Abercornucopia published a full centre page spread of the forthcoming independence weekend celebrations programme. It would begin during Friday with ‘arrival of people from rural areas’, then an evening torchlight procession through the township to the Independence Ground was to be followed by ‘traditional dances and songs, a parade of Messengers, Kapasus, Youth league and prayers for the new nation’, before the midnight flag lowering and raising ceremony. Saturday would start with prayers and services at St Francis Mission and the church, a gathering with the Tanganyika Brass Band would be followed by the reading of the new president’s message, the firing of rockets and a flypast of Red Locust Control aircraft dropping Zambian flags. Then a parade, cycle races, football matches, a cocktail party at the District Secretary’s residence (‘by invitation’), a cinema show and open air concert and dancing from 9 p.m. Sunday would be quieter: more services of worship followed by inter-schools sports and football, closing with ballroom dancing at the Catholic Welfare Hall and traditional dancing at Independence Ground.
While all this was going on, Abercorn would also be making a unique contribution to the national celebrations, as our newspaper headlined. Following a precedent set by Kenya and neighbouring Tanganyika and Malawi, the new flag was to be raised at midnight on the country’s highest (6,782 ft) peak, Mount Sunzu, 21 miles away by road and close to the border with Tanganyika. This ‘strenuous expedition’, Abercornucopia reported, would be undertaken by the training staff at Abercorn’s Outward Bound School, adding: ‘A fine view of the table-like summit about 17 miles away is gained from Abercorn airport, and it can be seen from many villages in the surrounding countryside; but in general the country is thinly populated by not very advanced people who will probably be somewhat puzzled by this unusual light high on their night-time horizon.’
In the run-up to the weekend I wrote home: The town is decked in Zambian flags (so ugly – black, red, green, orange) processions rehearsing etc. Jiff and Alan are coming to supper and bridge on Friday and we all go to Independence Ground at 10.30 p.m. or so. There is a Tanganyika brass band, and fortunately places in an enclosure for 2/- to avoid being trampled! … As we have to give the servants most of the w/e off we shall be busy watering flowers and veg. We haven’t any fixtures at the Club – some people are fearfully anti and won’t go to the ceremony or anything, but it seems silly as the Union Jack only represents what went a while ago now.
In the event, though, I found the moment more moving than I had expected. After tribal dancing (so feeble, just jigging about, no costumes and endless microphone commentary), and a 50-strong brass band from Tanganyika R.C Mission (splendid), I suddenly felt a wave of sadness as we watched the old Union flag’s jerky descent: I thought of all the pioneers who’d worked under it, but the mob cheered, and the other flag went up – v. ugly really. The anthem however is really beautiful, ‘Nkosi Sikelele Africa’ originally, and the Chila Chits have played it for you not v. well on the vast tape Ian is bringing over for you. (The anthem, or at least its tune, is now much more widely known, having become the national anthem for the new, democratic South Africa in the 1990’s. I still find it both beautiful and moving).
We were part of the 250-strong official cocktail party on the Saturday at the Barrs’, racially mixed of course, although this was still a novelty for many in the European community. For the first time we met some of the local officials and functionaries of the new administration. I remember my continuing feelings of awkwardness as I tried to make conversation with them, though I described the party to my parents only as ‘good for a laff’.
There were other signs of changing times: our local M.P. was to be posted to Moscow, to join Zambia’s new embassy there. It was rumoured that he had married a second wife to take with him. (Ian Mackinson in his autobiography writes of a common practice at this time of taking an additional ‘cocktail’ wife, a younger woman readier to adapt to the demands of western culture, often to the relief of the first, traditionally home-based wife.) ‘Vesey’ – Desmond Vesey-Fitzgerald, our own world-renowned naturalist, announced he would be leaving, appointed as Scientific Officer to Tanganyika’s National Parks department – the start of Abercorn’s own brain-drain, as the newspaper had it. And there were more farewell parties, including for Paddy and Glenda Tobin – both mainstays of the club, she a fellow bunny girl and sailor – who were off to Mongu.
We looked, I think, for signs of things going wrong, confirmation of predictions that standards would deteriorate. No letter from Mum this week meant ‘posts slowing down I suppose’. The 500 miles of phone lines that linked Abercorn to the Copper Belt were down again – ‘it’s due to a shortage of technicians’. Mark had his watch and wallet (both gifts from me) together with the hefty sum of £30, stolen from his bedside in Mpika, a costly loss for us and with little hope of anything being found, for ‘the police in Mpika were very inefficient’. Mark was away a lot now: I am having a thoroughly boring week as he is away Mon. – Fri. and the line to Kasama is out of order so I can’t even hear from him. I for one am getting thoroughly sick of this job – if he isn’ t away it’s a Liemba weekend or the phone never stops from 7 a.m. or we have to entertain company trogs. No word of his leave yet either. Shirley Macdonald says it is impossible to rent a house in Lusaka, so what we shall do I don’ t know.
As I recall those months after independence and reread my letters – a mix, by now, of aerogrammes scrawled ‘in haste’, of sheets off an airmail pad at Christmas time and, for one later momentous announcement, two close-typed quarto pages – they bring me what I can only describe as a feel of autumn: of the tail end of a long, sunny summer, of falling leaves reminding us of colder months to come; of packing away the sun umbrella, unwrapping packages of papery bulbs to plant for spring. Fanciful perhaps, but it is the only way I can describe the different feel this period gives me now. It was a time full of uncertainties and conflicting emotions, for we now knew we would be leaving by March the following year and that, wherever we fetched up, it could not compare with Abercorn and the wonderful little community we had become a part of. At least, I thought, Mark’s next posting was into sales, a promotion away from the field. I and the children would see more of him, even though my memories of Lusaka were not positive. I was gearing myself too for our long leave: the plan was for me to fly to England with the children upon our departure from Abercorn, Mark joining us at my parents’ once he had settled into Lusaka.
So my letters now were full of excitement about seeing them all, but also of practical considerations. There were anticipatory wails about the cold of an English winter, of needing little vests, requests for jumpers to be knitted please, of how I was making Paul long corduroy trousers for Christmas and how Caroline could nearly walk but would have no shoes. Soon I was imagining us actually staying there, of spending time with the family: my clarinet now oiled and used again, I was pulling from my music case piano and clarinet arrangements, pieces Mum and I could play together. Ian Mac promised to take the piano parts to her, along with the tape of the band’s music making. I remember wondering what the new family home, a restored old vicarage in a Cambridgeshire village, would be like, for I had only a couple of small ‘before and after’ snaps of the outside to go on. I hoped, I wrote, that the children’s room would not be too close to their grandparents’, with their habit of waking at dawn, and with Caroline sure to be teething again.
But I am – as I was then – getting ahead of myself. With life beginning to feel less secure, less certain, I am not surprised now to read – though I have no specific memory of it – that by December my back was ‘agony’, so much so that I was lying down and resting whenever I could. Which can’t have been very often, with Mark away on business, or at weekends on Liemba duty, or with the golf team for a match; with my music practice for the band’s next appearance and a looming Club AGM for which I, as retiring hon. sec., must produce agendas for 100 members. By the time we had the Yacht Club’s barbecue, the rains had started in earnes
t and we had to move the cooking into the boat house – ‘ it will smell of mutton for months’, I wrote. But the rain cleared, and the band played our now familiar favourites as we gathered on the balcony lit with fairy lights. It was a beautiful spot, that balcony, with on a quieter night just the slip-slop sound of little waves and the surrounding darkness – that proper darkness which has vanished now from so much of the inhabited world, a darkness in which, when the clouds cleared, you could see a dazzle of stars.
By mid-December Christmas had been on my mind for weeks, what with the ordering and posting of cards and gifts for the overseas post. We were proud of our card that year – a fine sketch of the Yacht Club’s boat house by Ian Mac, which had also appeared on the front page of the independence issue of Abercornucopia. Now we were planning a shared festive feast with the Bowmakers, and had the luxury of Mark being grounded for a month, covering duties at the Abercorn depot while his clerk was on leave. No nights away, no worrying about him driving on roads made more dangerous by the rains. We were enjoying this new routine when we were knocked sideways by a totally unexpected development.
Mark came home one lunch time white faced, holding a terse note from the Zambia Manager in Lusaka, saying Mark would now not be going to sales, but as a rep. again, to Broken Hill (a small town on the Copper Belt). This was very clearly a demotion, the sales patch smaller even than Mark’s previous one in Gwelo, but the note contained no explanation. Mark was devastated; after a miserable weekend agonising over it, he decided to telegram for permission to fly down to Lusaka and find out what was really going on.
He did not get much joy: the manager was a tough-talking Australian with no gift for managing people (it was rumoured he had admitted he would not be long in Zambia due to poor staff relations). Face to face, he used words like ‘mediocre’ and ‘apathetic’, justifying a ‘lateral transfer’, whilst admitting that Mark’s customer relations and PR were ‘excellent’. Mark talked to colleagues too, one of whom had had similar treatment and had stuck it out. Mark came home angry, frustrated and depressed.
It is always hard being the powerless spouse having to stand by and watch the hurt. My reaction was an intense sense of loyalty and of fury on his behalf. I hammered out my anger and anxiety on the depot’s typewriter in a long letter to both sets of parents, timed not to reach them until after Christmas:
It makes me so angry, when I think of the amount of work Mark has done since he has been here, and how the company comes before everything with him, the weekends he works, the long hours etc. It is me who moans and groans, while he throws himself right into it, and gets this for it. It is a great blow to hear of the sort of appreciation they have for all his work and loyalty. Excuse my getting heated… all the good men in the Zambia company are leaving, by resignation if they can’ t get a transfer away…
To make matters worse for Mark, the overall General Manager, based in Salisbury, was on long leave, his stand-in ‘an old nit waiting for retirement.’ And although my letter does not mention it, I kept remembering how this self-same manager and his wife had been good friends in the early Salisbury days, even being special guests at my 21st birthday dinner five years before. But that seemed an age ago now, and already we were beginning to think our way out of the situation:
The thing is to decide if there is a future on this basis for Mark. We think not, but of course I just have to tell him that I will support what he decides, and it’s no good drudging along with no heart in it for people who obviously don’t like you, which is what he says it is, when one could make a fresh start, even though with some worry and loss financially to start with. He hasn’t actually said he will leave, but inferred it. We think we are on 3 months notice, in which we would include our next year’s leave if possible, so needn’t do anything till about February… I realise that what with Will thinking of going into the Church, and Simon madly in love, and James waiting to see if he’s got to Oxford, this must be just about too much to take! There is nothing definite, except our depression and disappointment – and all the while we thought Mark was off to Lusaka for a super promotion. Ha ha.
Paul can’t believe his luck…
…while Caroline (left) prefers sharing soggy biscuit with Philip Bowmaker
I knew it would be a great worry for both sets of parents. In addition, Mark’s father had been a big wheel in the company in South Africa, and must have known some of those involved and wondered what to advise, aware there were no strings he could pull.
By a horrible coincidence, the Bowmakers were also dealing with the implications of a career set-back for Alan in the Fisheries Department. Plans for him to go to headquarters in Lusaka had been abruptly cancelled, and they were having to adapt to staying on till their long leave, and were talking of his finding another job, perhaps in South Africa. My letter ended with more general news: due to a rabies outbreak in the African township, all loose dogs would be shot, so our Alsatian Boy was ignominiously tied to the garage after a week of fun with his ‘girlfriend’ on heat. The Nativity Play was that evening, I was making scores of orange jellies for the children’s Christmas party next day. The last refrigerated truck of fresh goods before Christmas had arrived, and someone had fallen off a ladder while decorating the club hall and had to have 11 stitches. Posts were very slow and the Christmas cake from home had not arrived. Queues outside the bank had been so long, as people waited to change their hoarded cash for the new Zambian note, that twice someone had fainted in the heat. The rains were exceptionally heavy.
There was nothing for it but to throw ourselves into the Christmas celebrations, not least for the children, for it would be the first when Paul would really appreciate what it was all about. His eyes were wide as Father Christmas arrived at the club party on a fire engine and handed a gift to each child.
We hid a goodly stack of parcels from England until the day itself. On Christmas morning the Bowmakers came round with gifts – toys for the children, and a godmother present for Caroline of a pottery Samuel Whiskers, the start of a Beatrix Potter set which she has to this day. Jiff ’s gift for Mark, a shaped drawstring bag in flesh pink crepe, in which two golf balls hung suggestively, was another example of the creativity we had to bring to bear, given the limitations of what was available. Caroline slept through the hearty carols in church, then it was on to the Barrs and the Vermeulens for drinks, neighbours Robin and Pam to drinks with us and bachelor Colin to lunch. To make room for evening dinner we swam, then shared an evening feast at the Bowmakers followed by roulette. The sun lasted for our midday Pimms party on Boxing Day, which I enjoyed despite an increasingly sore toe, which I had stubbed down at the Yacht Club on Christmas Eve. More fun for the children that afternoon was our first visit to the nuns, being made a fuss of by Sisters Amabilis and Romana with little cakes and crackers, and a tour round their house and little chapel. And who could forget the all-male panto at the evening club hop, with the thunder of heavy dancing feet, falsetto dialogue and a huge fairy queen with ‘the hairiest legs of any fairy ever to grace a stage’? For the club’s New Year’s Eve dance cabaret, Gavin and I prepared a special arrangement of ‘Stranger on the Shore’, one of Britain’s top hits of 1962.
There remains one mystery from that Christmas: I wrote to thank my mother for ‘the grey wig, which is rather a nice one’. A grey wig? Not for me, surely? Could it have been for a wicked stepmother in that panto? The question hangs spectrally in the air, unanswerable now.
From Mark to my parents, early January 1965: No doubt Amanda has told you all about our Christmas and New Year’s doings… all very pleasant. Unfortunately the poor girl stubbed her toe at the yacht club on Christmas Eve. The doctor looked at it at our Pimms party on Boxing Day and declared it a mere bruise. However, a week later it was still causing considerable pain and preventing sleep so she went back to him. Now he has decided it is more serious and put it in plaster… unfortunately (typical of this country I’m afraid) the X-ray machine is broken so we don’t know for certain what�
��s wrong. Poor Amanda is rather crippled…
As you will have gathered we are getting rather fed up with this country and with the company here… I feel I may as well get out, what to do I don’t know… anyway we shall be coming over soon, looking forward to seeing you and showing off the grandchildren… All a rather disturbing start to 1965 but I hope the year will end well. Please pray for us.
‘Poor Amanda’ – but also poor Mark, who was now both depot clerk and chief homemaker, bathing children, getting up to Paul with his bad cold in the night, cooking suppers. To cap it all the depot safe was burgled, and Caroline had caught a mild form of chickenpox, with Paul sure to be next. At least Mark was grounded and so not expected to be covering his territory till the clerk returned. We were now spending much time talking about the future: the company’s personnel department was urging Mark to wait for the General Manager’s return, felt there would be a future for him. But Mark was becoming increasingly certain that the sort of job he had been doing was not for him. Somewhere we had heard of psychological aptitude testing, and I wrote to Mum asking her to find out more. And where should we settle? We didn’t feel we wanted to return to Zambia – Abercorn is the only really nice place, and its all getting more inefficient and maddening daily I wrote. So that left Britain or South Africa. I had deep, though unarticulated misgivings about the latter, with apartheid dominating all aspects of life there, whilst Mark, who had never lived in England apart from his three years at Cambridge University, felt he belonged in Africa. I knew that my role was to support my husband who was, after all, the breadwinner. Meanwhile though, do we sell everything here before we go, or hang on and have to come back (Mark will be in Broken Hill for the 6 weeks before he comes over), and so on. All v. difficult, but I’m sure it will work out and Mark will find what really suits him.
Roses Under the Miombo Trees Page 17