rest.
One of the boys had died at the scene, cradled in the arms of the driver. Another two were taken to hospital in a critical condition. Just hours before they had been vital and alive, whooping as they flung themselves down granite kopjes with us. And here we were this busload of their friends arriving at a scene of abject devastation not very long after the accident.
Prior to this I'd had a run of bad run witnessing some bad accidents. At a very young age we'd driven past a fatal accident at traffic lights close to home and had seen people strewn over the road. </span></span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5uhlXf_vGwzuHsO6jf9sg0QdLgtqZtKsOgADt0umiogEmp5UVZVsZ8WB5QbXxb2cJEbXuWS-TWWhfeTasDSzyvA7J-DKNsl-bN3mEDz3ugeZIwUmfwzYcKt4ky4r_dInvV3AwgMTg0IC/s1600-h/IMAGE0516.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219417449857067234" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5uhlXf_vGwzuHsO6jf9sg0QdLgtqZtKsOgADt0umiogEmp5UVZVsZ8WB5QbXxb2cJEbXuWS-TWWhfeTasDSzyvA7J-DKNsl-bN3mEDz3ugeZIwUmfwzYcKt4ky4r_dInvV3AwgMTg0IC/s320/IMAGE0516.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">When we lived in Johannesburg for a year our flat looked over a very busy intersection of Twist Street near Hillbrow that regularly saw head-on collisions and T-bones (picture right). Another time we were driving to Bulawayo airport when we drove past a dead cyclist lying in a blanket by the roadside.
Most traumatic was an accident that happened adjacent to our car on Matopos Road. Another car had entered Matopos Road from Famona Street at high speed using a slip lane. A truck had broken down in the slip lane and the car had no chance of stopping. I still have the mental imagery of hearing the screech of brakes and flicking my head to the left just in time to see the car with a single occupant smash into the tailgate of the truck and keep going underneath it – the roof of the car shearing off.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Mum and Dad were both St Johns trained and Dad pulled over to give assistance. I became hysterical and pleaded with him not to stop. Several other cars had pulled over to give what assistance they could so Dad reluctantly drove away. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Then a friend of ours hit and killed a pedestrian on Cecil Avenue that was our shortcut home from church. I became immensely fearful of this road in case the same happened to us, but it was not a fear I confessed. For several years after that I drove them to distraction every time we drove home from church because I would plead with them to go down a longer alternate route via Mafeking Road because I "wanted to look at the yellow street lights" which must have seemed ridiculous to them.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0.5cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">This ruse lost its effectiveness about the time the Churchill Arms Hotel reopened for trade. The Hotel was further down Matopos Road than the turn-off to Cecil Avenue so I developed a keen interest in its trading prospects and would get Dad to drive that way so I could count their lit windows and gauge their clientèle.
All that to say that the horror of driving past this accident after our big day out at the Matopos was not a pleasant experience. We had been flagged down so we could be partially diverted in the hopes the people wouldn't see the car and realise it was one of our party. We inched past the accident scene where two ambulances were pulled up and paramedics were still working on one of the bloodied victims. A full body-bag was </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">clearly evident.
</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirCNXuvg_9qiZXmxfE65FkX9AiT5I1OYIXekJAZmUcHGCAa3Hcay87l2NyhoxEGSvW6C4fHHXgVpVlY0sMd-ouoic800mNSpy4WLymoBQ5_5-LVZnmwMqtjKlwjBJVRQ2Gj9FlIbE0oJ50/s1600-h/IMAGE0059.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219415449561393378" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 230px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 156px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirCNXuvg_9qiZXmxfE65FkX9AiT5I1OYIXekJAZmUcHGCAa3Hcay87l2NyhoxEGSvW6C4fHHXgVpVlY0sMd-ouoic800mNSpy4WLymoBQ5_5-LVZnmwMqtjKlwjBJVRQ2Gj9FlIbE0oJ50/s200/IMAGE0059.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">It took a few minutes before it became apparent that the accident involved our own and there was a slow rippling up and down the bus as people started sobbing in grief. We all drove back to YFC's Resurrection Centre in Grey street and spent the next few hours praying and singing. All of the songs sung that night are etched in memory and whenever I hear them I am transported back to that night, a young boy in a room full of grief stricken people singing songs and praying for the dead and dying.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfljUA7_ZwSer6wWVbritCKz35bscCyZtGy7Dc14IkHeO8CM72UbzY8KFcViSNvwaFkhYKld6Jbo_g6ggFetiEYoo2Hy_4_D2zb5_gBSDQumYskv_yiGiqow4WEV5qf4Uf0h42l8f6c1zi/s1600-h/IMAGE0269.JPG"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219416147415940610" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfljUA7_ZwSer6wWVbritCKz35bscCyZtGy7Dc14IkHeO8CM72UbzY8KFcViSNvwaFkhYKld6Jbo_g6ggFetiEYoo2Hy_4_D2zb5_gBSDQumYskv_yiGiqow4WEV5qf4Uf0h42l8f6c1zi/s320/IMAGE0269.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Another of the boys, Gavin Masterton, had been with YFC for many years and our albums were littered with photos of him at the various YFC camps through the years. He lay in a coma in Bulawayo General while a roster of his young friends sat by his bedside and prayed for him. After a week they turned off the life-support and he became the second fatality. In this photo a young Gavin Masterton is in a blue shirt, far left in the front row.
A terrible end to a wonderful day, an accident claiming the lives of two more young men from a Youth Group that had already given up several fine men in the fire-fights of the Rhodesian war. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">Rodney stayed on for the sleepover that night at our house. We returned home late after the grief-stricken session at the Resurrection Centre. I don't think either of us managed much sleep that night. I lay on the bed facing the window, spooked by the shadows cast by the Flamboyant Tree outside that in my imagination became the ghost of the dead boy doing push-ups on the window-sill.
For years afterwards I was haunted by dreams of driving past car accidents before stopping at butcher stores further down the road that were offering the body parts for sale.
This tragedy also touched the Minter-Brown family in a profound way as the boys involved were close friends of Rodney's elder brothers. It was Rodney who had to break the news of the accidents and the death the next day when we dropped him home.
I doubt I am alone in sharing a great sadness with the Zimbabwe Diaspora that these days are scattered all over the globe. Most of those I spent my early school years with have been scattered to the four corners of the globe. Perhaps this is most keenly felt by those of us that left Zimbabwe in our tween and early teen years. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">You don't realise when you're eleven, twelve or thirteen that the people you share your formative years with share a part of life that is irreplaceable. Living in Australia I can only envy the people around me who have not known a brutal dislocation from the land and people of their birth. To have legitimate lifelong friendships and to still interact daily with those you have literally grown up with must be a truly wondrous joy. They don't know what they have.</span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#ff0000;">After a twenty-six year period of silence Rodney Minter-Brown and found each other and reconnected thanks to the modern genius of Facebook. Thanks goodness Rodney had a unique surname!</span></p><span style="color:#ff0000;"><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm" align="justify">
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</p>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-8567325678830668592008-06-09T15:15:00.017+10:002008-06-09T20:29:23.417+10:001985 Part III<span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >
Part of my induction into Australian "Culcha" was to very quickly shed my "Queens English" Zimbabwean accent. This became a necessity after the first few days at school when it became clear that multiculturalism was not exactly high on the agenda for the rednecks in the red T-shirts at Kirwan High.
At first their ignorance meant that I constantly had to prove I could speak English - Zimbabwe being some unheard of place in deepest darkest Africa. It became easier to just say I was from South Africa, because at least this had some passing infamy thanks to apartheid.
However, this lead to all manner of preconceptions until the cruel day when some of the more hilarious wags set up the white-bread "South African" to go and give the "niggers" a bit of the treatment associated with apartheid. A swift lesson in what happens when one gets on the wrong side of the school's aboriginal gang ensued.
Ironically since arrival we'd already been told many jokes about the "boongs", "coons" and "abos" that would never have been given breath in a racially divided South Africa. In short, shedding that accent became an urgent necessity and the task was set upon with gusto and basically completed within six months.
In retrospect it was a simple matter of understanding the differences in two vital vowel sounds. The first one was fairly obvious given my surname. Andrew Gr aunt immediately became Andrew Gr ant. R ar nch became r a nch etc. And the longer "are" sound in words like "car" became nasal cawing sounds "caaaaaaaar".
The penny dropped on the other major vowel difference after a few months. The Zimbabwean "i" was pronounced as a soft "u" (not as guttural as the kiwis) whereas the Aussies use it in the phonetically correct form - a higher pitched sound closer to an "ee". So Birn became b i n and so on.
The assimilation must have been going reasonably well because somehow I attracted some female attention - again a somewhat perturbing experience for the boy from all-boys Falcon. The attention came from a girl called Paula, from memory a tallish brunette who was an occasional attender at JYP. I was completely oblivious to the fact until we went to a JYP camp towards the end of the year.
This camp was at a scouts camping site at Rollingstone, around 40km north of Townsville. The place had very little to endear it to us - a dry dust bowl next to a stagnant, largely dry creek bed. We played the obligatory games and a wide game or two but my memory of the greatest amusement came when a mysterious pair of underwear were run up the flagpole one night and no one would admit to owning them, or flying them high.
I was sharing a tent with Jonathan but was alone in the tent on the first afternoon when a "messenger" arrived in the form of Paula's best friend to inform me that "Paula liked me".
This was absolutely staggering information and caught me completely off guard, so all I could manage was a stuttered "oh bull shit!". Given Paula was in the adjoining tent with a coterie of her friends this was probably a worst-case scenario - a gruff (and might I add unintended) rebuff replete with colourful language heard loud and clear in evangelical circles.</span>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >I can remember quite a few stony stares over the next twenty-four hours and very little conversation until mercifully the camp was over and I could retreat to the relative security of Lodge life. I did plan to try and make amends at the next JYP night but Paula and her best friend never showed their face at TDBC again as far as I can remember.</span>
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHI21-fJ1811HJdpCA_v60tpI6xg9HWk5Tuiw4CWsPxUiNFy-CHnuc5SwZTJdYvDs68vC_kHri9cRXZAeSrJ-U3AEdXyMEovoZ8bn6-B_5TEinag_bjsL1zIo_8X30HK9OoG8mdQPsS8g6/s1600-h/IMAGE0454.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 261px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHI21-fJ1811HJdpCA_v60tpI6xg9HWk5Tuiw4CWsPxUiNFy-CHnuc5SwZTJdYvDs68vC_kHri9cRXZAeSrJ-U3AEdXyMEovoZ8bn6-B_5TEinag_bjsL1zIo_8X30HK9OoG8mdQPsS8g6/s320/IMAGE0454.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209754974666819250" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">If she had returned her ardour would most likely have</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> cooled significantly when the annual</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> JYP concert rolled around. Dress-ups has never been my strong point and camp concerts are a dull and excruciatin</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">g ex</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">perience of banality. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Perhaps this aversion springs from the brilliant idea Jonathan and I hatched for our performance at the concert in 1985.
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<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Mad Max III had just come out and with it the main song from the sound-track, Tina Turner's "<span style="font-style: italic;">We don't need another hero</span>". Jonathan and </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I slightly doctored the words and changed the title to "<span style="font-style: italic;">We don't need another yout</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">h group</span>", some strange homage to JYP that I think was supposed to be flattering.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span>
<a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNQ236-ZBRpQBhgsV_6A-IX7p9Lo0TVtbLTuZIcwBfsrJqaI6XzdJP0FQwRppadscgq3UHcPwyBFNGQ52GF-VkztLNMJcjc7tIUZhyJ19fOML9n-4Hmhw-v80B6Bc3ZugMOjGdyYYnySh/s1600-h/IMAGE0172.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 290px; height: 362px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNQ236-ZBRpQBhgsV_6A-IX7p9Lo0TVtbLTuZIcwBfsrJqaI6XzdJP0FQwRppadscgq3UHcPwyBFNGQ52GF-VkztLNMJcjc7tIUZhyJ19fOML9n-4Hmhw-v80B6Bc3ZugMOjGdyYYnySh/s320/IMAGE0172.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209751550979673346" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">
<span style="font-family:verdana;">Our nerves were not assisted by the ridiculous get-up we chose for ourselves. Jonathan borrowed a dress from Carlie while I dragged a kimono I'd been given when fly</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ing </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Cathay Pacific out of the closet and matched it with the iconic green and whit</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">e hoop socks of the Zimbabwean Rugby team.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">To top it off I took out a permanent felt-pen and wrote all over my precious "fellis", comfortable bush shoes</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> that had b</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">een a part of the Falcon day uniform.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span>
<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">
</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">P<span style="font-family:verdana;">lay was pr</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">essed on the tape player and we proceeded to sing the first few lines of the song over the </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">top of Tina Turner, at which point Jonathan completely lost composure and launched into maniacal laughter.
</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I attempted to labour on with the s</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">ong but probably would have been better joining in with Jonathan (and by now the rest of the youth group) i</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">n derisory laughter at the ridiculousness of the performance.
</span>
</span><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHrbeByVvin0AI3YW1wx45KTDJwI9UNFsIpW6KsXjf7loeip9QUYJrFBetSJhGFE9PlxMXpcr9lz-Z1tssDU_ZGljUal1nII38MRDsWwuVx3zvUqe2gRr8IVFi3BVRitVsxkKEC8tr0jDJ/s1600-h/IMAGE0455.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 243px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHrbeByVvin0AI3YW1wx45KTDJwI9UNFsIpW6KsXjf7loeip9QUYJrFBetSJhGFE9PlxMXpcr9lz-Z1tssDU_ZGljUal1nII38MRDsWwuVx3zvUqe2gRr8IVFi3BVRitVsxkKEC8tr0jDJ/s320/IMAGE0455.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209754982490668338" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> think it would be fair to say that both </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Jonathan and I remember this night as one of the most humiliating in our teenage lives.
</span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">Towards the end of that year traged</span><span style="font-size:100%;">y would strike our youth g</span><span style="font-size:100%;">roup when the elder brother of the Chester twins, Shane, would pass away in a car accident. Shane had just finished year 10 and was intending to leave school to take up an apprenticeship.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">He and another older guy in the church, J</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ohn, decided to take a trip to Sydn</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ey. With John the only one that could drive they set out from Townsville,</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> made it to Brisbane and decided to keep going. In the dead of the night is seems John fell asleep at the wheel and the car veered into the other lane on a notoriously bad stretch of the Pacific Hi</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ghway near Tarree. They collided with a semi-trailer and both were killed instantly.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">The accident happened in the early hours of a Sunday morning just before Christmas and the pastoral staff were quickly alerted to the news ahead of the morning’s church service. Senior Pastor Stan Solomon was flown to Tarree to identify the bodies whilst the rest of the pastoral team picked up the pieces with a shattered congregation.</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">It was a very sad start to the summer holidays and cast a pall over several subsequent Christmases.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">All of the other Lodgies vacated for the Christ</span><span style="font-size:100%;">mas holidays and we returned to our nu</span><span style="font-size:100%;">clear family which sweated out our first tropical coastal summer. While Bulawayo was in the</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> tropics it was also 1300 metres above sea level and had low humidity, it's temperate climate regarded as one of the most pleasant in the world. </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDzGVMie0d_qv7VZNujno1jfpftRbVvqef5MbHmx-VBzp8aJCeXQ8Ap2JPj_76nRHmgk_6pjVO5lA2EO2ntcv85OIH22QIBn1ojAb5X43Ne330-WCKfNQVUVoI48bOOMrOcrlbGAYlYszA/s1600-h/IMAGE0469.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDzGVMie0d_qv7VZNujno1jfpftRbVvqef5MbHmx-VBzp8aJCeXQ8Ap2JPj_76nRHmgk_6pjVO5lA2EO2ntcv85OIH22QIBn1ojAb5X43Ne330-WCKfNQVUVoI48bOOMrOcrlbGAYlYszA/s320/IMAGE0469.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209759001099269250" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">The Townsville summer </span><span style="font-size:100%;">descended like a sticky wet blanket from which there was no respite.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">We had no air-conditioning so all we could do was open our louvres and rely on ceiling fans that were on constant rotation, beating the turgid air around with little effect.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">Wit</span><span style="font-size:100%;">h the heat and humidity came the lethal box jellyfish so even a dip in the soup-li</span><span style="font-size:100%;">ke ocean had to be conducted within the confines of a huge cage covered in chicken-wire. It was</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> hardly worth the effort.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeI56mseZBIaATJpD8ULbNWVJ-98RVviT9pabSHdDZZG6eaOjH_D6krEqP-pVBAhS_xwzDUcLzYf5OZGolUJz3Y-UexEJlFlCWRMbZWXiO78Ptqp752Qix4N8eTBABf0ucWTnkFwQo7RAY/s1600-h/IMAGE0423.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 359px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeI56mseZBIaATJpD8ULbNWVJ-98RVviT9pabSHdDZZG6eaOjH_D6krEqP-pVBAhS_xwzDUcLzYf5OZGolUJz3Y-UexEJlFlCWRMbZWXiO78Ptqp752Qix4N8eTBABf0ucWTnkFwQo7RAY/s320/IMAGE0423.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209757557152070482" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >In the lead-up to Christmas there were a huge amount of advertising brochures to be distributed, Jonathan's place on the team taken up by a school friend, Dominic Andrew. </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >To escape the blazing heat we would meet up at 5am and try to have the whole delivery round finished off by 9am, whereupon we'd retreat to the only air-conditioned place we could find that summer - the shiny new Willows</span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" > Shoppingtown.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">We'd withdraw our hard-earned money at the Westpac ATM on the way in and then spend</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">several hours languidly buying ourselves treats (coke and ice-cream mainly). One day Dominic shook his 2 litre Coke up a little too hard and it shot the cap off the bottle and Coke spewed out in a great big puddle on the immaculate</span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" > tiles. We took one look at the carnage and bolted for the bike racks, my legs pumping the little BMX as fast as was humanely possible.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NHKZsIjDWUd21gSX36Y8aS_G-nT8erKyaWOSTlQKagrfcNn6LUo15Ae-D_pJ52T09YgPMFuR6frzSY8sNGMmPSyl9hYkVQ3UUzKa6nqiUlVYRCD4k1pz1NxzYl6zH5k_v7OABgQf_7sw/s1600-h/IMAGE0465.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NHKZsIjDWUd21gSX36Y8aS_G-nT8erKyaWOSTlQKagrfcNn6LUo15Ae-D_pJ52T09YgPMFuR6frzSY8sNGMmPSyl9hYkVQ3UUzKa6nqiUlVYRCD4k1pz1NxzYl6zH5k_v7OABgQf_7sw/s320/IMAGE0465.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209754988665711362" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Dominic joined us when we took a day-trip on Reef Link for our first proper look at the Great Barrier Reef. It was a two hour trip to the Perc Tucker Reef which housed the "yellow submarine" with a glass floor and was also preparing to receive the "8th wonder of the world - it's first floating hotel". It was a cloudy, blowy day (hot and sticky of course) and Mum and Dad joined half of the boat's patrons in being violently sick.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Dominic and I sat on the back deck for the trip and showed no ill effects and enjoyed a very long day of snorkeling and eating the buffet lunch that was touched by very few. </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Mum and Dad managed a fleeting look at the coral through the yellow submarine but spent most of the day i</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">nspecting the back of the toilet bowl or marveling at the patterns the contents of their stomach could make in the water when lurched over the boat's rail.</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9CxwrG4bpMZP6g6vnQP-bqHwo6In_PeBs-IYyh0NnUg57JN3D4ycRUs2gvD9jAKIhqFxcM0RSTLY6K820UXApj9hBKWPPufpOt194nMkwjxslkNm7C34qCK-eKXBREbk4cideY6pPQjMZ/s1600-h/IMAGE0466.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9CxwrG4bpMZP6g6vnQP-bqHwo6In_PeBs-IYyh0NnUg57JN3D4ycRUs2gvD9jAKIhqFxcM0RSTLY6K820UXApj9hBKWPPufpOt194nMkwjxslkNm7C34qCK-eKXBREbk4cideY6pPQjMZ/s320/IMAGE0466.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209754984114086770" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Floating Hotel didn't last very long at the Perc Tucker Reef. It opened with much fanfare but was buffeted by Cyclone Winifred the following year and lost patronage. Within a year or so of opening the Hotel was cut loose from</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">its anchors and towed up the coast en-route to Ho Chi Minh city which was just opening its doors to the world and had no accommodat</span></span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >ion!</span></p><p face="Georgia" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;" lang="en-AU"><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >
</span> </p>
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDbYrtWklJfxCjRptr9g_rD03aWmEff43FqVVkoxVY9tRVk9IIriTHuxRNtoL4s48ec-TaR7XgPBDi6qBLlOsj5pLrLVRN6ZLzmg-Z-JjCszzJvqCovFlubq460zQS9jPd5br-uf0lpfY/s1600-h/IMAGE0569.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 269px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDbYrtWklJfxCjRptr9g_rD03aWmEff43FqVVkoxVY9tRVk9IIriTHuxRNtoL4s48ec-TaR7XgPBDi6qBLlOsj5pLrLVRN6ZLzmg-Z-JjCszzJvqCovFlubq460zQS9jPd5br-uf0lpfY/s320/IMAGE0569.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209757566607199954" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:verdana;">As we cruised back into Townsville harbour late in the afternoon we passed another hotel that was a few weeks short of opening - the Sheraton Breakwater Casino which at the time was a stark monolith rising up from the dry and dusty Townsville marina carpark.
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<span style="font-family:verdana;">Our first Australian Christmas was a sweltering day (even more so than usual) and we made the short trip over to Magnetic Island to spend the day with the Ansells, their Zimbabwean connection making them our longest-term friends in the country.
</span></span><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip3ML-bUSYoAY4aFKUHirn_0j-N17jspBSXm3DB1v0CG_FSZinVX0x6nRateYgHCynAd7k-dTE2gWUB3wgz6fmEHc-tF4e1KLkli0oU61HbDxW_1Oi7a53LPdO6mL1bkWPBW2m7KMv4fmb/s1600-h/IMAGE0464.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip3ML-bUSYoAY4aFKUHirn_0j-N17jspBSXm3DB1v0CG_FSZinVX0x6nRateYgHCynAd7k-dTE2gWUB3wgz6fmEHc-tF4e1KLkli0oU61HbDxW_1Oi7a53LPdO6mL1bkWPBW2m7KMv4fmb/s320/IMAGE0464.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209759011257149058" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:verdana;">We did the whole Christmas Roast thing and then went for a desultory walk along Nelly Bay to let the food settle. It was an absolutely stifling day, a couple of degrees higher than normal and tremendous humidity and with no stinger nets in operation a quick dip in the tempting-looking water was not an option.
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<span style="font-family:verdana;">A few months later an Australian one-hit wonder band called Gangajang would release a song called "Sounds of Then". I distinctly remember the first time I heard the song on the radio, distorted by the crackle and static caused by lightning strikes as an early evening thunderstorm pierced the heavens and great gusts of rain were dumped from the darkened bellies of massive cumulonimbus clouds.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family:verdana;">And the refrain was repeated over and over again:
</span>
<i style="font-family:Georgia;"><span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">To lie in sweat, on familiar sheets,</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">In brick veneer on financed beds.</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">In a room of silent hardiflex</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">That certain texture, that certain smell,</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">Brings forth the heavy days,</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">Brings forth the night time sweat</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">Out on the patio we’d sit,</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">And the humidity we’d breathe,</span>
<span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);">We’d watch the lightning crack over canefields</span>
</i></span> <span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 128);font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><i>Laugh and think, this is Australia.
</i>
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Indeed!
</span></span><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b>1985 Soundtrack:</b></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>
</b></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-family: Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">Apparently this is not a common trait, but I seem to have a back catalogue of songs in my head that are strongly associated with the memories, feelings and even smells of particular points in time - generally when the songs were on heavy rotation on the radio.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-family: Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b>Kate Bush - Running up that Hill: </b> This haunting song beautifully conjures up that sense of "WTF have I come to" that was relocation to Australia at the back-end of 1985.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Say if I only could,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"> I'd make a deal with God,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"> And I'd get him to swap our places,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Be running up that road,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"> Be running up that hill,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"> With no problems...</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" > </span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;">I am certain this song became hard-wired because the first eighteen months in Australia was a long-running debate with God along the lines of "what have you done with me? Do you know how hard this is?"</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt;font-family:verdana;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-family: Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b style="font-family: verdana;">Prince - Rasberry Beret: </b><span style="font-family:verdana;"> I'd fallen in love with Prince's music the year before. The risque funk rock of his Purple Rain album starting a life-long addiction. Rabserry Beret was pretty much the follow-up single, a light and breezy number that plumbed the depths of a teenager just starting to wake up to the romantic possibilities of the opposite sex. Clumsily taped off the radio this song was on very heavy rotation as I read through Wilbur Smith's Eagle in the Sky.</span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-family: Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p face="Georgia" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b>Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town:</b></span></p><p face="Georgia" style="margin-bottom: 0pt;" lang="en-AU"><span style="font-size:100%;">
</span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"> <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);font-size:100%;" >(Chant)
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.
Ah hey ma ma ma
All the work shut down.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0pt; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Georgia;" lang="en-AU"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);font-size:100%;" >
</span></p><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >
</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);font-size:100%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >It was certainly obligatory that this song would be adopted by the proud North Queensland locals, even with its reference to "winter 1963, it felt like the world would freeze." The song entered folklore the following year when local disc jockey Steve Price offered to swim in the fountain near the Long Tan pool in mid-winter (oo-er). It did and he did.
</span></span>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-29281066053714084932008-05-20T20:15:00.009+10:002008-05-21T17:02:07.903+10:00Straya 1985 - Part IIOne morning at breakfast it was announced that we were about to be joined by another boarder, a girl our age called Carlie Gray. <div><div><div><div>
<div></div><div>Leanne burst out, "I know her, she has a twin sister Leah and they're known as the Dolly Birds" (Dolly Parton having quite famous mammary "assets" at the time). This was probably an incredibly ill-advised comment to make in the presence of two fourteen year old males.
</div>
<div>Jonathan and I eagerly awaited the arrival of Carlie as the story was filled in. Her parents were sugar cane farmers in Gordonvale but low commodity prices were seeing them relocate to an exotic fruit orchard at Cape Tribulation and the twins needed somewhere to stay. </div>
<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjugY9qCcYWgTltK71qXvIrPs4TsZ4Bbi19HoyxOnWZPTCxmRceviP0Hq867OJ48K85Cth5jryr5UY4MQLI7YAQLQuCtVh1nmVu0cZvg3UqB5g8bkNPFIN1wz7oqhYZMzYyDwZTAjEL47_h/s1600-h/IMAGE0159.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202402052454336802" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjugY9qCcYWgTltK71qXvIrPs4TsZ4Bbi19HoyxOnWZPTCxmRceviP0Hq867OJ48K85Cth5jryr5UY4MQLI7YAQLQuCtVh1nmVu0cZvg3UqB5g8bkNPFIN1wz7oqhYZMzYyDwZTAjEL47_h/s320/IMAGE0159.JPG" border="0" height="257" width="333" /></a>As they were identical twins who apparently didn't see eye to eye the parents wanted them to have the personal space afforded by attending separate schools. Carlie would live with us at the Lodge and go to Kirwan while Leah was boarding at the private Cathedral School.</div>
<div></div><div>Well they say girls mature faster than boys and Carlie arrived as a confident young fashion sophisticate. She also latched quickly onto my mother as her proxy mum which was quite something for a “lonely only” who had never had to compete for attention or affection. This blew into quite a fracas when Carlie went to hug mother good night one evening only to find me standing in her way snarling "she's MY Mum!"</div>
<div></div><div>Carlie soon branded Jonathan and me with the moniker "immature young rabbits" which inspired us to new levels of name calling that we won't go into. Eventually things would settle down but it must have been a frightening introduction to Lodge life for Carlie. Jonathan, Carlie and I would be at the Lodge together until the end of Year 12 – the three hardcore "originals".</div>
<div></div><div>The September school holidays rolled around and <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDMLDjlNVjCEblb95XnJiaDDhzqPqO4Tq8RFHHH700mM_lzuyJfBDn83ZamJw0adHjAOt3SfbVlta_pJutjBbIPsLmIaX6BUMBkIt9cqPmB0QKzY-JCuRRhyphenhyphenqcIi9FsYG7NVX_2Yxx6UrN/s1600-h/IMAGE0167.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202402520605772082" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDMLDjlNVjCEblb95XnJiaDDhzqPqO4Tq8RFHHH700mM_lzuyJfBDn83ZamJw0adHjAOt3SfbVlta_pJutjBbIPsLmIaX6BUMBkIt9cqPmB0QKzY-JCuRRhyphenhyphenqcIi9FsYG7NVX_2Yxx6UrN/s320/IMAGE0167.JPG" border="0" /></a>Carlie went home to Cape Tribulation. Jonathan would only go to PNG twice a year so he and I found ourselves at something of a loose end so we decided we'd commandeer all the building rubble left from the Lodge's construction and make a BMX track.
</div>
<div>This saw us gainfully employed for a fortnight using shovels and picks to smooth the humps and create a wild path that swept around the jumps in a tight circle.
</div>
<div>We hatched grand plans of how this facility would make us our first fortune, so we went up to Willows <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX67Pn2GZRzikE1Pt03eQJ9cYB2cXnrrNtfci_lSQyWXD75355xat6U-lgAsd4J3tkJp-OQh8z3lXH5o0IKj8N6wMarBnGMISkYqRRk9R_mBMUju_5Nq7OoxqJJhfBKlmsC0eo6gpqYdJT/s1600-h/IMAGE0435.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202403061771651394" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX67Pn2GZRzikE1Pt03eQJ9cYB2cXnrrNtfci_lSQyWXD75355xat6U-lgAsd4J3tkJp-OQh8z3lXH5o0IKj8N6wMarBnGMISkYqRRk9R_mBMUju_5Nq7OoxqJJhfBKlmsC0eo6gpqYdJT/s320/IMAGE0435.JPG" border="0" height="292" width="202" /></a>Shoppingtown to avail ourselves of the free advertising cards that are still found on notice boards at most Woolworths outlets! </div>
<div></div><div>We promoted a Townsville-leading BMX facility available on a pay-for-use basis and set a date for a grand opening and waited for the town population to flock to our wondrous creation.As it turns out the opening day was politely attended by Leanne, Mum and Dad and the Bullpits.
</div><div>Jonathan and I dressed up, said our speeches and asked Leanne to cut the ribbon and take the first ride. After that I think Jonathan and I were the only ones to use that track.
</div>
<div>Ours was not the only construction going on the property. The next stage of the church’s expansion plan was a large Hall that would also double as the premises for a planned Bible College. Thus a large barn duplicate of the main church building was slowly rising in the west.
</div>
<div>The building was being project managed by Kim Grossman, a member of the Willows Lodge Board who had also taken responsibility for the building of the Lodge itself. </div>
<div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIsO6NztTA_YKS6BK8nf9O-CVmY-DzABdbH_eMU3Z__b9qQjDbBrfky9lI5KuRq_WwL5e6fZnla2Scp3ZtQbklgYBxNiZ-HOotvFcsHtPdSJ_fK7ZthyNPFAJybjO5IgTnKFa3exfuH92p/s1600-h/IMAGE0421.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202403727491582290" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIsO6NztTA_YKS6BK8nf9O-CVmY-DzABdbH_eMU3Z__b9qQjDbBrfky9lI5KuRq_WwL5e6fZnla2Scp3ZtQbklgYBxNiZ-HOotvFcsHtPdSJ_fK7ZthyNPFAJybjO5IgTnKFa3exfuH92p/s320/IMAGE0421.JPG" border="0" /></a>Kim’s work crew were an eclectic bunch of characters who, I understand, were participating in the building project as a training exercise (think work for the dole) to enable them to gain experience in the building industry.
</div>
<div>This crew proclaimed themselves the “B Troop” and cheerfully went about the task of erecting the massive edifice which we’d wander about at the end of each day to see progress.
</div>
<div>There were grand plans for this Hall. It was to have a large central room that was bordered by several other rooms of varying sizes and a commercial kitchen. Not only would it host the North Queensland College of Ministries, it would also be the venue for church functions, youth group events and by day was to be hired as a gymnastics training facility.
</div>
<div>In 1985 this was all in the future and so our youth group events were held in the back end of the main church building and for Sunday School we would use the classrooms in the Canterbury School demountable.
</div>
<div>That first year of Sunday School was little short of a circus. Some quirk of nature meant that all but one of the church youth born in 1971 were male with 1972 being the reverse. The 1971 exception, Carlie, was allowed to go up one year to join the Sunday School group that met in the Bullpitt’s lounge room, leaving a wild group of boys who didn’t really want to be there in the first place. </div>
<div>The lawlessness of our Sunday School group that year was a stark contrast to what I knew from Falcon, where the failure to raise one’s hat and politely chirp “Good morning Sir/Maam” to a teacher was a caning offence. </div><div>
We would go to Sunday School after enduring a long church service that generally went for 1 and ½ to two hours. The order of service was pretty much the same each week, several choruses sung twice, selected from a stable of no more than twenty tunes so we’d rehash the same dirge every 2-3 weeks. The choruses would be interspersed with a hymn or two, all accompanied by the dreadful screeching of a pipe organ that set one’s nerves on edge. </div>
<div>Church notices would take twice as long as they should and the whole shebang would be topped off by a sermon that would never be shorter than 30 minutes but would generally run to 45. The choice of seating was either sticky plastic chairs that drew the sweat from your pores or the cooler hardwood benches that were constructed at the perfect angle to make comfort an impossible dream. </div>
<div>The saving grace of the wooden pews was that they had a rail at their back which was designed to hold hymn books, bibles and communion glasses. This meant it was possible to lean forward on the rail, rest one’s head on an arm and, if possible, snooze through the sonorous exhortations to greater tithing and volunteering for the various church rosters (Dad and Stan Solomon excluded). </div>
<div></div><div>Every fortnight we would have a communion service and little silver trays would be passed around containing minute cubes of white bread that had been shaved of their crust. Someone had mastered the art of the cut that made them the ideal size to stick in one’s throat and their minute size was the complete antithesis of the bountiful grace that they were supposed to represent. </div><div>
But the stinginess didn’t stop there. Choking on the bread was alleviated by the “wine” that was brought around in thimble size glass cups. In actual fact this was cheap grape juice (alcohol being something close to anti-Christ in Baptist circles) that was liberally watered down to make it go further. </div>
<div>It is here that I confess that my perverse sense of humour used to be thoroughly piqued by sneaking into the church kitchens through the week and taking out the half used bottle of grape juice and taking great big slugs directly out of the bottle. Eventually someone must have had their suspicions because they started to freeze the bottles! </div><div>
The main service was followed by a quick cuppa and biscuit before all the adults settled into discussion groups while us kids were shuffled off to our Sunday School, by which time us young males were somewhat stir-crazy and agitated. </div>
<div>We would congregate in the school playground that consisted of some very basic swings and a jungle-jim. Generally we’d perch on the jungle-jim, throwing twigs and rocks at the younger kids passing by and trying to pull the hair out of each other’s legs that were little past threadbare anyway. </div><div>
The first several times our teacher summoned us to class would generally be ignored until eventually we’d reluctantly troop in to see whether our books contained a story on Joseph or Moses for that day. The commencement of teaching did not coincide with a conclusion to the mayhem. </div><div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPqsmENQHWYQhBTlQr6e31tBONjOlutafbnJQMDBDLHJZ_qcHhp5_QHAHflyH_kqvtHrM3UmfPwP3iRKSUh30zQSRB5DkhK6Z48byFr0zCBSxiChRk3cH3ra676Xlm_QUGzzrKZeptOWDe/s1600-h/IMAGE0457.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202404650909550946" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPqsmENQHWYQhBTlQr6e31tBONjOlutafbnJQMDBDLHJZ_qcHhp5_QHAHflyH_kqvtHrM3UmfPwP3iRKSUh30zQSRB5DkhK6Z48byFr0zCBSxiChRk3cH3ra676Xlm_QUGzzrKZeptOWDe/s320/IMAGE0457.JPG" border="0" /></a>It was not unusual that one of the Chester twins would stand up and wander over to the TV and flick it on to watch the beginning of the Wide World of Sports program. Naturally this would draw the attention of all of us and the teacher would spend the rest of the time vainly trying to regain it while we caught up on the day’s sporting action. </div><div>
One infamous Sunday we noticed the mice that were in several cages about the classroom. We’d wait until the mice were in their wheels, making steady momentum before prodding our hands into the cage and flicking the wheel backwards and laughing uproariously as they clung on for dear life or were thrown out of the wheel and across the cage. </div>
<div>It is little wonder that news of our reputation spread and there was a concerted move to thwart the progression to the Bullpitt’s Sunday School Group for Year 10-12 in 1986!</div></div></div></div></div>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-60766352647179432012008-05-19T22:21:00.014+10:002008-05-21T09:19:16.243+10:00Straya 1985 - Part One<span style="font-weight: bold;">Preamble:</span>
My intention has been to work through the years, covering each one in order. However, there's a bit of current demand need to cover some of the early years of Willows Lodge.
Based in Townsville, the Lodge was originally a hostel for kids of missionaries overseas whose children would remain in Australia for a local education. My parents were the first house parents.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrXyW9gHM9m7hxeNOpYDCvFEYSxwVDHI23fCYO7gChhIK_t3Pvi5PEOK3ZFjUTLMiNcoLUjHZriBIgYuCFgtJm5ikI-0JCgFrYUEsRsQOAaVarbVycdswYB0waKoqCfcVF_JDA1tFwlbJ/s1600-h/IMAGE0005.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 247px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjrXyW9gHM9m7hxeNOpYDCvFEYSxwVDHI23fCYO7gChhIK_t3Pvi5PEOK3ZFjUTLMiNcoLUjHZriBIgYuCFgtJm5ikI-0JCgFrYUEsRsQOAaVarbVycdswYB0waKoqCfcVF_JDA1tFwlbJ/s320/IMAGE0005.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202065808054667394" border="0" /></a>In order to provide a little bit of context, I was born and raised as a virtual only child (my next sibling is fifteen years older) in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and grew up in the midst of a bitter civil war and the "independence" that bought the despot Mugabe to power in 1980.
The majority of the Caucasian population quickly started to scatter from Zimbabwe, hurried by a brutal genocide that broke out in the city we were living in. We joined the exodus when our immigration to Australia was sponsored by the Townsville District Baptist Church (TDBC) at the urging of friends of ours, the Ansells, who had immigrated two year's previously.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMuqzatiQ2In9gRGjZL8S67QOmkqQSAN_fTfgRLRGFU2bFpIMKOMJ8EQFntbwFXZt2mO6Uwi6VhweCDSRABN-AQPBYGemRJsv9uiro4gTWWw12vctjJUleqD3jD49Fttvkem6EdEtmL41/s1600-h/Falcon1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMuqzatiQ2In9gRGjZL8S67QOmkqQSAN_fTfgRLRGFU2bFpIMKOMJ8EQFntbwFXZt2mO6Uwi6VhweCDSRABN-AQPBYGemRJsv9uiro4gTWWw12vctjJUleqD3jD49Fttvkem6EdEtmL41/s320/Falcon1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202065339903232114" border="0" /></a>Prior to our immigration I'd been a boarder at Falcon College, an academically brilliant, all-boys, all-boarding private school. The school's excellence grew from an extremely strict regimen that was supported by a culture of schoolboy bastardry whose hammer blow fell hardest on those in the lower grades, of which I was one.
We flew out of Zimbabwe on 1 July 1985 and had a few days in Sydney before flying up to Townsville, which is where the story picks up.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Townsville 1985:</span>
Our departure from Sydney was delayed by several days because the country was crippled by an airport firefighters strike that grounded all jet aircraft. Eventually we were shuffled onto a low-flying Fokker aircraft that snaked its way up the coast to Brisbane where we spent a few hours of numbing tedium at the run-down Archerfield airport that had banners proclaiming the Bicentenary and Expo 88.
We then boarded our plane to Townsville and the great unknown. On touchdown we walked down the steps onto the tarmac on a typically temperate Townsville winter evening. We were confronted with a terminal that amounted to little more than a tin shed and a sea of grinning faces as the church folk had all come out to have a look at their new African acquisitions.
There was no luggage conveyor. Our baggage was hauled into the carpark on a trailer pulled by a dilapidated tractor and we helped ourselves. Our suitcases represented the sum total of our worldly possessions until a container-load of the furniture we were allowed to take arrived some six months later.
Foreign exchange controls meant we had left Zimbabwe with $1000, though we had smuggled a few hundred extra in American dollars sewn into the front of my underpants to get past the body search in Harare.
We jumped into the Ansell's car, wrestled with the unfamiliar concept of seat belts in the back seat and were driven to the Ansell's modest three bedroom house in Heatley.
That first night at the Ansells Warren took me into the park opposite the house and pointed out the Townsville landmarks. "Immediately to our north the flashing lights represented Mount Louisa, further to the east the lights were atop the iconic Castle Hill and behind us in the south the tallest lights of the bunch were Mount Stuart.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVaQSpux8Fo3XSh7YU-NDXs9ZKNtFqocg0IgWyE5EbiQ5uOjDHQ7Ttn3Gvl41LrFCFGij8eBOjjFmjQbtqPExRj5afYCrHID7NlN_lyO3BUH0GZyIRVxAvHa32ZMxBxTV2UbKc57h7iB4/s1600-h/IMAGE0427.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 222px; height: 156px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVaQSpux8Fo3XSh7YU-NDXs9ZKNtFqocg0IgWyE5EbiQ5uOjDHQ7Ttn3Gvl41LrFCFGij8eBOjjFmjQbtqPExRj5afYCrHID7NlN_lyO3BUH0GZyIRVxAvHa32ZMxBxTV2UbKc57h7iB4/s320/IMAGE0427.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202066357810481298" border="0" /></a>The following morning we eagerly awoke to discover this tropical paradise we'd come to. In Townsville winter is the dry season, and we were shockingly confronted with a dry dust bowl landmarked with a few bedraggled eucalyptus trees. The deep emerald greens we were used to in Africa replaced by the pale, washed-out khaki of the sunburned country.
We were unexpectedly staying at the Ansell’s house because, unbeknown to us until we arrived, the Council construction certificates for the Lodge had not been issued because the fire department were not happy with the double fire doors at each end of the building and would not allow us to move in until they were replaced with a single door.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV4f-6tZ3PR65upDJwF3t2ktK8trHuGYVw0z9ieQybguJ22OQqEnPD1NovUgHrRojOCf2BmXejGAcIuDRhIZuxl4aDih8V7xH5xS6lKqOyXPPwbtGlBc8Gna6Sh9jUaSZ0e79lOg8HYnDA/s1600-h/IMAGE0621.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV4f-6tZ3PR65upDJwF3t2ktK8trHuGYVw0z9ieQybguJ22OQqEnPD1NovUgHrRojOCf2BmXejGAcIuDRhIZuxl4aDih8V7xH5xS6lKqOyXPPwbtGlBc8Gna6Sh9jUaSZ0e79lOg8HYnDA/s320/IMAGE0621.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202067809509427378" border="0" /></a>These were gigantic openings and as it turned out the large single doors proved to be too heavy for the jamb and were impossible to open. They ended up being a far greater hazard to our safety than the double doors ever could have been. Welcome to bureaucratic and union madness – Australian style!
I do however have a distinct memory of wandering into the vacant Lodge after our first morning church service at TDBC the weekend before we moved in, flicking on the antiquated television and seeing footage of the Live Aid concert that was being simulcast out of London and Philadelphia. Madonna was singing “<span style="font-style: italic;">Get into the Groove</span>” a song that caused my mother much consternation later in the year when its clip was played on <span style="font-style: italic;">Airwaves</span> during a Saturday lunchtime and the double entendre became apparent to her.
As the Queensland school holidays had just concluded and I was coming off a long term at Falcon it was decided I could wait a week before starting school at Kirwan High, a large co-ed government school of 1600 students.
The culture shock of school can be covered at another time, but it is worth noting that on my first or second day I was introduced to two boys my age. The taller one with the flat top introduced himself as Andrew and said "this is my cousin Jonathan who will be living with you at the Lodge." I'd met my first fellow inmate. His parents were missionaries in Tari, Papua New Guinea.
My first experience of the church youth group, the imaginatively titled Junior Young People (JYP) happened to coincide with my birthday. That night we played the normal round of lame games like duster hockey in the back of the church building before being called into the kitchen. To my horror I realised the well intentioned folk had prepared a birthday cake for me.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXP9CERog3FZeTb4i-CUk6sis1Jx3qOkb4vJxsfwIoyTJ7ihg__bQBsXK4GuWMGnmQVNZ26QWGBcRwZLntTaoKurVRuInAieaLRV6VjgcmE23iYhz4NF7JqR7qj8e9tSEVJxsIsXFMsxbZ/s1600-h/IMAGE0151.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 248px; height: 171px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXP9CERog3FZeTb4i-CUk6sis1Jx3qOkb4vJxsfwIoyTJ7ihg__bQBsXK4GuWMGnmQVNZ26QWGBcRwZLntTaoKurVRuInAieaLRV6VjgcmE23iYhz4NF7JqR7qj8e9tSEVJxsIsXFMsxbZ/s320/IMAGE0151.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202066933336098978" border="0" /></a>To this day I get very uncomfortable when any fuss is made of my birthday and I'm not partial to surprises. Suddenly becoming the centre of attention for this shy African fellow with a ridiculous haircut and strange accent was completely overwhelming. I bolted from the room and ran down to the demountable building that served as the classrooms for the fledgling Canterbury School (it would become Annandale Christian School).
The rest of the evening a nonplussed youth group wandered around looking for this strange African fellow who in fact was cowering underneath the demountable building, brushing away cobwebs and praying he wouldn't be found. Eventually everyone gave up and went in for the cake and I only emerged when I saw my ride appear.
The next day we finally moved into the Lodge. It was a long, narrow building that at that point contained 13 rooms for residents. It sat atop a dusty plain that was bordered by a long line of power lines and petered away to brown bushland pocked with more eucalyptus trees. The car park was shared with the manse which was inhabited by the Bullpitt family.
The original plan was for the Lodge to be lots of single rooms but this was changed when it was pointed out that it would be peopled by masses of hormone addled teenagers who would surely get up to nocturnal hijinks in the privacy of their own rooms. Thus the design was changed at the last minute and most of the rooms were doubles, one door leading into two rooms that shared a common lobby area but beyond that had a dividing wall.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOi52yK5FGz-zbrqNyDnx-NPQx_DbJ6IJ4yytpqg1fAGSRDKtooH6lS8VWfNppMC912MqC3sAdY0R8T4_j-oVqQ12gZ_dWQS71-FA6YBhh-2UEj7JeMcI5hFxMRrB0taD-tlbeMHoi8lj/s1600-h/IMAGE0442.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 257px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOi52yK5FGz-zbrqNyDnx-NPQx_DbJ6IJ4yytpqg1fAGSRDKtooH6lS8VWfNppMC912MqC3sAdY0R8T4_j-oVqQ12gZ_dWQS71-FA6YBhh-2UEj7JeMcI5hFxMRrB0taD-tlbeMHoi8lj/s320/IMAGE0442.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202068208941385922" border="0" /></a>Each room had two cheap pine built-in cupboards, a pine slat bed with a very narrow foam mattress, a curved desk that ran the length of the dividing wall and an overhead fan that would prove inadequately essential in summer. The building was constructed to promote through-breezes, large windows placed on top of louvres that gathered dust but allowed the sea breeze to pass through if the doors into the long centre passage were left open.
One of these double room arrangements had been slightly altered by placing the dividing wall askance, creating a larger double bedroom for Mum and Dad leaving a remaining narrow sliver that was supposed to be their lounge room and office. Their bedroom had a door that led into one of the bathroom areas that was also split in two by a wall and door in case my parents wanted to retain a modicum of privacy.
The building was bordered by large concrete awnings except for the front area that was slightly expanded to accommodate a large living and dining area adjoining a kitchen that was equipped with normal family household equipment and crockery – for a facility that would soon be catering to 15 people on a daily basis.
Jonathan moved in over that first weekend and it represented the first time in my 14 years that I'd had to share house and parents with another human my age. It would be something I would have to get quickly used to, not that I took it graciously.
Jonathan was placed in the single room that was next to my parent's office and I was in the next room down, another single room at the end of the building offering an entire face of uninsulated besser brick to the fierce afternoon sun.
Jonathan and I perched at the end of this vast uninhabited building that still reeked of fresh paint and carpet like timid sparrows. Each day we'd hop on our bikes and ride the three kilometre trip to the Kirwan High jungle.
My bike was a yellow BMX number that had been kindly rescued from the rubbish tip by the Chester family and moderately restored. Jonathan's pride and joy was a Malvern Star racer and I'd have to pump my legs twice as fast as him just to keep up.
The Bullpitt children were slightly younger than us and we'd sometimes share the trip with them. Early in the Lodge's existence we also hosted the daughter of the Chairman of the Willows Lodge Board, Kirsty James. I suspect she must have introduced the Grant family to the alien scrabble of Australian Rules Football because I became a Carlton supporter – her club of choice.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXOo2kah3XWEwKOiLvHAx3-jJFslMSXyWgH4q5SQlnDEvm1TAQyswkNId_9Mbw1MpIRv-hI6wrHniLDNK6HIRkKWCJ9H900D95YjQM1sHfOpunY1fTJTpS9YOZqD5Y8GE45d9eaMB-xt6/s1600-h/IMAGE0438.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXOo2kah3XWEwKOiLvHAx3-jJFslMSXyWgH4q5SQlnDEvm1TAQyswkNId_9Mbw1MpIRv-hI6wrHniLDNK6HIRkKWCJ9H900D95YjQM1sHfOpunY1fTJTpS9YOZqD5Y8GE45d9eaMB-xt6/s320/IMAGE0438.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202069085114714322" border="0" /></a>After about a month it was time to take in some more inmates. The first to arrive was Leanne, a tall, willowy brunette attending university at James Cook. She didn't fit the demographic the Lodge was then there to serve but I'd imagine there was quite a need to take in boarders to pay the bills.
Leanne had a boyfriend , a car and a university social life and didn't spend too much time hanging out at the lodge fraternising with two young lads in Grade 9!
The next inmate was a fellow called Eddie who was working locally, I think as an electrician. All brooding eyes, stocky body topped by a bull-neck and few social graces, Jonathan and I immediately decided that we were sharing a house with a serial killer and we avoided him like the plague.
My abiding memory of him is of bad jokes and a day where he watched the Grand Final of a strange code of rugby I'd not heard of before touching down. Eddie was a mad keen Dragons supporter and they had made the Grand Final but obviously weren't doing very well as Eddie kept punching the ground and muttering under his breath while I pondered how anyone could take such a strange game so seriously.
One of Eddie's jokes particularly stands out in memory. That year Townsville was granted an extraordinary public holiday, from memory to celebrate the inaugural Pacific Festival. In the afternoon we'd played a game called Hooky with Leanne and her boyfriend where we threw rubber rings at hooks on a plaque to score points. Eddie wondered by and muttered to us that "if anyone at school asks you about what you were doing today you can say you played hooky".
In fact earlier that morning Jonathan and I had managed to get up to far more mischief than wagging school. We'd scraped together enough money to buy us a packet of Peter Jackson 15s – a controversial cigarette that was being specifically marketed to the teenage demographic because it was cheap to buy and easily hidden.
To cover our tracks we cycled all the way up to the shops adjoining the Kirwan Tavern where we must have thought our surreptitious purchase would be unobserved. In a blue funk I stormed into the shop and breathlessly demanded from a knowing owner a "packet of Peter Jackson 15s for my brother please sir" (the sir bit being a default to Falcon parlance that was at that time a characteristic of mine when under pressure).
With contraband safely stowed we cycled our way to the end of Canterbury Road that meandered onto a dirt track in the bushland between our church and the recently opened Paceway (now Stockland Stadium, home ground of the NRL Cowboys).
The Paceway had only just been opened amid a broadcast flurry from then Gaming and Racing Minister, the rotund and corrupt Russ Hinze. His expletive-ridden tirade reached us at the Lodge and included the gem "people who say this facility is a white elephant, well they can all go and bloody get stuffed!"
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1Hc-oef-F31GLJ6dC9y1ZdyXLxEJrFEtVVc4o4_mV5A1vojjCGrrNNcO3uVrCLVQ4wOGQlFruSif3fZ-ZW1ZCt2kWMotSwyUkxf6R9ed9ajE0zrWa68GvooP7AHLF15MZt00Q9_zeT1x/s1600-h/IMAGE0450.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq1Hc-oef-F31GLJ6dC9y1ZdyXLxEJrFEtVVc4o4_mV5A1vojjCGrrNNcO3uVrCLVQ4wOGQlFruSif3fZ-ZW1ZCt2kWMotSwyUkxf6R9ed9ajE0zrWa68GvooP7AHLF15MZt00Q9_zeT1x/s320/IMAGE0450.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202069828144056546" border="0" /></a>The Paceway closed operations within five years but for the time I was at the Lodge it lit up the intervening bush with a pale ghostly light and interspersed the night air with commentary that made sleep impossible every Saturday.
That bushland included a large gully which stretched away north from the Paceway for well over a kilometre like a long finger. It was riven with gullies and Jonathan and I rode our bikes to one of them and with trembling fingers lit our first cigarette.
We took great pains to strip off our shirts so they didn't absorb smoke which was a dubious practise seeing as the gully was a frequent haunt of older trail bike riders who would surely have had a bit to say about two semi-naked teens cowering in a gully. A few roared past but thankfully we smoked out three "durries" each unnoticed.
I remember holding my cigarette between index and middle finger like an urbane James Bond whilst Jonathan held his in thumb and index finger and goaded me that this was the Australian way of smoking things.
Light-headed after our first smoking experience we buried the remainder of the pack and scrubbed away at our teeth with Jonathan's Ipana toothpaste – the only one he'd use because it still came in a metallic tube. This was of course to cover the smell of smoke on our breath.
When we arrived home we had both raced to the showers and given our teeth another good brushing. We'd gotten away with it. Eventually we became far more brazen, aided by the fact we were sharing a leaflet delivery run for pocket money.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS1teVfTO3jT9zvgYXzBkrvoqlbPqUTq3DLt5rKn42Q7KBxLpkA3yibb2t6rzOdvyZf-Lk3Y_NZYSYBLL76vTb2bqRXsYotyzIIEKoK1XRPmMCboVcR5LIn77w_QDosYKZt4z6R5tb9Qh7/s1600-h/IMAGE0155.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS1teVfTO3jT9zvgYXzBkrvoqlbPqUTq3DLt5rKn42Q7KBxLpkA3yibb2t6rzOdvyZf-Lk3Y_NZYSYBLL76vTb2bqRXsYotyzIIEKoK1XRPmMCboVcR5LIn77w_QDosYKZt4z6R5tb9Qh7/s320/IMAGE0155.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202070360720001266" border="0" /></a>Our first area was in the backblocks, the very southern end of Kelso in the Upper Ross. Kelso was still being built and much of the run was long roads with houses far apart. It was a tough gig. Part of the run included a house owned by a church family, the Wards, and we'd sometimes stop there for water on a hot day.
It was probably only a month (but it seemed like years) before we were offered the delivery run of houses surrounding the newly opened Willows Shoppingtown. This area began at our end of Canterbury Road and covered the swathe of houses between us and Kirwan High – some 450 mailboxes.
We would pick up piles of brochures and bring them home and sit in one of our rooms, folding them with a table knife and stuffing them into our school bags (our ports). This exercise would take well over an hour and we'd listen to the dulcet tones of legendary DJ Steve Price on 4AY that morphed into 4RR while Steve Price was poached by the market leading 4TO.
We'd split the houses up between us and would deliver the pamphlets after school and on weekends. It would take around two hours to knock over our area, all for the princely sum of $15 per brochure set delivered, that we'd then share between us.
As there were quite a number of houses that didn't accept "junk mail" we'd end up with piles of excess brochures that we'd take out the back and burn in the evenings. While we sat around poking smouldering paper we'd smoke our Peter Jacksons with the fire providing the perfect cover for our activities.
To be continued .........Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-12147939184427922192008-04-02T16:56:00.001+11:002008-04-02T16:59:42.483+11:00No Country for Old Men – a critique of post-modernism?<p><strong>*Spoiler alert* – If you haven’t seen the movie, and intend to, you don’t want to read this.</strong>
On first instincts this movie’s ending will frustrate anyone who likes closure. The ending comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that it will take a few minutes for you to realise it’s over. And then your brain will start to be overwhelmed with questions!
Closure can only be obtained if you understand this movie is a parable. And there were many parables told by Jesus that were quite deliberately left open-ended for the listener to contemplate. It’s a masterstroke because far more value is obtained by intellectual rigour than listening to a nice story that is all tied and trussed up by the end.
In my mind there are several layers to the message of this movie. (Some may not have been intended by the Directors). I will do my best to tease out some of the threads in a logical way.
The story revolves around three main characters, though there are others that are on the periphery and play their part to the story.
<strong>Llewelyn Moss</strong> is the hillbilly that stumbles on $2million of drug money and probably would have made away with it if he hadn’t listened to his conscious and sought to go and serve water to a dying man.
<strong>Anton Chigurh</strong> is the ruthless assassin who is hell bent on tracking down the money.
<strong>Ed Bell</strong> is the ageing and disillusioned Texas Sherriff who does his best to stay out of the story but cannot help but be reeled in.
<strong>A critique of post-modern thought:</strong>
There is an overarching theme in this movie which I could only take as a ruthless critique of post-modern thought. Each of the three main characters would vehemently argue that they are men of principle.
Moss sees the loot as an opportunity to leave the trailer park behind and provide a good life for his wife.</p><p>Chigurgh has his very own code of honour and is ruthlessly committed to serving what he would argue is his logical morality.</p><p>Bell is a servant of the law and, despite his disillusionment and even bewilderment at what life has become, still does “his duty”.
There are honourable as well as selfish aspects in the motivations of each man, but when their worlds collide the results are brutal and bloody.
In the end only one of the three remain true to their version of truth and morality. Despite promising the contrary to his wife, Moss commits to a high risk game of cat and mouse with Chigurgh to satisfy his ego and need for closure. Eventually Chigurgh uses Moss’ weakness as justification to slay Moss’ wife to satisfy his own commitment to honour.
Bell quits the police force and there are enough hints that in doing so he commits to a life of abject misery. Having stared evil in the face he finds he does not have the inner fortitude and motivation to keep up the fight.
By the end of the movie the only one that has remained relentlessly true to his truth and worldview is Chigurgh. You get the feeling that he hasn’t even come to the point of flirting with comprising.
The overall message then?
1. As much as we might try to pretend otherwise, conflicting ideologies cannot peacefully co-exist.
2 It is often those that are committed to the most evil and destructive ideologies that have the highest determination to succeed.
<strong>What motivated Chigurgh?</strong>
It is worth digging a little deeper to find out what it is that motivates Chigurgh to such incredibly malevolent violence. Though not obvious it is clear that by the movies end he has done far more than serve his ideology. He has also ended up with both the drugs and the $2million.
For much of the movie it is easy to assume that Chigurgh is in the employ of one or the other of the parties to the initial drug deal. That belief is exploded only towards the very end of the movie when it becomes clear that he is actually a third party pursuing Moss for the cash. Texan commerce owned the cash (Carson Wells was their man) and the Mexicans drug-runners are the ones that finally catch up with Moss and slay him.
Unless I’m missing something, Chigurgh simply saw an opportunity and took it. His only motivation therefore would have been his own gain. Virtually the only explanation you could give for his relentless pursuit of the cash is the one he gave for the coin he would toss to decide the fate of the random people that came into contact with him to find their fate hung on a coin toss – the path lead him there.
If Chigurgh was an opportunist it lends a staggering extra dimension to his evil. But the parable begs the question – is any self-motivated opportunism less evil?
<strong>Compromise</strong>
For much of the movie Moss is set up to be the potential hero. If this movie were to have a Hollywood ending Moss would be the capable but naïve hillbilly that defies the odds and rides off into the sunset with the cash and the girl.
His ride spins on the moment where he forgets that his primary motivation is to elude his pursuers and set up a new life for his family. From the scene where he yells down the phone to Chigurgh that he is making this a personal war his involvement in the movie is deliberately minimal.
It’s an almost instant metamorphosis from courageous underdog to being slain and vanquished, lying in a pool of his own blood on the threadbare carpets of a rundown Motel in El Paso. Not even slain by the target of his anger. He is completely sideswiped by the Mexicans drug runners who track him down thanks to information from his mother-in-law.
The swiftness of his downfall comes about because he takes his eye off his original goal and in doing so becomes sloppy and lazy. Compromise often does that.
<strong>The inheritances of Judeo Christianity makes the West soft:
</strong>
This theme is buried within two scenes in the movie. Moss and Chigurgh both sustain bullet wounds in a gun battle. At this point Moss is the innocent “good guy” while Chigurgh is prevented from seeking medical help for obvious reasons.
Chigurgh is pragmatic about his situation. He understands he has chosen a certain path that denies him many of the comforts of life. Uncomplainingly he self-medicates, a gruesome scene where he administers local anesthetic to his wound and cleans out the shotgun fragments.
The full benefits of the medical world are available to Moss and he avails himself of its care. It is no coincidence that nursing nuns are visible while Moss convalesces in hospital.
In the fourth century the Christian faith crossed the line from persecution to state religion. Those countries with a long heritage of the Judeo Christian ethic are today the ones that enjoy the most affluence and comfort. But they have also allowed affluence and comfort to become their goal.
Modern affluence and comfort is only possible because of the economic persecution of the majority of the world’s population – and these downtrodden societies have become an ideal breeding ground for the kind of malevolent ideology that Chigurgh represents.
The Western teenager complains if they have not kept up with the latest and greatest technology of their peers. They are oblivious to the horde of hungry and starving that inhabit the planet. If and when it becomes a war of these conflicting worldviews, which of the next generation are going to be mentally tougher to see the matter through to a conclusion?
<strong>Justice and Karma are not an obligatory right:
</strong>
In the final ten minutes of the movie Chigurgh is unleashed to satiate his desire for his personal form of justice – served by the slaying of the innocent.
As he drives away from his last slaying, Moss’ wife Carla Jean, he has right of way at the traffic lights. It is obvious what will happen next. A car runs a red light and T-bones his vehicle. He extracts himself from his vehicle and is attended to by some young teens horrified by the bone sticking out of his arm.
Hearing the sirens and needing to stay ahead of the law he bundles his shattered arm into a sling and staggers away, presumably to live another day. If there were obligatory karma Chigurgh would surely have died in this accident or at least been incapacitated so the law could catch up to him.
Justice is not served on Chigurgh which is a key element in the lack of closure the viewer experiences at the movie’s conclusion.
It is a confronting and thought-provoking movie that doesn’t shirk the ruthless reality that life cannot be. I watched it against the backdrop of the roller coaster ride that is the current uncertainty of the future of my homeland Zimbabwe.
In recent days I have found myself shaking with rage every time Mugabe has appeared on screen. My every instinct wishes justice to be meted out in equal measure on this barbaric, cruel and unkind dictator.
In reality I know there is still every chance he will hold onto power. The worst fate that might “befall” him is a removal from power to serve out his dotage in a safe haven funded by the billions he has gouged out of a once prosperous nation.
I doubt in this life he will be asked to pay his butcher’s bill for the injustices he has dealt out on my countrymen for 28 years. Which makes me hungry for the eternal hope of the afterlife that featured so prominently in Bell’s closing monologue. </p>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-85223943457483869032008-03-25T10:16:00.001+11:002008-03-25T10:17:48.476+11:00A mirror to our own failings?<strong>Yet another NRL/AFL/Super 14 season descends upon us blighted by numerous scandals involving young footballers running amok. Predictably this is followed by another outpouring of public outrage at the actions of these highly paid professionals crossing so-called moral boundaries.
</strong>
It gives me reason to pause and consider the spotlight we place on these young footballers and the expectation we put upon them to be ‘role models”. Do we not all know of friends, relatives, children and nephews that indulge in similar behaviour without the full force of society’s outraged being pressed upon them? Yet we expect the best of men who have often been pulled directly out of high school, given a pay packet many times that of their peers and an abundance of time with little to occupy them?
We expect something from these men because they have been assigned the roles of “hero” in our society. These days there is a growing shortage of genuine heroes in many of the major institutions of our society. Who is there to inspire honour and emulate in some of our major institutions?
In politics the debate seems to focus upon the lies told by our leaders, the broken promises and the influence of major companies and interest groups. Where are the Wilberforces that doggedly sought after legislative change in the abolishment of the slave trade?
The institution of the church has been diluted by frequent scandal involving sexual and financial abuse and a growing lack of clarity in its message. Where are the great inspirational leaders such as Jesus Christ, whose teachings have shaped the world for the past 2000 years?
Where are the heroes like Luther that railed against the abuses of the church from within or the Wesleys that would inspire large crowds through the power of their oratory and the sacrificial example of their life? Are there any religious leaders of today that will inspire movies in the future?
Even our military heroes are besmirched by fighting wars of dubious distinction. So is it any wonder that we’ve grown to put on a pedestal those of excellence in the arena of athletic endeavour? The sporting field is one of the few places we can point out to our children to and show them the benefits of discipline, work ethic, team work and the rewards of excellence.
But here’s the catch. We want our heroes to be without flaw. Whilst most of us admire Shane Warne for his immense skill in leg spin bowling we generally loathe him as a person (even more so if he wasn’t “one of us”).
In League we applaud the on field exploits of Mason and Sonny Bill Williams but we hold no real affection for them because their flaws as human beings have been put in the spotlight for all to see.
Yet we probably all have acquaintances that frequent brothels, or go on drinking binges, or who give each other’s rumps the odd squeeze or, dare I say it, the odd finger poking. Quite a few of us would view their actions as unfortunate or damaging, but generally their actions are written off as “their choice” or part of the rites of passage of growing up as a male.
However, should a group of football players of the same age and demographic indulge in exactly the same form of behaviour they’re exposed to torrents of public hysteria, shock horror and outrage!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to excuse the behaviour. However, spend time in any university during orientation week and you’ll hear the messages of hedonism, promiscuity and indulgence. Every weekend you’ll rub shoulders with patrons in nite clubs drunk or high and will quite likely defend their right to a “good night out”
So why exactly are we shocked when these messages manifest themselves in our young men in these sporting competitions?
I contend that is we who have placed these men on a pedestal because of our need for heroes to emulate. Their sole qualification is the ability to play a high octane and brutal contact sport. Often they are placed there without adequate preparation and support.
The virulence of our reaction betrays the fact that their inevitable fall is reviled only because it holds up a mirror and reflects back to us much of our own society that is decaying and reprehensible.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-83061595096467519852008-03-18T20:15:00.000+11:002008-03-18T20:16:03.894+11:00SMH - Where is thine mercy?I am outraged by the bucket job the Sydney Morning Herald has done on Mercy Ministries. By “bucket job” I mean quite literally the bucket of toxic, raw sewage that this so-called “distinguished broadsheet” has dumped on a nationwide ministry to vulnerable women.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/they-prayed-to-cast-satan-from-my-body/2008/03/16/1205602195122.html
While I don't agree with all of their methods, I certainly don't think they deserve to be treated in the way they were yesterday and today - to the point where several major corporate sponsors have said they are considering withdrawing their monetary support for the ministry.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/corporates-move-quickly-to-cut-ties/2008/03/17/1205602293122.html
(*disclaimer disclaimer) My sister is heavily involved in Mercy Ministries. She had to do 2 years of intensive training to be of any use to them. I think many of you will have read about her trip to Zimbabwe that is partly inspired by the kind of program and ministry Mercy has with the sexually abused, pregnant teens etc. Read her updates and judge for yourself.
http://interact.cornerstone.edu.au/forum_viewtopic.php?30.4908
What makes me angry is that the SMH finds two disaffected people who have not been in the program for 3 years - and build their case entirely around their allegations.
No attempt seems to have been made to find the many hundreds of women that have found the program to be life-transforming.
No attempt is made to cynically question the claims made by the two women (who are quite likely to have mental issues of their own if they were in the program in the first place).
At the very least you would describe this as "sloppy" journalism.
But it's not that, because surely no journalist could possibly be so incompetent.
No, this is a callous and calculated attack.
The fact that there are currently up to a hundred young girls in care who may not know where next week's meal and care will come from because of the withdrawal of corporate support must surely heap like burning coals on the heads of all involved in this sorry little episode.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-6781130566539089062008-02-14T21:35:00.007+11:002008-02-14T21:51:55.007+11:00The Marble PatchThe grounds of school provided many options of play for our lunch breaks. Now that we’d left the Kindergarten stream the Kindergarten playgrounds were closed to us, but this still left the majority of the school grounds to recklessly explore.
Several ovals were the scene for many pick-up games of soccer and rugby while we also spent time in the cricket nets and at a tennis hitting wall - a half tennis court with a large brick wall at one end with a horizontal paint line drawn across it at net height.
However, this was not so much a location for tennis as it was for vicious games of branding, tennis balls hurled as far and fast as we could propel them to thud painfully into young flesh, leaving bruises and lasting vendettas.
On the way to the tennis shed we’d pass by a large patch of dirt underneath the school flagpole and next to the main car park which was always a milling throng of bodies - the marble patch.
In our early years my recollection was that this area was treated with somewhat casual indifference until one of the regular trips “down south”, to South Africa, saw me emerging from one of their monstrous generic Hypermarkets clutching a large bag of 100 marbles, suitably equipped to enter this arena of dreams.
Soon casual indifference changed to burning obsession - a first introduction to the rough and tumble of a market economy that was to become a way of life.
When we first started frequenting the marble patch (in my recollection it must have been during Grade 4) our country was still under sanctions and therefore marbles were indeed rare commodities. They were not available for sale in Zimbabwe Rhodesia so fresh supplies were hard to come by. This lent a special edge to our endeavour as every marble lost was one closer to oblivion until the next trip to South Africa’s land of plenty.
We walked into a burgeoning marketplace with its own language, rules and codes of honour. Ours was not the marble within a ring approach that seemed to be the norm in the English literature we read, and in most of the countries where I’ve traveled (not that I have spent much time researching the marble habits of the world).
Somewhat in keeping with the national spirit, our approach to marbles was far more direct.
Each standard marble was considered one “unit” and each unit meant a step out from the target. Thus if you set up one marble, you would take one step out and drag a line in the dirt with your foot to denote the shooting line.
If you set up three marbles , three steps were taken, five steps for five marbles and so on. There was an intimate knowledge on how a combination of marbles would need to be set up. I presume that this had been worked out over many years in a method to provide fairness to those setting up their marbles and those shooting for the prize.
For instance a “fiver” stack of marbles had three across the back row, two and then one so the shooter was faced with an inverse pyramid. It meant there was something to aim at and depth of throw (accuracy being harder as distance increased) would be rewarded with a larger target.
Five marbles in a horizontal line would be easy pickings for the shooters while a vertical line would be snubbed by shooters. Similarly, there was a careful balance in attracting people to your particular pile. It was not good policy to take giant steps out from the target as people would be daunted at the distance and go elsewhere. Too close and it became too easy.
There was a careful balance that needed to be struck between attracting customers and making a “profit”.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhchL3dAz3pODidZ-UWmQLEjXXDXC5dQQ9R5wFqSnn_ax7pWsoyyd5656VP8l7UscGe1BWmgQxyoKrP96mJhC39ZGeXZ3Y_bVBYnyWTPgOuiK30BYXWjL8em3gEKYW7qNb7FOXL8ocN0T73/s1600-h/marble+patch.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 426px; height: 319px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhchL3dAz3pODidZ-UWmQLEjXXDXC5dQQ9R5wFqSnn_ax7pWsoyyd5656VP8l7UscGe1BWmgQxyoKrP96mJhC39ZGeXZ3Y_bVBYnyWTPgOuiK30BYXWjL8em3gEKYW7qNb7FOXL8ocN0T73/s320/marble+patch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166782946213235026" border="0" /></a>Equally as important in the whole process was the marketing of one’s goods. At Henry Low the marble patch was a large patch of square dirt, bordered on two sides by waist high brick walls. People offering marbles for shooting would set up shop all along these walls and step out into the square.
By the time the marble patch was rocking and rolling there’d be up to fifty people offering a target for shots so calling out one’s goods became an essential part of the process. From an early age I’d been fingered as having the “voice of a preacher” and “one that would raise the dead” so this served me well in the maelstrom of the marble patch market place.
If a person had put up four marbles (a base of three topped by one) they would shout out “Roll up a fourer” at the top of their voice to attract the shooters circling around in the dust haze like a pack of bloodthirsty sharks.
This would raise a massive din that would be loudly punctuated by frenzied yells of “PACE!” the calling signal of a flushed shooter whose marble had collided with its target.
Sometimes a situation would arise (particularly with the larger groupings of marbles) where there were multiple shooters and the cries of “PACE!” would come from 3 or 4 excited children who would all careen into the disrupted bundle of marbles, pushing and clawing at each other and scrabbling through the dirt to grab as many of the hoard that they could. Sometimes fists would fly.
The marble patch was a very competitive fray and there were a group of boys that would circle the arena like a patch of piranhas, seeking the edge on each other, competing for the biggest bag and the rarest marbles to establish the current king of the block. However, when it came to the marble Queen I have to give special mention to Kerry Macdonald who had an eye as sure as the boys and would scrap and fight for top dog status with us.
One day she managed to “pace” fair and square one of the rarest marbles in the school, much to the mortification of my good mate Brendon Hitchcock who had put it up at a high number of steps, confident no one would bag it while collecting all the failed marbles.
Such was the blow to his pride I watched as he waited until Kerry’s bag was unattended and the marble expropriated. Never one to be backward in coming forward I blew the whistle and a melee ensued and witnesses called to determine the marbles rightful owner. Kerry prevailed - perhaps she still has the marble?
Marbles in this marketplace style catered to a wide range of characters. There were the defensive specialists - children that would only set up marbles for shooters in the hopes of gathering several more marbles than were in their offering before it was knocked over.
Then there were the aggressive offensive specialists. The children that always took to the shooting line and backed their eye and ability to knock over the castle with their first or second shot and therefore make a profit.
There were two major ways to shoot a marble. The standard way employed by most was to bend at the waist and to swing the right arm from between the legs, with the position of the arm and its straightness in delivery relied on to project the marble towards its target.
However, there was also the overhand style, called “dobbing“, where the marble would be held up to ones eye for aim and hurled towards the target with a downward motion. This method required a clear eye and was more often employed on smaller targets. Generally there was a “no dobbing” cry employed on targets of three marbles or less.
I fell into the group that mixed it up depending on mood and current marble numbers in their bag. Each of us must have harassed our mothers to make us our prized marble bags - material bags with a large mouth opening at the top which was closed with a drawstring.
Depending on one’s fortunes, the marble bag could be bulging or hanging limply with a few marbles jangling around in the bottom. It was a pretty obvious way to assess each other’s progress.
If I was getting low on marbles I would switch into defensive mode, setting up piles in an attempt to stock up my numbers.
I have a distinct memory of one day being down to my last marble. In desperation I set up a “oner” a very rare occurrence because children could hang over the line and virtually shoot at it from over the top.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbuio-T1D7t_NTdkvgLb0QYRDrQM9ImEFC6B-GnQO9w_iPlP4-3eylid5zHZFGH0QrggnjbPvsd4ubZir6qD_cdTRqYA5wLywGl5HKXxzEQwSAdMyBVdYQWq1Z8HoXP_xxN9gNOqiTxwwI/s1600-h/marble.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbuio-T1D7t_NTdkvgLb0QYRDrQM9ImEFC6B-GnQO9w_iPlP4-3eylid5zHZFGH0QrggnjbPvsd4ubZir6qD_cdTRqYA5wLywGl5HKXxzEQwSAdMyBVdYQWq1Z8HoXP_xxN9gNOqiTxwwI/s320/marble.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166783908285909346" border="0" /></a>I can only presume that the novelty value of this “oner” attracted the ensuing crowd and some very rash shooting that saw around ten marbles ping against the back wall before my prize was claimed. Some judicious shooting followed this windfall and my bag was restored to some decent size. One’s afternoon would generally depend very much on the day’s fortune in the marble patch.
The standard marble was the shooters staple - we always shot with these marbles. However, their was an entire language and value code that went with the various targets we could shoot at. A marble deemed as rarer was worth additional steps. This was enticing for the people setting up as people were shooting at a smaller target from further back, but there was also far more on the line. Some of these “special” marbles were special indeed.
There were the supersized marbles called “blundies”. Generally a blundy was taken out to three steps, though the larger size of the marble was quite an enticing shot.
In the size of the standard marbles and the blundies were what were called “goens” (pronounced with a short “ooh“ sound, similar to could or should). These were purely metallic and were ball bearings.
Our proximity to the railway workshops meant that many of the children had fathers that worked there and these “goens” were sourced from the railway workshops, presumably yet another expression of the Rhodesian urge for sanction busting.
A standard goen had the same nominal value of the marble and a blundie goen was nominally <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8ISAFjIoht1eRkTsLpIOUN_Hk9OXHvV5lksxo5JcmRnz592lBUW5AZAdrX4g9osYD06yfH5kLT6wZJgrH5q6eC4GYye5jmLZoVKFM2qvM8YFpnvQ2rNAjbkFQWbdglnQERZVWUgEKs0j/s1600-h/smokie.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 233px; height: 186px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8ISAFjIoht1eRkTsLpIOUN_Hk9OXHvV5lksxo5JcmRnz592lBUW5AZAdrX4g9osYD06yfH5kLT6wZJgrH5q6eC4GYye5jmLZoVKFM2qvM8YFpnvQ2rNAjbkFQWbdglnQERZVWUgEKs0j/s320/smokie.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166784543941069170" border="0" /></a>worth three steps. However, they were a fairly unattractive commodity and it was rare that people would shoot for them at those rates. Similarly it was frowned upon to use a goen for shooting. No one really wanted too many (if any) of them and occasionally their additional weight would chip the glass marbles.
The next marble up the tree was the “smokie”, a white marble that had its patterns on the outside. A single smokie was deemed to be the same value as three standard marbles and thus each smokie in a pile attracted three steps. Though rare, there were also blundie smokies, quite a mouthful to call out and their “value” being indeterminate. Technically they were 3x3 for 9 steps but noone was brave enough to have a crack at a single blundie sized marble from so far away, so the rare occasion they were put up for hitting the steps would range somewhere<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3iSLdoDi16JRFaz2itztOg6dQ8H63VI9Qvc4DY6oR-n1ViYET_GzpsUKFJWzbGqLa0EuQT7rRNlUu8TJ8Ec6RBie2jU9_uOIBjkHMIV53fD6bgh0bQMVfA2zB5J0zNRoWFHLy43cXweN1/s1600-h/clearie.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 184px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3iSLdoDi16JRFaz2itztOg6dQ8H63VI9Qvc4DY6oR-n1ViYET_GzpsUKFJWzbGqLa0EuQT7rRNlUu8TJ8Ec6RBie2jU9_uOIBjkHMIV53fD6bgh0bQMVfA2zB5J0zNRoWFHLy43cXweN1/s320/clearie.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166785089401915778" border="0" /></a> between six to nine.
Though rated as a similar value to the smokie in terms of steps I used to place a far higher personal value on the clearie. This was a clear glass marble without blemish and I think I appreciated its pure aesthetic lines. It was a rare day that I’d shoot for a smokie from three steps but a clearie was irresistible bait.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja0Sd9apqfz6rE1gyO1eS9CXnnuccvBSONhCtfnQpSMHyrsiIMPByY0mPw-JK_Si42sCRbw2h6A_tyMQlb1ydsofrYD13E17CYyDpKgNGDdxVkqQoSFNbpoCnz1aXqQtQ52JcsWZlL8MuU/s1600-h/blue+clearie.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 175px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja0Sd9apqfz6rE1gyO1eS9CXnnuccvBSONhCtfnQpSMHyrsiIMPByY0mPw-JK_Si42sCRbw2h6A_tyMQlb1ydsofrYD13E17CYyDpKgNGDdxVkqQoSFNbpoCnz1aXqQtQ52JcsWZlL8MuU/s320/blue+clearie.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166785506013743506" border="0" /></a>Then there were the rare coloured clearies, pure glass marble with a coloured tinge to them. Their value was indeterminate and very much dictated by their beauty and if people were game to shoot for them. A coloured clearie would normally start at five steps but this could blow out if it was particularly rare or beautiful. However, it was a brave person that would put these up for action - normally they were stowed in the bottom of our bags and bought out for class admiration when we were lining up to return to class.
When it was a “slow” day at marbles there were other shenanigans for us to get up to. One day Brendon asked me to stand back to back with him to see which of us was taller. As soon as we did so he reached behind him and whipped down my school shorts to around my ankles, much to my mortification.
Once my dignity was restored I decided this was an excellent trick and cajoled Robert Goldie into the same position with me to determine the taller. But as I grabbed his shorts I also managed to take hold of his underpants (under rods as we called them) and bought down the whole castle.
Robert was exceedingly angry at this trick, though thankfully he’d been facing the school oval at the time (rather than the mob in the marble patch) so his modesty was largely retained.
The marble craze continued when I transferred schools to Whitestone Primary. Initially we were assigned a rectangular patch of dirt close to the bike sheds that was reminiscent of our Henry Low arena. However, several acts of vandalism on the bikes wore patience thin and the din of people yelling out their wares soon became too much for the boarding mistresses who were nearby serving morning tea to the Boarders.
My foghorn voice was particularly unpopular and there was one old dragon who was always beseeching me to move to the other side of the dirt square, as far as possible from her. I repaid her in gold coin in Grade Seven when I was handed the part of a dragon in the school play and could careen through the middle of the audience yelling and growling at the top of my voice. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCIqkQe3WZZoOYxrHj6kDCw3gZlXib-QO-gzNAq-1COkqrDJO5YJksd0J90vIG00K1hyphenhyphenY0_fLRvw4tfueieJDOa2ZkghFbdJOWj_XGYaZT4kMOP5JHmHkHbz8DqzcBGSqG8BBEV3NWIWa/s1600-h/plays.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlCIqkQe3WZZoOYxrHj6kDCw3gZlXib-QO-gzNAq-1COkqrDJO5YJksd0J90vIG00K1hyphenhyphenY0_fLRvw4tfueieJDOa2ZkghFbdJOWj_XGYaZT4kMOP5JHmHkHbz8DqzcBGSqG8BBEV3NWIWa/s320/plays.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166786115899099554" border="0" /></a>Poor old lady, she was lucky to still be alive after this effort. ---->
Eventually it was decided that our marble play must be moved and we were shifted to a little grove of trees and granite blocks close to the school Dining Room. This area lacked the clean lines of the rectangular square but it introduced an extra dimension of difficulty and skill because there were a number of large rocks in play from which we could bounce marbles off and onto the targets.
It also meant we were directly outside of the windows of the feared Grade Three teacher Mrs McIntosh (wife of a future Springbok coach). She would keep a beady eye on us and if trouble was brewing would step outside her classroom brandishing her feared “tackie”, a flexible and cheap Bata running shoe that stung like a hornet, beady eyes fixed with intent on arguing children.
Despite the ever-present threat of Mrs McIntosh passions would still run high. There was another time one of my classmates (Fuji Flop) became particularly animated in a dispute and told his antagonist to “piss off” just as our sadist Headmaster, Mr Harris, hove into view. That little indiscretion cost him three cuts (and Harris would quite literally make us bleed).
Passion, skill and street cunning. It took it all to survive the playground marble patch.
<span style="font-style: italic;">A very special thanks to my eldest son, 8 year old Joseph, who willingly allowed me to raid his own precious marble bag for the photos above. </span>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-77572673265163234092008-02-14T15:56:00.002+11:002008-02-14T16:11:53.398+11:00The world's stolen generationThis is not a critique of the apology to the Stolen Generation. It was long overdue and it is to John Howard's ongoing shame that he was too small-minded to do it years ago.
But one of my Australian friends expressed some angst at, and I quote:
"<em>when he sought to validate aboriginal culture by comparing their '1000 generations' of habitation in Australia with other Aussies as those who arrived 'only yesterday'. An unnecessary and distorting over-simplification. My ancestors included several 'stolen generations' who were exiled from England to Australia with little prospect of return for 'crimes' like stealing a loaf of bread or a pair of boots to survive the winter. Five or six generations later, if this land is not my home, where is</em>?"
His distaste at being considered "yesterday's arrival" hit a nerve for me as being a second generation born and bred African I feel very much that African soil is my homeland but that we (Zimbabweans/Rhodesians) were dispossessed by the British and Australian (aka Commonwealth) policies of the 1960s and 1970s that handed power to the megalomaniac Mugabe in a rigged election in 1980. Perhaps we were too polite. Perhaps the history of southern Africa would have looked very different if the colonial invaders had followed the Australian lead and committed genocide on the indigenous population to subjugate them.
Instead we did our business by contract that was eventually over ruled by the political expediency of the po-faced Windsors and their cohorts in London, Canberra and elsewhere. It is particularly galling that the very thing we fought against has now happened, as we said it would. Many good friends of mine (both black and white) shed blood and were killed in the fight against the Eastern-bloc sponsored insurgents.
Now people who were raised as brothers to me are dead because of Zimbabwe’s AIDS pandemic.
And while there is some little bit of hand-wringing about the Mugabe situation there is no real political will to actually go and redress the wrongs.
Where are all the pompous, self-righteous, but very ignorant bleeding hearts who persisted on the downfall of Rhodesia in 1980 to apologise to the many millions of refugees from that once very prosperous country who have had to "bomb-shell" all over the world but still love and hanker after a home-land that is no more?So as one of the very many educated Diaspora of Rhodesians/Zimbabweans I have a high level of empathy for what it must have meant to the aborigines to receive official recognition of the wrongs and injustices of the past (and the present).
We Zimbabweans are similarly dispossessed, but worse our land has been handed to rack and ruin and seemingly no one but us cares.
I won’t be expecting a similar apology to that received by the stolen generation in my lifetime and it makes me sad and angry at the same time.
We, the Zimbabwean Diaspora, are the world's stolen generation, and the Western world will not do anything about it because they can't afford to lose us.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-41678761863314078382008-01-17T22:01:00.001+11:002008-01-17T22:50:37.129+11:001980Our transition to Standard Two meant a short trip up the corridor to our new classroom at the other end of the northern block of Henry Low. I get the impression that the majority of my classmates were relieved to be free of the dragon-like clutches of Mrs Mcaninch, particularly as my memory of our Standard Two teacher is that she was of a far more benign nature!
Mrs Hounsell was a tall, willowy brunette, significantly younger than our teachers to that point and not given to raising her voice, though this is not to say that our academic rigour fell away at all during the year.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVEwAGreMkTctO4FCqH9x-MVx4499DY8DkhhHOg5-zCCY6V2hyGSB6QKqvOZPBcv9XDFgLk431JrJnaHCsWLXQ0p628o7g9IdI3ekiPeKywezr6MtL49sVTVju5q2ERTfDD9mwaqYTEvJ/s1600-h/tester.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVEwAGreMkTctO4FCqH9x-MVx4499DY8DkhhHOg5-zCCY6V2hyGSB6QKqvOZPBcv9XDFgLk431JrJnaHCsWLXQ0p628o7g9IdI3ekiPeKywezr6MtL49sVTVju5q2ERTfDD9mwaqYTEvJ/s320/tester.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156399434949844386" border="0" /></a>One of the landmarks of the year was that it signalled our transition from writing in pencil to writing in biro pen. However, this milestone could not be reached without a good demonstration of our commitment to neatness. Thus one could only transition to ink pen when consistent excellence was displayed.
Mrs Hounsell was the keeper of five "I am a tester" ink license badges which were given out to the first five students that achieved the standards required. These badges were pinned to the uniform of the five and they were then given input into the transition to ink of the rest of their peers. At the end of the year these badges were returned but somewhere in the system there must have been a sixth badge.
I know this because I was the recipient of the sixth badge, a soiled version of the others, and was allowed to keep it at year's end.
My recollection was that the first five badges were divvied out to five of the girls in the class and no doubt my budding activist instincts sensed an injustice and a comment had been made.
I do remember working very hard to get that license (goals were always a great motivator of mine) and it was presented to me late on a Friday afternoon. The weekend took an age to tick by as I couldn't wait to get to school on the Monday morning to proudly display the spoils of all that painstaking handwriting.
Another campaign of mine that year was a silkworm drive. Our yard had two gigantic mulberry trees that would be laden with fruit each spring. Many afternoons were spent lazing along a large horizontal branch, plucking jet black mulberries from above and feeding away till it was too dark to identify the ripe and unripe fruit. It would also result in a good scrubbing that evening, black stains proliferating all over my skin, particularly on the hands and mouth.
The leaves of the tree were also a constant supply for a burgeoning silkworm farm that we kept in our laundry. When the word went out that the school needed some fund-raising done I took it upon myself to bring the silkworms into school and to set up a trade in silkworms, cocoons, moths and even mulberry leaves.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzGoIRBBy0yLPZOjYsMeyiE2eT6KxvYCG_1znntYLyxtmYXvj70jmSpByzZrlwXlF9oP02Itu5_WBGO_mN5rBdxJuD9Eyx6dvnyq2W_niFVQ1L_Trgwsa3Wu6P1Nt8_CoAttAmGOyuBn3u/s1600-h/sw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 281px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzGoIRBBy0yLPZOjYsMeyiE2eT6KxvYCG_1znntYLyxtmYXvj70jmSpByzZrlwXlF9oP02Itu5_WBGO_mN5rBdxJuD9Eyx6dvnyq2W_niFVQ1L_Trgwsa3Wu6P1Nt8_CoAttAmGOyuBn3u/s320/sw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156399881626443186" border="0" /></a>Soon it must have seemed as though every Henry Low household was inundated with shoeboxes of worms munching their way through mulberry leaves and anxious children watching bright cocoons for signs of life.
By the end of my first foray into commerce $23 had been raised and I was the proud recipient of a "silkworm king" certificate from the school assembly.
School assembly was held each week and we'd file into the hall in our class groups and sit on the floor facing the elevated stage. The walls of the hall were adorned with large boards that listed prefects, head boys and girls and recipients of colours.
The Kindergarten kids were always at the front of the hall and were followed by each subsequent year with the Standard Fives at the back. We would always hope for assembly to be a quick affair as we were forced to sit cross-legged on the hardwood floors, our ankles digging into the tiles and legs becoming increasingly numb from lack of circulation.
Sometimes we'd stay on in the hall after assembly for "singing". These singing lessons always featured a flamboyant Mrs Pierce banging away on a piano. The most requested song, and the one that always received the most rousing rendition, was "we all live in a yellow submarine". I didn't like singing time.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicuNxh6KLVk5Za3pnziz1C1CZIyCPOSMrpl3jkNx4G_zn_Wl7KJHD1DtchLBzD80hTbDH_VyYo0409dOijHeH0yD2BIVLBWIMPZknTmPt6aeDdFIOrITBWlD0MN5Tal1IaECaBEIJ-kWmk/s1600-h/hl+quad.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 151px; height: 114px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicuNxh6KLVk5Za3pnziz1C1CZIyCPOSMrpl3jkNx4G_zn_Wl7KJHD1DtchLBzD80hTbDH_VyYo0409dOijHeH0yD2BIVLBWIMPZknTmPt6aeDdFIOrITBWlD0MN5Tal1IaECaBEIJ-kWmk/s320/hl+quad.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156401397749898706" border="0" /></a>1980 marked the twenty-fifth year of Henry Low's existence and this milestone was marked with a major Fete one Saturday afternoon. The quadrangle between the school buildings was a maze of various displays and games and my memory of the day was of a long afternoon of various delights, the highlights being:
<ul><li>Guess the number of sweeties in a jar</li><li>Guess the number of "landmines" buried in a sand pit atop a table (!)</li><li>A dunking machine that the teachers bravely ventured into whilst we pelted a target with tennis balls in the hope of upending them</li><li>An egg-throwing competition on the top oval that kept us enthralled for hours as people attempted to catch eggs in a baseball mitt and, if unsuccessful, were splattered with bright orange yolk.</li></ul>
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO8mhj7RhLT8Rw0Cy49JQfq5kQelS7uWB7xut4J_7H4ThaRdqU8zhofbvnSCCXdYJMatDXIlepMYVU1pKvVcevERnqMLhGilaqcQ52ekYhdCaSL9cvvoYPAbmnu0NXGHE4mxm9IW8fzw08/s1600-h/hl+mug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 203px; height: 152px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO8mhj7RhLT8Rw0Cy49JQfq5kQelS7uWB7xut4J_7H4ThaRdqU8zhofbvnSCCXdYJMatDXIlepMYVU1pKvVcevERnqMLhGilaqcQ52ekYhdCaSL9cvvoYPAbmnu0NXGHE4mxm9IW8fzw08/s320/hl+mug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156400362662780354" border="0" /></a>However, the defining memory of the year occurred one Friday afternoon when Mrs Hounsell and a student teacher of the time announced to us that we would be receiving "very exciting news" on the Monday morning. Another long weekend followed until we filed into class that morning to be told that our day's task would be making passports for a "world trip" that we would be taking as a class.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYHndNFzoxi5PqIFbU0ST9ULiZUOMFzrupWYRmECTRVeZvmod27qRWq-nZu4scxHOkMTFAecH3D5hFnZI-N2v-j79zVgD7gFZN75ORem4cey_ntymZj7h6-2squss0zA4kDwb-FQhJo6f/s1600-h/world+tripb+002.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQYHndNFzoxi5PqIFbU0ST9ULiZUOMFzrupWYRmECTRVeZvmod27qRWq-nZu4scxHOkMTFAecH3D5hFnZI-N2v-j79zVgD7gFZN75ORem4cey_ntymZj7h6-2squss0zA4kDwb-FQhJo6f/s320/world+tripb+002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156401994750352866" border="0" /></a>This was not a real trip, but would be one where as a class we would "travel" to various locations around the world and learn about the different cultures we were to encounter. It seemed that for the majority of the year our learning was all interwoven around this theme of being somewhere in the world.
Some of the highlights of our journey included craning our necks to look at the skyscrapers in New York and paying a stratospheric $100 to stay the night in the "five star New York Hilton" hotel. Truly, paying $100 for a night's accommodation was the ultimate extravagance, especially as we all had colour TVs in our room.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY6bgJLVs55awI5hyphenhyphenZijzjQSYdreSPTSQcIxqsbWiJM2Eukbl2vYzXWpfksLWqAL14sMMMylMBon-oJWh6fjsYP-Dyd_x8Bqhs4ftYaI31NWM0Kd9wFOYoS3xyrO2OFjv10K32yUnvGv-H/s1600-h/world+tripb+001.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY6bgJLVs55awI5hyphenhyphenZijzjQSYdreSPTSQcIxqsbWiJM2Eukbl2vYzXWpfksLWqAL14sMMMylMBon-oJWh6fjsYP-Dyd_x8Bqhs4ftYaI31NWM0Kd9wFOYoS3xyrO2OFjv10K32yUnvGv-H/s320/world+tripb+001.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156402295398063602" border="0" /></a>Our travels also took us through Australia and our student teacher had recently been to Australia and spoke of a strange brand of rugby played called Australian Rules. She described it as rough with lots of kicking and catching. These days I know it as “aerial ping-pong”, a scrambling monstrosity that has somehow become a religion in four of Australia’s mainland states. Must be a convict thing.
It was at about this time that we all received a pen pal from Australia and we traded several letters over the course of the year. The letters would come to us in a big package and we'd all compare notes about what these strange children from Australia had said.
We found it highly amusing that they immediately assumed we lived in mud huts and asked if we had basic amenities like power and stoves. I know at least some of our classmates were guilty of perpetuating the myths by telling tall tales of pet lions and wrestling with snakes.
Actually, I did indeed have a pet lion! As we grew up we had very little daytime television (which meant we amused ourselves with constructive and imaginative outdoor games when we weren't participating in the school sport program) but for a while the evening's transmissions started with a locally produced children's show called "Thumbelina". At one point the show held a competition to name a young lioness that had just been born into the pride in Salisbury's Lion and Cheetah Park.
<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjBuWsIUXNY1EZfPNbrlhxe1Dx2y11mhsqodyadV1sK05gE5NHB02y8X8_y-np04Q5Gnud8GScbq5elobGLMr74JUYJhv-SVEqzqEGrnwBYhLD4lxJR7JVJOD_Amt_B3E9fyCgjpLTqSn/s1600-h/world+tripb+003.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 315px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjBuWsIUXNY1EZfPNbrlhxe1Dx2y11mhsqodyadV1sK05gE5NHB02y8X8_y-np04Q5Gnud8GScbq5elobGLMr74JUYJhv-SVEqzqEGrnwBYhLD4lxJR7JVJOD_Amt_B3E9fyCgjpLTqSn/s320/world+tripb+003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156402578865905154" border="0" /></a>Mum came up with the brilliant idea of naming the lioness Shumbalina and it turned out that the cub's father was named Shumba, a trained lion who starred in the "Born Free" film. So the competition and the lion was mine - not that we were able to keep her, as much as I wanted to. She lived happily at the Lion and Cheetah Park but we visited and met her and her family. She was a very energetic lioness!
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Our trip around the world resulted in many letters being written to friends and family from various locations around the globe and concluded with a giant Open Day where we all built displays covering various aspects of the American culture we'd encountered and invited our parents to visit the classroom to view the fruits of our endeavour.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8HAGBTCZ6-DN9f10fzodf69wqByiofWB8n9tr_RcP6ToeDeW1SgpFK-OWhzFVraVwo4cLFgq_eZWnA3zaR2Q3eAw85Xm-r7qKQHRpLcND5b_sni8FZHEllis0G4ynNIWb3zzZzru0Bsbd/s1600-h/world+tripb.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 367px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8HAGBTCZ6-DN9f10fzodf69wqByiofWB8n9tr_RcP6ToeDeW1SgpFK-OWhzFVraVwo4cLFgq_eZWnA3zaR2Q3eAw85Xm-r7qKQHRpLcND5b_sni8FZHEllis0G4ynNIWb3zzZzru0Bsbd/s320/world+tripb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156403227405966866" border="0" /></a>I teamed up with a boy called Brian Wilson to make a display on the American Indians. We constructed a teepee and somehow we sourced a giant American headdress replete with eagle feathers. We padded out our display with a host of local carvings and drawings doctored to make them look Indian.
Politically 1980 was a very significant year for our country. A ceasefire was called on the civil war and elections were held on a "one man, one vote" basis. Our city started to crawl with United Nations Peace Keepers with their vehicles painted with white crosses and the kill count on the radio started to document the number of peacekeepers slain in misadventures such as helicopters crashing into powerlines or naïve tourists being feasted on by wild animals. It seemed more people were dying than ever!
Even as a nine-year old it was hard to miss the sense of foreboding that overcame society as the elections drew closer. It was widely hoped that the elections would endorse the ruling structure of Bishop Abel Muzorewa's African National Congress (ANC) but there were dark mutterings about vote rigging to get one of the Zimbabwe African National Unity (ZANU PF) or Zimbabwe African Peoples' Unity (ZAPU PF) over the line.
The majority of our fathers were on call up but rather than seeing action they were sitting bored in camps monitored by the Peacekeepers, all the while knowing that many of their former enemies from the ZANLA and ZIPRA armies were free to roam about the rural countryside intimidating the local population into voting against the ANC.
After the election they spoke of the plot that had been hatched to take up arms and slaughter the UN Peace Keepers in the event of a ZANU PF victory. It seemed there had been a strong intention to maintain the fight by upping the ante and slaughtering the UN Peace Keepers drawn from Britain, Australia and various other Commonwealth countries.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Postscript: </span><span style="font-style: italic;">My Dad now says they had some of the insurgents in “keeps” and that th</span><span style="font-style: italic;">is is what "our" guys were there for. The whole week before the announcement of the election result our guys had been training at Brigade strength with the intention of going in and taking out the "keeps" and the U.N. monitoring force, which in his case he says were a bunch of</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Poms.</span>
Our consciousness suddenly became aware of the once exiled leaders of these parties, Robert Mugabe (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo (ZAPU). A few years previously Nkomo had received some infamy after the Rhodesian forces had attacked his house in the Zambian capital Lusaka. He'd escaped certain death by climbing out of his small toilet window, a visual picture that had attracted much mirth as Mr Nkomo had a rather large frame.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqTa9Y9bDNIPsCo0mNtd4dcDJvas4Eh1EJS5F1xw06pBYDHAaLAnoAMjVBC_V6oTt9_HbwFh2ewQ7JIJ9T_j2VZNNFy4eVCsU47Vx6C1u4MFagtlXxv1vsOj9WQnuOyVIkdNL0_1HP0kB/s1600-h/lipless+african.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqTa9Y9bDNIPsCo0mNtd4dcDJvas4Eh1EJS5F1xw06pBYDHAaLAnoAMjVBC_V6oTt9_HbwFh2ewQ7JIJ9T_j2VZNNFy4eVCsU47Vx6C1u4MFagtlXxv1vsOj9WQnuOyVIkdNL0_1HP0kB/s320/lipless+african.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156408651949661730" border="0" /></a>Our sense of foreboding at the impending elections were heightened by our knowledge of what the fighting men of ZANLA and ZIPRA were capable of. Going around was a large hardback book that had graphic pictures of various massacres and atrocities committed by the invading armies. It began with the slaughter of nuns in the north of the country and then graphically catalogued ten years of horrific bloodshed and violence.
Page after page would be turned by young fingers to reveal piles of nuns casually thrown in piles with flies buzzing around the pooled blood, torched buildings, massacred villages and most horrifically victims that had had their lips and ears sliced off with razorblades after being fingered as informers. They were called "sell outs" This was not a pretty war.
The elections occurred over two days and long lines of people queued to put their cross next to the party of their choice, represented by symbols to help the illiterate choose correctly. ANC were a flame in a fist, ZANU, representing the majority Shona tribe, were a rooster (the jongwe) and ZAPU, representing the minority but previously dominant Matabele tribe, were an elephant (ndlovu).
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/photogalleries/zimbabwe-elex2005/images/01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.cbc.ca/news/photogalleries/zimbabwe-elex2005/images/01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Prior to voting the voter was required to receive a mark on their hand of ink that would indicate they had voted. This caused a problem when the traditional African greeting of a vigorous African handshake saw the ink transferred to those waiting to vote and chaos ensued.
With known rural intimidation and the chaos that arose from the ink debacle, the election closed in high farce and the country awaited the verdict. I still remember the widespread sense of shock when it was announced that Robert Mugabe's ZANU had won in a landslide, a strong second was ZAPU while Muzorewa's ANC garnered a pathetic three seats in the newly convened Parliament.
Ian Smith's Patriotic Front party swept the seats specifically set aside for the white population in the Lancaster House agreement, but Zimbabwe had a new government and internationally endorsed independence.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/photogalleries/zimbabwe-elex2005/images/01a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.cbc.ca/news/photogalleries/zimbabwe-elex2005/images/01a.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>I vividly remember the day of the announcement. A pall rested over the school, and even us nine year olds were apprehensive about what all this meant. Would the new government be vindictive? Would we have to flee, or would we be slaughtered before we could get to Beit Bridge? What did the future hold?
That day we'd been asked to bring something to school that was "disgusting" (I don't think it was meant as a comment on the political situation or our state of mind). I'm not sure what the purpose of the exercise was, but I do remember our class trooping over to the Hall with our varying disgusting items and a group of us boys were discussing the momentous news of the day - the downfall of life as we know it.
And in the middle of that discussion Russell Smart procured his jam jar that had a festering blob of blackening meat inside, whipped of the lid and thrust the putrid contents under our noses. "This piece of meat is Robert Mugabe" he said as we all recoiled. For some reason this act of defiance is what will always stick in my mind as the defining comment on the day and the prevailing mood.
In reality, for us at least, life didn't change a great deal in the short term. I have read with interest the books written by my peers who were growing up in Harare and Mutare and their sense of immediate change as "black" children immediately flooded into the schools that had previously denied them entrance.
I don't recall this happening to us, my recollection being that our class didn't change in 1980 and the first few African children started to trickle in timidly the following year.
One thing that did change with international recognition of the new Zimbabwe's status was that we were readmitted into the sporting fold and a Zimbabwe team was hastily scratched together for the impending Moscow Olympics. The Moscow Olympics were to be widely boycotted by the majority of Western powers and became known as the "Red" games, dominated by the Russians, Baltic States and Chinese.
There was a certain irony in all of this as the Western nations expressed their outrage at the communist invasion of Afghanistan. The invading ZANLA and ZIPRA armies had been funded by China and Russia respectively and red money was suddenly pouring into Zimbabwe as they came looking for their payback with interest. There were a lot of enticing things to exploit in this newly open country.
Our headmaster's daughter, Brenda Phillips, was a member of the Zimbabwe hockey team and they marched through the games weakened without the traditional heavyweights of world hockey. Zimbabwe's first medal in Olympic competition was guaranteed when they won their final round robin game against Austria.
This final game must have been played early afternoon Moscow time as we were all in school when it was played out. I presume Mr Phillips (headmaster) had either a broadcast of the game on his wireless or was in receipt of updates by telex as we all sat expectantly for news in our classrooms and received periodic updates from runners coming down to us from the Head's office.
We erupted in joy when the final whistle blew and Zimbabwe had won its first gold medal in Olympic competition. A few weeks later Brenda came to our school with her precious gold medal and visited each classroom while we crowded around her and took our opportunity to touch the precious metal.
A closing piece of trivia is that the previously mentioned "Silkworm Certificate" was adorned with beautiful calligraphy inscribed by Brenda Phillips'. Now she was a gold medallist in the "new Zimbabwe".
We were about to hit double figures.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-14421063507040053252007-11-24T12:27:00.000+11:002007-11-24T13:14:05.282+11:00Centenary ParkGrowing 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.
<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NII6nmT897Pet0QOflxrX00oG6KfEhAbjA04cc4I3ZACisKBD2AW7_-ZjJaJmEucQx4tp33YkV4oOxDdAX5FYatK_zGgFmyTIkqvvfnOP1G376cpbQlnCkFJMFs1MTKHxuHJoAkcr8o4/s1600-h/selbourne2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 345px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NII6nmT897Pet0QOflxrX00oG6KfEhAbjA04cc4I3ZACisKBD2AW7_-ZjJaJmEucQx4tp33YkV4oOxDdAX5FYatK_zGgFmyTIkqvvfnOP1G376cpbQlnCkFJMFs1MTKHxuHJoAkcr8o4/s320/selbourne2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136218017384791794" border="0" /></a>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.
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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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghA7UTe1D66RzoBZu-Cl1JUjn1_9Ec40uQoQsGLLf_F1DpNWmIORJT_FaOwTIYbioupjPMlKi33IcQspyTRj5EVl3S7pZpyHUva1rkdsZK9w1tPd1bApEA4BBZaGarRTNz4moKRYXZQJ3x/s1600-h/jacaranda.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 186px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghA7UTe1D66RzoBZu-Cl1JUjn1_9Ec40uQoQsGLLf_F1DpNWmIORJT_FaOwTIYbioupjPMlKi33IcQspyTRj5EVl3S7pZpyHUva1rkdsZK9w1tPd1bApEA4BBZaGarRTNz4moKRYXZQJ3x/s320/jacaranda.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136214203453832818" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-2w979MUR0wgkMK702NCz6GEs6-kybuJHsOWN9ek1DMLmxuIZUwtpz4WV6BY9RmOjnYe91FtwJ10rxYg7P2XhgcSyyOBCJrlkb9UW2ZJKIl-1ii_oruHDk-POMq454VoMB8NJBWMmFU0-/s1600-h/Fountain+overhead.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-2w979MUR0wgkMK702NCz6GEs6-kybuJHsOWN9ek1DMLmxuIZUwtpz4WV6BY9RmOjnYe91FtwJ10rxYg7P2XhgcSyyOBCJrlkb9UW2ZJKIl-1ii_oruHDk-POMq454VoMB8NJBWMmFU0-/s320/Fountain+overhead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136217373139697362" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiBEITOlSLrEzY2NoxT8qfC0GfTX-yZKTisiPwoRwyUWu0U9r3Gt35859WhzqTF_zavf3PpWImXovvfUc_ipbfkmUSkTMmIKfJ0t1E4scoMzvge2ZjPkE_ip6w5ygRMS2k8yqAo6Kp62Kx/s1600-h/fountain1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiBEITOlSLrEzY2NoxT8qfC0GfTX-yZKTisiPwoRwyUWu0U9r3Gt35859WhzqTF_zavf3PpWImXovvfUc_ipbfkmUSkTMmIKfJ0t1E4scoMzvge2ZjPkE_ip6w5ygRMS2k8yqAo6Kp62Kx/s320/fountain1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136215045267422850" border="0" /></a>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.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh5zoAzwZwstYAgHBZkcV0Ybvev_pa4355fgxoflQgKtPOTpGbs7WC3_jSEa9xjv2TJxwXrpr0vsY_simhyE7RzmnutgNvASneOU_mD1uEJqufalnaRTIRhtz_RsCEyabluBJdZsw0wr6K/s1600-h/bulawayo-coat-arms.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh5zoAzwZwstYAgHBZkcV0Ybvev_pa4355fgxoflQgKtPOTpGbs7WC3_jSEa9xjv2TJxwXrpr0vsY_simhyE7RzmnutgNvASneOU_mD1uEJqufalnaRTIRhtz_RsCEyabluBJdZsw0wr6K/s320/bulawayo-coat-arms.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136215320145329810" border="0" /></a>
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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLirEt8UIt3GUCGTi6fyL0iuFWq0MZ1dg_bj6O_YfiSG5vGrN90mbQRIQiiL_m3ivyHsvJqW9bxngft9FevBgcdVL-KR-fdEcjAfctlGti8aJpVNfUEVgNGIPdgKK0QthCX5iQuMccsyG/s1600-h/ice+cream.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLirEt8UIt3GUCGTi6fyL0iuFWq0MZ1dg_bj6O_YfiSG5vGrN90mbQRIQiiL_m3ivyHsvJqW9bxngft9FevBgcdVL-KR-fdEcjAfctlGti8aJpVNfUEVgNGIPdgKK0QthCX5iQuMccsyG/s320/ice+cream.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136215831246438050" border="0" /></a>
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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjla_DQbkOlL28n4gwCol1Cbvrohn-TYjjOTD-JnnJrk90Di8d4xBg0pGJEKH0OQlWfwoznbw9fXchoHwL1W7MJXpQptiZGkp-vySl75Tg-opUEUcu69fFXtHN66l2ariLHG2Yp_ByiqkXR/s1600-h/centenary+park.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjla_DQbkOlL28n4gwCol1Cbvrohn-TYjjOTD-JnnJrk90Di8d4xBg0pGJEKH0OQlWfwoznbw9fXchoHwL1W7MJXpQptiZGkp-vySl75Tg-opUEUcu69fFXtHN66l2ariLHG2Yp_ByiqkXR/s320/centenary+park.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136217613657865954" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMg59xDrDoL3M2uATzh2suJl5X-QjEpBk-VSu_No8gWrArcLIFGp8FPh22KJ9cbpegNijBioYb2KPqPg94V884UsfsXGAbutenjmQGRY6QuTqTf2gav840d-d3oLyrLtlCGPOGD40zqGj4/s1600-h/Train.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 321px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMg59xDrDoL3M2uATzh2suJl5X-QjEpBk-VSu_No8gWrArcLIFGp8FPh22KJ9cbpegNijBioYb2KPqPg94V884UsfsXGAbutenjmQGRY6QuTqTf2gav840d-d3oLyrLtlCGPOGD40zqGj4/s320/Train.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136216496966368962" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfF9JYvF2d7wqy1X5O8CaDszFUbsNziEDG6ZPWpSiPap-zhgZMCg2diW7yP7ij7qKdOSTF67PzIHV6vu6RXDM8PZUUk-5YQuwKdix7_WsS3nUPwVf-yvc6zXrbOznNurCPbAvFB_pPHGHm/s1600-h/centenary-park.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfF9JYvF2d7wqy1X5O8CaDszFUbsNziEDG6ZPWpSiPap-zhgZMCg2diW7yP7ij7qKdOSTF67PzIHV6vu6RXDM8PZUUk-5YQuwKdix7_WsS3nUPwVf-yvc6zXrbOznNurCPbAvFB_pPHGHm/s320/centenary-park.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136216140484083378" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpdaIdbKGpk92HW-xiw-G6b5ba7bRRIipfAUZLco9QqYDbNt_OFi7l2spXA1tT4YOvg8dCPW0LwZ53feoAZAgfzh6fzP59P2gNI17_oo0D_Fqbs2vBTR6WeuEtn7tLnVOUmPHCcWKLt0C/s1600-h/DSC_48480733.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpdaIdbKGpk92HW-xiw-G6b5ba7bRRIipfAUZLco9QqYDbNt_OFi7l2spXA1tT4YOvg8dCPW0LwZ53feoAZAgfzh6fzP59P2gNI17_oo0D_Fqbs2vBTR6WeuEtn7tLnVOUmPHCcWKLt0C/s320/DSC_48480733.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136218837723545346" border="0" /></a>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!Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-1617232407419982292007-11-12T19:57:00.000+11:002007-11-13T11:25:42.545+11:001979 Part IIThe 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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjvlSMf2F7olEsfi3Xnln5WFG4NApEAxj7eFROHFPHCxr9RpU8ZzLrwlIaMiaPpqsLNrcWapcLdP7ze7KoHghiOzV9aYV11J5Xj0d5DoVvncTq07whBPm7quTtPfHQ-DJu6OBz-E0dnuv/s1600-h/PtShepHol.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131876696328740626" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjvlSMf2F7olEsfi3Xnln5WFG4NApEAxj7eFROHFPHCxr9RpU8ZzLrwlIaMiaPpqsLNrcWapcLdP7ze7KoHghiOzV9aYV11J5Xj0d5DoVvncTq07whBPm7quTtPfHQ-DJu6OBz-E0dnuv/s320/PtShepHol.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRE5dy4QeU_rAoZWxUiiWlaHl-F5nIzRa7akqRKxf5OEt-aknfTtWqRO4zG2Q8zAbS13ILh3nbcwCNdwHkbO8t4Wp8ZGezuGaHNSEds_TA9E4qJJPqqHDZafIdxbZS-D_1vWjuKAJ_lOXi/s1600-h/ACG1979.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131877782955466530" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRE5dy4QeU_rAoZWxUiiWlaHl-F5nIzRa7akqRKxf5OEt-aknfTtWqRO4zG2Q8zAbS13ILh3nbcwCNdwHkbO8t4Wp8ZGezuGaHNSEds_TA9E4qJJPqqHDZafIdxbZS-D_1vWjuKAJ_lOXi/s320/ACG1979.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1tXvlku1WhTKfoLm2KISwmgVYonYZG2Wazt-7Q-yS8d5_t5rPU5M9nIURBFMJ62gS7QJIa1kUFy8C0GOjIcYQz_9-exEEL6KN5dl4yBkWVk5iutnUiAwHoJIhUsKD7KJabubQ_sBPkO4v/s1600-h/HL+1st+XV.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131878036358537010" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1tXvlku1WhTKfoLm2KISwmgVYonYZG2Wazt-7Q-yS8d5_t5rPU5M9nIURBFMJ62gS7QJIa1kUFy8C0GOjIcYQz_9-exEEL6KN5dl4yBkWVk5iutnUiAwHoJIhUsKD7KJabubQ_sBPkO4v/s320/HL+1st+XV.JPG" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpeurk3ohQNjrlQ5WwzdoXJQqzi91a3XfE2K7BeXI7CuAPfhjrMQ1oNZ1i5a_TbMzLKVdxbLcL8sW_pTDsSTFWYb-_qRUskGi6LkVAVRAecWs5Q-4n1YxnAsZ-iXU3aT_YXUQreHIQvGi/s1600-h/ACG1979a.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131878581819383618" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpeurk3ohQNjrlQ5WwzdoXJQqzi91a3XfE2K7BeXI7CuAPfhjrMQ1oNZ1i5a_TbMzLKVdxbLcL8sW_pTDsSTFWYb-_qRUskGi6LkVAVRAecWs5Q-4n1YxnAsZ-iXU3aT_YXUQreHIQvGi/s320/ACG1979a.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRooeENUkoF5_utpnsQMgqSLSxIiwvgEpNfA7K_M2tsgzgZi2hxETi3vLysfaQ6wi3DvQEOThdG9nd-JgzmJtcBRtolQ1RAanTJA09c69XuHBKMNUE8BANw7ZIVpBXnJVrchE2Rjn-Mmg/s1600-h/HL+sports.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131878878172127058" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRooeENUkoF5_utpnsQMgqSLSxIiwvgEpNfA7K_M2tsgzgZi2hxETi3vLysfaQ6wi3DvQEOThdG9nd-JgzmJtcBRtolQ1RAanTJA09c69XuHBKMNUE8BANw7ZIVpBXnJVrchE2Rjn-Mmg/s320/HL+sports.JPG" border="0" /></a>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.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-52810260949640206562007-11-06T20:15:00.000+11:002007-11-09T13:01:45.004+11:001979 Part IEntry 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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3_nbn6VqU5Y5Y59huYjklop_w7o3dnvMtk_neInonjv7tDfnoeIn7JfkDlo-vwhjnBn3Lujl1qrosz-rOcPJVH9yD00l2mnf5XgNYg1AMC8X5PPuHbMG_5FoD9bHGOTjbB72FRJFmSNuG/s1600-h/teachers.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129654250010424802" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3_nbn6VqU5Y5Y59huYjklop_w7o3dnvMtk_neInonjv7tDfnoeIn7JfkDlo-vwhjnBn3Lujl1qrosz-rOcPJVH9yD00l2mnf5XgNYg1AMC8X5PPuHbMG_5FoD9bHGOTjbB72FRJFmSNuG/s320/teachers.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLyOnLz6Xq9WCawO5Q_YfjOnRYU6KgcdblhQxTYPxgzshe6HPVp2BtjM25BjnYMpCetmX6DyM_fppB7VDcZgtdgUbMqTH-okVlkiFU9NRtzWJLaRugWtI_QBY3vBsOHrSSsotzIHqDnMn-/s1600-h/anne+hoffman.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129660864260060690" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLyOnLz6Xq9WCawO5Q_YfjOnRYU6KgcdblhQxTYPxgzshe6HPVp2BtjM25BjnYMpCetmX6DyM_fppB7VDcZgtdgUbMqTH-okVlkiFU9NRtzWJLaRugWtI_QBY3vBsOHrSSsotzIHqDnMn-/s320/anne+hoffman.JPG" border="0" /></a>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).
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQY0kemL8oq0I9700BEua4Xv6sBp24xikEBlNBhhEzA26uGieW_9vwlHU05MmMQ6sJqNe3z-2urSNShjsSFNAgh8BN0c7KtDpj4CN8-x4beVrhu7s58MloLKZLxg3u7HkQE6NCAY13f-Pj/s1600-h/robert.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129661109073196578" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 276px; cursor: pointer; height: 196px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQY0kemL8oq0I9700BEua4Xv6sBp24xikEBlNBhhEzA26uGieW_9vwlHU05MmMQ6sJqNe3z-2urSNShjsSFNAgh8BN0c7KtDpj4CN8-x4beVrhu7s58MloLKZLxg3u7HkQE6NCAY13f-Pj/s320/robert.jpg" border="0" /></a>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”.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4FiAfIxJYcjiHUCEBKAejvGCMHwWpqCf1RhE568NzTAdhT05K4AiKbphyphenhyphenSinQAmK3JpYjc6QK5zBZARx2atiLgSN-4UXZj2mXRKUMtlMFtkc56eeRs12PNI-pijitJ7wLUmSMhzExnmwg/s1600-h/bridget.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129661461260514866" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4FiAfIxJYcjiHUCEBKAejvGCMHwWpqCf1RhE568NzTAdhT05K4AiKbphyphenhyphenSinQAmK3JpYjc6QK5zBZARx2atiLgSN-4UXZj2mXRKUMtlMFtkc56eeRs12PNI-pijitJ7wLUmSMhzExnmwg/s320/bridget.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLj7NIJdLsbX5jYTk5bSAjjhW2NdHu0Lu3qDeaQ4Vu32_2FCIop1mHCrcoVxrhL4kXIzUnOW9jOv75J-5iFRrFASE4cLVE-TR5XAbSEOIz9Nf5i8EKxCSUjIsp_OBNiue47zoqBWaSmUo9/s1600-h/eist+1979.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129661869282408002" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 214px; cursor: pointer; height: 137px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLj7NIJdLsbX5jYTk5bSAjjhW2NdHu0Lu3qDeaQ4Vu32_2FCIop1mHCrcoVxrhL4kXIzUnOW9jOv75J-5iFRrFASE4cLVE-TR5XAbSEOIz9Nf5i8EKxCSUjIsp_OBNiue47zoqBWaSmUo9/s320/eist+1979.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyqyWt33eN2AYyh6J2uMnsuyF9BBuXCjir7sSibo3aHiPjC5xJQXHccYxJKFNwAk7zlbFiTaXJekyUo6rfMM5RZauXpkxjVxR-lQFTyTtx9BeqW346MEUIW5E0Lo5sYo5vJb4xeMt5_O15/s1600-h/eist79.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129662199994889810" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyqyWt33eN2AYyh6J2uMnsuyF9BBuXCjir7sSibo3aHiPjC5xJQXHccYxJKFNwAk7zlbFiTaXJekyUo6rfMM5RZauXpkxjVxR-lQFTyTtx9BeqW346MEUIW5E0Lo5sYo5vJb4xeMt5_O15/s320/eist79.jpg" border="0" /></a>
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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtKy2cn-9HlfbVtKdTWWLDYL9_8Ae8PmYu4-k1priBi_j_n7MIK36DVEBZOvc5Z9778f6cO6R4-jTgG_PGJRbwfnhzSa5tMbtDRBEmwGgToyHUuTgUK02Ep29noRCAxESiBA1arWlzizA_/s1600-h/toy.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129662668146325090" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtKy2cn-9HlfbVtKdTWWLDYL9_8Ae8PmYu4-k1priBi_j_n7MIK36DVEBZOvc5Z9778f6cO6R4-jTgG_PGJRbwfnhzSa5tMbtDRBEmwGgToyHUuTgUK02Ep29noRCAxESiBA1arWlzizA_/s320/toy.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7QbEQfe6uZxl20JAbeibi-tHf-MX4TBTzWaGq4C1RpXywakdjGEcLoFS-xJEuPAXI3yU2ukj6jAhyfqZhlvOzV7geO6-tEIovWDN4aPrjyQyAexP3kzM9LMRklozLEf-gb0bWArPb6Z-q/s1600-h/milkman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7QbEQfe6uZxl20JAbeibi-tHf-MX4TBTzWaGq4C1RpXywakdjGEcLoFS-xJEuPAXI3yU2ukj6jAhyfqZhlvOzV7geO6-tEIovWDN4aPrjyQyAexP3kzM9LMRklozLEf-gb0bWArPb6Z-q/s320/milkman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130654460305448706" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguipDGKrenfW3RVAyJB5DBebJm_7lAGpksJsV8mbfEHM8rVA4Fvk0gM1_-0kVPRpIMdLBUZb9gHVdpaVzQ4kLEtp_Bb1M4kZXCn302lQsmPw19m59uR0yJ1-SBOq64oEVQXw-IMhWa_sMG/s1600-h/zw_1979.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129663140592727666" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 336px; cursor: pointer; height: 168px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguipDGKrenfW3RVAyJB5DBebJm_7lAGpksJsV8mbfEHM8rVA4Fvk0gM1_-0kVPRpIMdLBUZb9gHVdpaVzQ4kLEtp_Bb1M4kZXCn302lQsmPw19m59uR0yJ1-SBOq64oEVQXw-IMhWa_sMG/s320/zw_1979.gif" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh07eJnOTOrK45HLbCNRVbKZp2b9Pbcty8Rq7aINyqy_eJhfqeJxy_9BwzXA-BR6puDJu2P8pdXnarV5H3cRFUv04kPeDO1RV79KbdQA6_DHnBZ2S2Rt1syryD2Ok3JoJ8opk9pVFqhR9u0/s1600-h/war.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129664244399322754" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 225px; cursor: pointer; height: 300px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh07eJnOTOrK45HLbCNRVbKZp2b9Pbcty8Rq7aINyqy_eJhfqeJxy_9BwzXA-BR6puDJu2P8pdXnarV5H3cRFUv04kPeDO1RV79KbdQA6_DHnBZ2S2Rt1syryD2Ok3JoJ8opk9pVFqhR9u0/s320/war.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">
<span style="font-style: italic;">Part II to include:</span></span>
<ul><li>Athletics carnivals and the swimming pool.</li><li>Holidays to South Africa.</li><li>Rugby at Hartsfield Stadium.</li></ul>Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-6506721062799785192007-11-02T15:32:00.000+11:002007-11-02T16:15:13.354+11:00The Cure in Melbourne"<em>And tired disguised oblivion Is everything I do</em>"
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:
<ul><li>The Patrick Bateman look-alike possessing big hair complete with flick; </li><li>The foppish new romantic resplendent in pastel rouge; </li><li>And an army of obligatory Goths, black lipstick and eye shadow crusted with age and disuse. </li></ul>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 "<em>Open</em>" 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 <em>Head on the Door</em>, <em>Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me</em> and <em>Wish.</em>
The Cure present something of a conundrum best encapsulated by a comment from one of the Goths on the show's exit - "<em>every blonde teenager should be made to listen to that concert</em>". 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.
<em>Dressed up to the eyes </em>
<em>It's a wonderful surprise </em>
<em>To see your shoes and your spirits rise </em>
<em>Throwing out your frown </em>
<em>And just smiling at the sound </em>
<em>And as sleek as a shriek </em>
<em>Spinning round and round </em>
<em>Always take a big bite </em>
<em>It's such a gorgeous sight </em>
<em>It's Friday I'm in love!</em>
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, <em>Friday I'm in Love</em>, <em>Close to me</em>, <em>Hot,hot,hot</em> and <em>Boys don't cry</em>.
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.
<em>Never never never never never let me go she says </em>
<em>Hold me like this for a hundred thousand million days </em>
<em>But suddenly she slows </em>
<em>And looks down at my breaking face </em>
<em>Why do you cry? what did I say? </em>
<em>it's just rain I smile</em>
<em>Whiping my tears away
</em>
<em>I wish I could just stop </em>
<em>I know another moment will break my heart </em>
<em>Too many tears </em>
<em>Too many times </em>
<em>Too many years I've cried over you </em>
<em>How much more can we use it up? </em>
<em>Drink it dry? </em>
<em>Take this drug? </em>
<em>Looking for something forever gone </em>
<em>But something </em>
<em>We will always want? </em>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI1eMLrb6kAgYY_0AD0bzjjB0XF_NwW-ccoSNTOoIx-8GiqX7VCipeLmp3BCLI9X6Vfprcge9ygwdYqKePmKvH8SMnSCGiWcSGfdxhNB3zVWWyUOFxChqvWW4MUl-SLZNy2bRtXAJzuqw0/s1600-h/cure.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5128100957907957202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 271px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 223px" height="281" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI1eMLrb6kAgYY_0AD0bzjjB0XF_NwW-ccoSNTOoIx-8GiqX7VCipeLmp3BCLI9X6Vfprcge9ygwdYqKePmKvH8SMnSCGiWcSGfdxhNB3zVWWyUOFxChqvWW4MUl-SLZNy2bRtXAJzuqw0/s320/cure.JPG" width="393" border="0" /></a>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 - <em>From the edge of the deep green sea, Pictures of you, The blood, Push, Ope</em>n and <em>Close</em>.
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 <em>Killing an Arab</em> 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.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-34835096002194877662007-10-30T21:46:00.000+11:002007-11-02T16:03:15.395+11:001978<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUp9r47wv1tOUg373ONquBr-GD9Gmsh-lvlyWaf-mBTzkk9nc5NAEBHJz4c06aABMvBAvyBLL4IKnTtpx3vHmQYiDi6wt16UoXziIQA8FBgd2OvnWnOVqU3B8oU3durgcYXcMI6nUk-rDD/s1600-h/eyre5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127084158760367474" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUp9r47wv1tOUg373ONquBr-GD9Gmsh-lvlyWaf-mBTzkk9nc5NAEBHJz4c06aABMvBAvyBLL4IKnTtpx3vHmQYiDi6wt16UoXziIQA8FBgd2OvnWnOVqU3B8oU3durgcYXcMI6nUk-rDD/s320/eyre5.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdV57VkRqxfj5fjHRScmFW9svxmD6FEopy90CHDdbeKHrVNQZF7UW5PhWc3VGZs75OmJHG1UGyr7F2JY9CzcrJ8CRui_P1YFXBs2ub19ONWrtOforLsm24JUpEtrr9CGYuJ36WE8lqT4J/s1600-h/eyre2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127081968327046434" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdV57VkRqxfj5fjHRScmFW9svxmD6FEopy90CHDdbeKHrVNQZF7UW5PhWc3VGZs75OmJHG1UGyr7F2JY9CzcrJ8CRui_P1YFXBs2ub19ONWrtOforLsm24JUpEtrr9CGYuJ36WE8lqT4J/s320/eyre2.JPG" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwQsEh325I7CWZ-j3paWyufWgWBfFPocH94vlXC_zrVOQLQ_cQyDEEIgzj4YYgLBdEZBj5xiBPRgrRvkdMmcGr8kRjRO5D2G_EGZs6ASS0iuBuU6cAvviIqaa0aQ5CHYVShj3vM6vuE0y-/s1600-h/eyre3.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127082324809332018" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwQsEh325I7CWZ-j3paWyufWgWBfFPocH94vlXC_zrVOQLQ_cQyDEEIgzj4YYgLBdEZBj5xiBPRgrRvkdMmcGr8kRjRO5D2G_EGZs6ASS0iuBuU6cAvviIqaa0aQ5CHYVShj3vM6vuE0y-/s320/eyre3.JPG" border="0" /></a>
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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLbRup-9tP-xAnhuXpbx1lAnqlGrHwgo-ePFBBDRs8Pvccp7PygziLnBBEwWwdH-YWujfitYckQHzrdxrKCiPAOduJ36xK8FDIfFUsF1vEvgf9lg-ZNpugfrDDPrDPYKwh9aWeFlj4y9tc/s1600-h/ConvoyPics2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127790350168077762" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLbRup-9tP-xAnhuXpbx1lAnqlGrHwgo-ePFBBDRs8Pvccp7PygziLnBBEwWwdH-YWujfitYckQHzrdxrKCiPAOduJ36xK8FDIfFUsF1vEvgf9lg-ZNpugfrDDPrDPYKwh9aWeFlj4y9tc/s320/ConvoyPics2.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGpC-ZfLGYTNhuwbH8q56Mq9sIQKm_aCXc9EARMW_TftBhuufOADcDvf3YRgYCuHxhlvke7AYldIrYqNFNyjbwqJyqK-pAVsUf2INtSLqzyAche4f7Qp3nGb8estjrJdVKLwkvIelPQcC/s1600-h/eyre6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127084334854026626" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGpC-ZfLGYTNhuwbH8q56Mq9sIQKm_aCXc9EARMW_TftBhuufOADcDvf3YRgYCuHxhlvke7AYldIrYqNFNyjbwqJyqK-pAVsUf2INtSLqzyAche4f7Qp3nGb8estjrJdVKLwkvIelPQcC/s320/eyre6.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Z_RhUm9BY2WwIoUokymqKznw16RG9q-BD8gsQ24BPTzL-VUiist8eCrLrkQC-u0Ml_qD_QOTkUO8GrHVE6COQ03AGAYm3yySu1kjHuz6WFKXL1bKAP2T_7i7UyE5fbFhyphenhyphen9TEP9-tXDfJ/s1600-h/eyre.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127082719946323266" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Z_RhUm9BY2WwIoUokymqKznw16RG9q-BD8gsQ24BPTzL-VUiist8eCrLrkQC-u0Ml_qD_QOTkUO8GrHVE6COQ03AGAYm3yySu1kjHuz6WFKXL1bKAP2T_7i7UyE5fbFhyphenhyphen9TEP9-tXDfJ/s320/eyre.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiptWvXgZaWxR2fSOvPIIBbQqP2XuJl94KGsYyl4Xn_CxFVCG_2iliCO2uFuvPE5MfwnSSmRC0z_MKw-U-2Q-PPProbQpFkv6Nz7Zpk_1eA-PDv-IOlJXLDWlY48aNEXs4yU2lFHyVV2W6m/s1600-h/eyre1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127083200982660434" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiptWvXgZaWxR2fSOvPIIBbQqP2XuJl94KGsYyl4Xn_CxFVCG_2iliCO2uFuvPE5MfwnSSmRC0z_MKw-U-2Q-PPProbQpFkv6Nz7Zpk_1eA-PDv-IOlJXLDWlY48aNEXs4yU2lFHyVV2W6m/s320/eyre1.jpg" border="0" /></a>
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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lOxaCdJw536PjsJWTkkIPoc2Riq9UQSlbXZWsCXw_xzxKkjtPrJB5KyypZznPILhAzgv-AGN6Za6nw9g98OAi-WlmyU3-9iO6R9wZ8kskXJ26AozUBLzl5yM62wXbXxJwA2guDYrVRyy/s1600-h/eyre4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127083591824684386" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lOxaCdJw536PjsJWTkkIPoc2Riq9UQSlbXZWsCXw_xzxKkjtPrJB5KyypZznPILhAzgv-AGN6Za6nw9g98OAi-WlmyU3-9iO6R9wZ8kskXJ26AozUBLzl5yM62wXbXxJwA2guDYrVRyy/s320/eyre4.jpg" border="0" /></a>I determined that I too would be one of those visitors to Mrs Eyre in future years. She’d left her mark.Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1131559831975311957.post-11772865420615367382007-10-20T21:23:00.002+10:002008-07-05T11:07:00.032+10:001977I 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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVk8lGDQfM94gy1rAesDqnp9t3EUFgl0Nre78EqCLbCA7UGR2OYnEAGalhOwSV8knkJP-0WdW1MHrPmSQwNRMqep1xOz7Za0Noan2koJBNbCHDW0YGWbrXcKtGNWGcQ1P3AsgTB5iKXuUO/s1600-h/IMAGE0033.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVk8lGDQfM94gy1rAesDqnp9t3EUFgl0Nre78EqCLbCA7UGR2OYnEAGalhOwSV8knkJP-0WdW1MHrPmSQwNRMqep1xOz7Za0Noan2koJBNbCHDW0YGWbrXcKtGNWGcQ1P3AsgTB5iKXuUO/s320/IMAGE0033.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219328660488591970" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKiIFHuYrzLgFDlZTvF2bdSOZD0AhEx7kZFuSUBguA1kKTJAyCxo2WklDb6OIiU4X8UVh5WwrgI7sv0W8Sxo-QMlvhaVVXWcFWxuOHsDEmM6Vk6dCa2mQ6K7bvcGGmK8E3BitThBKmA6Df/s1600-h/IMAGE0243.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 360px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKiIFHuYrzLgFDlZTvF2bdSOZD0AhEx7kZFuSUBguA1kKTJAyCxo2WklDb6OIiU4X8UVh5WwrgI7sv0W8Sxo-QMlvhaVVXWcFWxuOHsDEmM6Vk6dCa2mQ6K7bvcGGmK8E3BitThBKmA6Df/s320/IMAGE0243.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219329507799241042" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4W82rG4sHoYxI3vqEKASd427c1ZLiwUkuzTg6-JbM1_5XjjgCKnH7H13PhwfnnzfByqKfTTVB4GXYULSxIXcvqv9N11rjTq3Vfo6ZwH7PtjoahdxcmWpe0UaPHhvLkyw0-2S1kFGeQpk/s1600-h/IMAGE0023.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4W82rG4sHoYxI3vqEKASd427c1ZLiwUkuzTg6-JbM1_5XjjgCKnH7H13PhwfnnzfByqKfTTVB4GXYULSxIXcvqv9N11rjTq3Vfo6ZwH7PtjoahdxcmWpe0UaPHhvLkyw0-2S1kFGeQpk/s320/IMAGE0023.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219328952576359890" border="0" /></a>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:
<ul><li><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc4b3MN56v7Rix-fZMutiS1cPSBoeft9UC1n_GqNL9BzgC6HfmsXUpFSG1gAgxWQFGX3iX1vxtGUY0zVvOQCA6SVPpNKfYRdFUiER7RKLC_qrVpQrC95-qN1rO0igjF0fCyL2KH__iAwcS/s1600-h/HLK77.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc4b3MN56v7Rix-fZMutiS1cPSBoeft9UC1n_GqNL9BzgC6HfmsXUpFSG1gAgxWQFGX3iX1vxtGUY0zVvOQCA6SVPpNKfYRdFUiER7RKLC_qrVpQrC95-qN1rO0igjF0fCyL2KH__iAwcS/s320/HLK77.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219327626383652226" border="0" /></a>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. </li><li>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.</li><li>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.”</li><li>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. </li><li>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.</li><li>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.)</li><li>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.</li><li>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. </li><li>Being rigorously taught how to do a Windsor knot in my tie because the easier slip-knot was lazy and for the “scumbies”. </li></ul><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNt0aCwPVa_nuJkBPBAW12jABVeiVnfnbq_es2xRDylhve5AAoPjmn39xHG2jOtzpZARjU-oofKXqzNSDcC8k_AlSBodQhT77rhpLGD1RUyh28CKe1_py7HtD6nJPeIjwagra5Af-aHzrd/s1600-h/1977.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127078906015364370" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNt0aCwPVa_nuJkBPBAW12jABVeiVnfnbq_es2xRDylhve5AAoPjmn39xHG2jOtzpZARjU-oofKXqzNSDcC8k_AlSBodQhT77rhpLGD1RUyh28CKe1_py7HtD6nJPeIjwagra5Af-aHzrd/s320/1977.jpg" border="0" /></a>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.
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeVt7C4zjZi4_7l9_YYqAHaehyphenhyphensgsJ5HDP7Rg3BEOVoT1QvKWZrou9zjr0CphG7fOzuMb_kU5jtFdsoAWOwr-fHqb6xzZljGvqoDjlFu_DQF4OQzVum0i76C4xLiTCS7BuI5d166P1sEH/s1600-h/IMAGE0040.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeVt7C4zjZi4_7l9_YYqAHaehyphenhyphensgsJ5HDP7Rg3BEOVoT1QvKWZrou9zjr0CphG7fOzuMb_kU5jtFdsoAWOwr-fHqb6xzZljGvqoDjlFu_DQF4OQzVum0i76C4xLiTCS7BuI5d166P1sEH/s320/IMAGE0040.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219328118411184338" border="0" /></a>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!Mzilikazihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06542938206780334473noreply@blogger.com0