Redlippie

I remember as a small child, us going down to Umtali often, as we had close family friends there. The drive down Christmas Pass was outstandingly beautiful, as you wound your way slowly down the mountain, the city spread out before you.

We'd often go with various families and picnic up in the Vumba mountains, (Misty mountains because a mist always seemed to hang over them); driving up above the clouds, looking down on them, as they spread below us, like cotton balls - stopping sometimes to have a drink from the stream which flowed next to the road all the way down. There was a primary school up there, had been a boarding school, but had had to shut down during the war as it was too dangerous, but our friends knew the caretaker/owner (not sure who he was now), and we'd take tea on the landscaped grounds overlooking a part of paradise.

We'd often drive over the border before 1972, and stay on their family farms in Manica . I used to remember finding it strange that everywhere we went, we had two soldiers with big guns accompanying us. It was not yet part of our lives in Rhodesia at the time. The father of one was ambushed and killed a few weeks before Moz independence. I still recall the exact spot it happened at, as though it was today, though I was little more than a toddler at the time.

Living in the central part of the country most of my life, we didn't really experience much 'action'. I do remember us driving down to Salisbury to go to the OK Bazaars to get our school supplies before every term started. Standing in line with all the women and having a full body search, as they'd had countless bombs/bomb threats over the years.

Growing up on the farm for most of my life there, was paradise for the most part. Giraffe, baboons, pythons, leopard, kudu, buck, etc..etc....wandering around was just part of every day life. Driving to school every day - a distance of 30 km's or so, was like starring in our own Nat. Geo. documentary. Looking back, I'm amazed at what we took for granted.

Remembering being in First Form and being told by the teacher that we were getting a little Indian girl in the class, and for us to be nice to her. Looking back, it was no big deal to us kids. After the first week or so, she was just part of the class and the only thing that made her different were her curried sandwiches which we'd all fight over! She settled for peanut butter and apple jelly!.

Having terrorist attack drills in primary school, in case we were attacked. Of course us kids thought it was a bunch of fun. If only we knew. One of our classmates' parents were NGK missionaries and one day the headmaster came into the classroom and took her out. We were ten years old at the time. We never saw her again. Her parents had been going to some mission outside of town, and were killed by terrorists. We didn't understand much, but were saddened not to see her again.

Our boys went off to war at 16/17 some of them. Knew young men who were called up, were ambushed and shot, thankfully most survived, but some died. No one close to me, but mostly older kids of family friends, or older siblings of kids at school. Names went on a plaque in the school hall. Every year there'd be some new names added. It was sobering, and made us grow up pretty fast.

Being startled awake in my room at night, as a teen, hearing a noise, or the dogs barking and wondering if this was the night we were going to die. That this was the night we were under attack, played a big part for a few years until the war was truly over.

Looking back, I wouldn't change a thing. I will borrow two words. 'Paradise Lost'.

Daxk

Stunning!, I'm sitting here with a lump in my throat.

Muqawim

Wow...
Literally sent shivers down my spine...
I've lived in a war zone as a kid too. Seen some pretty horrible things. We used to think guns and bombs were 'cool' and didn't really realise it was all for real... thought it was just a game... but one day, I was around 5 or 6, I was witness to a very horrible scene -- people being reduced to a pool of blood and scattered body parts, and ah, that unforgettable stench of death... I remember walking over to the 'crime scene', and just looking and not understanding what I saw...... I kept wondering where those people had disappeared... looked around me and not seeing them, I figured they were dead... it felt surreal to be looking at it trying to figure out which piece fit where, as if I was trying to solve a puzzle. I still remember the stench... it's like it never left my nose... I stopped talking after that. I remember my mom trying to convince me it was just red paint and all,but to no avail... and then going back to school after weeks of absence, and feeling different from the other kids... not enjoying anything I used to do, and being made fun of and bullied, because I had gone 'mute'.. not to mention, seeing classmates leave all of a sudden never to be seen again.

All those lives ruined and lost... for nothing...

Redlippie

Another memory is of driving back home from Bulawayo, about 300 km's away, with basically nothing in between, and coming across a minibus taxi/bus accident. People strewn all over the place. My folks telling us kids to sit tight, while they went to try and help. There was a carload of medical students who were on their way back 'down south' as we used to refer to S.Africa, and I remember them examining the bodies, and shaking their heads as they went through them. Of course, medical help was hours away. We eventually left when an army truck arrived on the scene.

Marshall Law was in place, and we weren't allowed to be on the road after dark. There was always a scramble to get home. Since we were farmers, we were lucky because our diesel rations were pretty good, as there was strict rationing. You had to profer a coupon to get petrol/diesel at the station. We were landlocked. Our pipeline from Beira was shut down because the Frelimo govt. sided with Mugabe's lot, and we got very little from the S.A. side. We had to turn to making our own - ethanol from sugar cane - in the Triangle region.

My folks were always giving any spares to friends - and they'd do the same for us if need be. Some months, you'd drive down to Salisbury, 211 km's away, and see a couple of cars on the road and nothing else.

Redlippie

Where was this? M.E.?

We had more than our fair share of bombs in South Africa. I just narrowly missed one, one lunchtime. I would have been walking past the restaurant where it went off at the time, but went a different route as I wanted to go to a different store. My husband's aunt was killed in a shopping mall by a huge bomb which went off just before Christmas leaving two babies behind.

Muqawim

yeah... too many similarities btwn Africa & M.E to be honest...

wow... I didn't know there were bombs going off in SA... Sorry to hear about your husband's aunt...

Would love to hear more of your experiences...

Daxk

Hey Rooilippie, your post has been on my mind all evening.
As a six year old. walking down to the shops to get the bread, eating the crust because it was hot and fresh out of the oven.

My Father, selling our house , discovering that the reason we did'nt have keys for the front door was that he'd not collected them from the builder 8 years before.And they were still on the board.

As teenagers, hitching to and back from Parties and "sessions" at 2 am,
Fontana Bakery in Hillbrow, the dunk a Doughnut, same area, waiting for dawn.

Hitching from Jhbg to then Lourenco Marques (Now maputo) at 16, then catching a bus to the beach cottage at Tofo ( refer Peter Scales, Bulawayo)
and back ,
Motorcycles and Landrovers, beaches, full moon nights, lots of dawns, the odd pretty lass, in Mozambique, Lesotho, Rhodesia and the RLI, Zambia, Kenya , Congo, Tanzania and then the Islands,Mageruque, Benguerra, Maurituis and Comores, Seychelles and Madagascar.
That scream of a fishing reel behind a sail boat or ski boat,

a stream with artificial rainbows and the two little herdbouy's who had watched me fruitlessly try and catch brown trout in the Maluti, delivered to me 4 superb specimens dressed Barefoot with Basuto Blankets and smiles that would have sold toothpaste when the grass crackled with frost

The war years, that coppery smell, but even a green leaf growing from a charred stump.
The friendship, the laughter and the teasing,
The sound of the Transvaal Jocks Piper, big, burly guys whose Parents ancestors had left Scotland and Ireland in the 1800's in a moonlit night so bright you could almost read by it, then two guys found two tentpoles and crossed them.
Those that could danced to the pipes, those that could'nt just made up the steps.

To me, Africa is the people who live there, or is that lived?
but my most endearing memory is a hole, a small smelly hole which was my home for two long nights, furnished with plastic bags that I did not wish to touch or acknowledge while I waited for a missionary landrover to play taxi to a farmhouse down in the valley.
while I waited for a sqwuack of static that would tell me there was an eagle
in the air , before dawn, a Rooibok, must have been one of very few left,

circled and found a place to give birth maybe 20-30 metres from me, all I could pray for was that she would finish before the loud noises started.
she did.

Redlippie

Excellent dax. I hope people add to it, with their memories, not just listings. I was posting mostly Zims, but can do SA too

Fontana Bakery, who can forget it! I think we all went there at some time or other after clubbing if you lived in Joburg.

Riding the double decker red buses in Joeys, sitting upstairs and hoping the bus didn't tip over as it went around the corner in Eloff Street.

Going to the bioscope in Joburg center. Riding the lift up to the top of the Carlton Center, and having a burger and shake at the Wimpy.

My best friend and I used to bunk college and go down to the Tony Factor Center and feel all grown up as we sat drinking capuccinos at the Brazilian Coffee Shop.

Driving down to Durbs on the old road, stopping frequently to admire the scenery (is there anywhere in the world so beautiful), and taking 7 or 8 hours to get there.

The drive from Pretoria to Nelspruit, with the mist on the road in the early dawn, just amazed at the beauty of the Eastern Transvaal.

The Magaliesberg and Hartebeespoort Dam with the jacaranda in bloom all the way up the mountainside, or driving from Pretoria North, over the mountain into Sunnyside and seeing the city spread out in October covered in a beautiful purple haze.

Hiking in the Berg.

The wonderous architecture of Maputo, with its wide avenues - pure magic.

elfman

Beira's a bit of a dump tho

Redlippie

Oy! You have to post more than that....... it is now....but it was beautiful once upon a time....I went to a private school down there for a few months just before independence.

Daxk

Even worse when I was last there(2002), the Donna Anna at Vilanculos had two guests(us) the same Curtains i remembered from 20 years before,
the wires were soldered to the globes and no running water above the ground floor.
The Hotel at Beira(Grande??) had squatters and was'nt the Riviera of the Indian Ocean anymore
Just reading redlippies comment: really? Boa tarde? Comesta?

elfman

The Mrs and I spent a couple of days in Beira back in 1998 - we were visiting my parents who were doing some temporary teaching work in Chimoio and my Mrs had a hankering to be at the beach. Someone told her some serious porkies about the quality of the beach and associated facilities at Beira. We didn't linger. Good cheap seafood tho.

Getting back to earlier stuff in this thread: blimey....I spent four years of my childhood in Africa (Zambia and Botswana) and have nothing but happy memories. Then as an adult I worked for two years in Uganda, and that's where I met the Mrs.

Redlippie

I have a very vague memory of eating ice cream at some posh hotel in Beira - my dad flew down there for a Benfica exhibition game from Rhodies and took me out for it. (I was only 7 at the time). I wasn't a boarder, but lived with his cousins who'd moved there in the early 50's from Portugal.

Funnily enough, Tegs and I (plus a certain god person and a guinness addict ), have an old online friend from what I call the 'den of vipers board' a certain S.A. board full of trolls *wink wink*, who went to the school at the same time as me, but a few years older! I posted some pics from the time that I found online and lo and behold there she was

elfman, that is really interesting. My dad went up there in about 1993 or so, he drove with some friends from S.A. all the way up the coast and was utterly devastated to see the place after the war. He'd last seen it the time I mentioned in the paragraph above.

My dh used to go down to Maputo, then drive to Xai-Xai which was a dirt road at the time, I hear it has been resurfaced now, to get a supply of prawns, which he'd bring back in coolers. Ten S.A. Rands would get him an entire cooler box full.

The farm scene in my first post, where the fella was ambushed and shot in Moz, was in what was then called Vila de Manica, I can't recall what it is today, the next town after Chimoio (old Vila Pery), on the way to Zimbabwe.

Redlippie

Ah, Tegwyn lived in Zambia for a few years, I'm sure she'll come in with some memories

Daxk

Posted some pics in the members gallery on Moz when I was last there
for those who are interested