It is amazing the risks we will take when we are young. Pegi and I had arrived in Rhodesia with US$1000 and a Diner’s Club card! Where we expected to be able to use Diner’s Club in Africa is beyond me. I hardly ever found a place to use it in the US. Nevertheless, we were blissfully ignorant of how dire our financial prospects were.
Within a month I would be making a whopping Rh$300 per month (‘Rh’ for Rhodesian currency). At the bank there was a one to one exchange rate for US and Rhodesian dollars. Fortunately, it was much cheaper to live in Rhodesia than Houston. We rented a car using our Diner’s Club—amazed that the rental agency would take it. Of course, Diner’s would pay them back in US dollars and since no one was trading with Rhodesia due to UN sanctions, we were helping the war effort by increasing Rhodesia’s access to foreign exchange. We were totally oblivious to this at the time.
We also found a local “department” store that accepted Diner’s. We were able to buy clothes for both of us that were more appropriate to the climate. You should have seen me in my “safari suit” with its Bermuda-style pants and short-sleeved jacket. Of course, my lily white arms and legs exposed me for the foreigner that I was. Any Rhodesian would have been tanned by the African sun. I never did get my tan straightened out. I ended up with a tanned right arm from hanging it out the window when I drove in our right-hand drive car. Later, the tops of my thighs were tanned from riding my army-issued motorcycle in my khaki uniform short pants.
We wanted to take Major Lamprecht’s advice to spend some time “honeymooning” around Rhodesia before I started training, but first we needed to find a place to live since military married housing was scarce and would not even be an option until I finished RLI training.
There were some apartment complexes in Salisbury, but they had long waiting lists. Fortunately, there were plenty of nice rental homes. Homes in Rhodesia were very nice. Neither air conditioning nor central heating was required in either of the two seasons: summer (rain) or winter (no rain). In higher elevations (Salisbury was on a high plain about 4000 ft above sea level), summers were cool and winters rarely saw a frost. It was kind of like Northern California. The lowvelt, (lowland with the ‘v’ pronounced ‘f’ as in Afrikaans), was closer to sea level, experiencing hotter summers. The entire country had low humidity, so this made the summers more tolerable.
Without the central heat or air and only requiring fireplaces for winter evenings, the cost of construction was low. Everything was built with local materials, often with bricks made onsite. Some housing had tailored Dutch-style thatched roofs. Thatch lasted about 25 years. It was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Second choice was tin roofing—really noisy in the rain.
Homes had large manicured lawns, most with some sort of hedges fencing the property. Inside the fencing were gardens filled with flowering and fruit bearing trees and bushes. Large windows and glass doors or sometimes cast-iron gates looked out on large covered verandas suitable for eating and lounging outdoors.
We found a two bedroom/one bath cottage on about one acre right across from the University of Rhodesia in Alexandra Park. Alex Park had a variety of smaller cottages like ours as well as larger homes—some with as many as five or six bedrooms. It was beautiful to say the least. Our rent was Rh$120/month. We were able to purchase appliances, bedding, sofa, table and chairs as well as basic tools for living such as kitchenware, bedding linens, mosquito netting, and even a push lawnmower from a department store called “Radio Limited.” This store would not accept our Diner’s card, but we had no way to pay continue paying off the Diner’s card anyway since we hadn’t maintained a US bank account. What were we thinking anyway? However, since I was going to be making Rh$300/month as a soldier, they were happy to put everything on credit. Our payment was Rh$55/month.
That would leave us approximately Rh$125/month for all other expenses: food, gas at $5 gal, electric, phone. Oh, yeah--we can't keep renting a car. Hmm . . . we hadn’t thought about that! Well, we still had US$800 in cash, so we moved on.
Every home at least two servants who typically stayed in the tiny servant’s quarters at the back of the property. Servants got one room with cement or adobe style walls. The floor was dirt or, don’t freak out . . . hardened cow manure. Actually, many of the nicer farm homes owned by white Rhodesians had “dung” floors. It was packed down until it was as hard as cement and then polished with wax to a high gloss. Sounds gross, but it wasn’t. But, let’s not pretend that the servant’s quarters were anything more than cement-walled closets.
We had a housekeeper, Julia, whom we paid $12 month and a gardener, Langton whom we paid $10. All servants got weekly “rations”: meat, maize meal, and cooking oil. If I remember properly, the cost of rations was about Rh$2.10/week. These were the going rates and although this may sound like abject servitude, this kind of pay and housing was the dream of thousands of rural Africans who lived as subsistence farmers in the rural Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs).
Julia spoke only a few words of English as she had lived most of her life in the TTLs speaking “Shona.” Langton (16) had only recently come to Salisbury after his rural school had been burned down and his teacher killed by Mugabe’s terrorist forces. Langton did not have a full-time gardening job. He was assisting as a temporary gardener in the Alexandria Park area.
The renters who had been there before us had lost their gardener and did not want to hire someone just before they moved. The grass was about a foot tall near the back of the property and something needed to be done immediately. Langton noticed our arrival in the neighborhood, approaching us through Julia. I immediately hired him as a full-time gardener.
In the farming areas, the white farmers often worked side-by-side with their African laborers. They played together as children and most farmers were fluent in Shona, Ndebele or other dialects. This was not always the case for city dwellers. Communication was in hybrid English/African dialect developed in the mines of South Africa. It was only good for giving work directions: dig here, take that, fix this, etc. Since we knew neither that nor Shona, it was difficult to communicate very much with Julia. But Langton’s English was excellent because of his schooling.
Langton and I got to know each other pretty well. He educated me with regard to life in the rural areas. I told him about America. He would work for us even when we moved to a new house on the outskirts of Salisbury. Eventually, his 14 year old brother would come to live and work with us after his school was also destroyed by the so-called “freedom fighters.” And, eventually their mother would travel for hours by bus from the rural TTL, just to come meet Pegi and me and thank us for taking care of her sons.
Pegi tried to communicate with Julia, trying out some of the Shona phrases that she was learning. On our second day in our new home, Pegi was trying to tell Julia about America. Julia said: “Madam, America . . . is that a very big city?” She was serious, not joking. Her world was the TTL that she had grown up in and the big city, Salisbury. She had no concept of other countries or continents. Julia was typical of many of the Africans. Maybe this will help you understand how much of a “step up” it was for her to have this important job in the city.
At the same time, there were many Africans who had high school, trade school and even a few who had university educations. And, we would discover that white Rhodesians had not done as much as we might have liked to make it possible for these Africans to be promoted to compete for white jobs. But, you must remember that Rhodesia was completely tribal until the pioneer columns made their way up from South Africa in 1890. This was only 1976. Rhodesia had only existed as a small colony for 86 years. It took Americans a lot longer than that to get to Civil Rights. Let’s see . . . 1492 to 1965 . . . hmm, maybe Andrew Young shouldn’t have been so quick to judge and throw in his lot with Mugabe and Nkomo?
Before we left on our tour of Rhodesia, there was one more thing we needed. Pegi and I had discovered our love for dogs on one of our first dates. As we had walked into 2-K’s restaurant off Westheimer Road in Houston for some post bible study ice cream, we passed a car with windows partially lowered. Inside was a beautiful Springer Spaniel “making eyes” at us. You know how spaniels do it . . . one eyebrow up, the other down!
We had our hearts set on getting a puppy, and since we were in Rhodesia, we wanted a Rhodesian Ridgeback. After a quick scan of the ads in the Salisbury Herald, we drove to a farm on the outskirts of Salisbury. We were bowled over by four of the cutest little puppies, one of whom sidled up to me. Rh$15 later, he was slobbering all over our rental car.
Langton took to Rebel immediately. Rebel would follow Langton around the yard as he worked. One day I asked Langton how to translate “rebel” into Shona. He told me, gandanga. Of course, that was the same word used for the terrorists. Oops!
But this was one Rhodesian “Rebel” I loved. When we had to leave Rhodesia some 18 months later, it was Rebel that I would cry for at night.
Well, our house was set up. It was time to do some sightseeing.
Next: Tea with the judge.
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