26 -- A Rhodesian “Rebel” I Loved (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Dec 1976)

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 small 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 had 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 cook/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 per person.   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, and approached 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 did have high school and trade school degrees. However, there were very 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.

Since we were from the southern US—Pegi from Texas, me from Kentucky, we decided to name him in honor of the hero soldiers of another misunderstood nation, the Confederate States of America.  We named him “Rebel.” 

Rebel Full Grown

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:  27 — Tea with the Judge (Rhodesia: Dec 1976)

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24 -- Two eggs Boss? You sure? (Salisbury, Rhodesia: Nov 1976)

As we walked down the steps from the Air Rhodesia 707 we caught the scent of flowers in the aftermath of the afternoon rain.  The sky was blue as the sun broke through the scattering clouds.  This was the freshest air I had ever breathed.  In spite of the excitement of actually being so far from home and in a country that was in the midst of a war, I had never felt more at peace.

Of course, the shooting was many miles away in the rural villages of the Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs) or remote farms.  We really had no idea what to expect, but we were not at all prepared for the beauty of the rolling hills fronted by green fields.  There were a few other cars and small farm trucks on the road that Sunday afternoon as well as locals on bicycles or walking by the side of the road. 

For those of you who have never traveled to a country influenced by the British, it is a bit nerve-racking the first time you are a passenger on the other side of the road, especially with oncoming traffic!  What made it a bit crazier was that RSM Springer’s car was actually an American import with the steering wheel on the left instead of the right as in most local vehicles.  Since I was sitting in the right-side passenger seat, it became my responsibility to advise Harry when it was safe to pass on the two lane asphalt.  I wasn’t quite ready to have that much responsibility!  Nevertheless, we survived the trip into town. 

Salisbury in 1977 was very urban.  With numerous office buildings, some as high as 10 or 15 stories, it resembled a medium sized American city, but one that had stopped new construction in the early 60s.  The downtown avenues were four or more lanes with parking meters lining them like any typical American city.  What was not typical was how spotless and clean everything was.  I would later learn that there was no littering problem in Rhodesia.  Everything was reclaimed and reused whether it was newspaper used to wrap a loaf of bread or old tires used to make sandals.  Everywhere you looked there you saw trees and flowers carefully landscaped to break up the hard edges of the streets and buildings.  Salisbury was a beautiful city.

To see a 10-minute video of Rhodesia from the mid-seventies, click on this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYDg3ofh7dM

Most of the vehicles had been on the road at least since the early 60s, but were sparkling clean without a visible dent.   They were mostly smaller vehicles such as the Japanese imports Datsun, Toyota, and Mitsubishi.  Of course there were also the British imports Austin, Cooper, and Rover, but almost all of them were at least twelve years old.  There were some older Mercedes, Jaguar sedans, small BMWs and the very rare American vehicle like RS< Springer’s.  Most of the trucks were Japanese imports brought in from South Africa.  The world had stopped trading with Rhodesia with UN-imposed sanctions in 1964 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain.

We were staying at the Jameson Hotel, one of the three major hotels in Salisbury.  The Monomatapa was a 19-story modern building that catered to tourists.  It had a beautiful Olympic pool and was a favorite hangout for nightlife.  The Meikles was a five-star refurbished older colonial style hotel, very typical of what you would expect from watching movies about the British empire.  The very wealthy stayed there.  But we were staying at the Jameson as it had been recommended as the place where “average” Rhodesians stayed when they came to Salisbury.  Since we might be in the hotel for a few weeks, we wanted to meet Rhodesians, not tourists or a bunch of stuffy Brit types!

The Jameson turned out to be our favorite place to stay or visit for a meal for all the time we were in Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe.  [The hotel grill was called the Sandawana Restaurant.] After Harry dropped us at the entrance, the porter brought our bags up to our room.  I didn’t have any Rhodesian currency yet, so I had nothing to tip the porter.  I promised I would catch him later and gave him an American $5 bill.  Although I was embarrassed that I could only tip him at the going American rate of $5 for one bag, he didn’t seem to mind even though we had several large suitcases and a number of other smaller bags.  It was Sunday afternoon, so the banks were closed. 

Once I exchanged some American dollars for Rhodesian dollars at an exchange rate of one for one in those days, I discovered that the going rate for a tip in Rhodesia was 5¢ per bag, not $5.  No wonder the porter was so happy with the $5 bill I gave him.  It was equivalent to carrying 100 bags!   Needless to say, this particular porter was at our beck and call for the entire time we stayed at the Jameson.  Of course, I continued to tip him appropriately in the local currency, but he was my friend forever! 

After we unpacked, we went for a short walk in the park a couple of blocks from the hotel.  The park was about two square city blocks and composed of meticulously manicured grass, carefully planted gardens which were filled with flowers and bushes, and overshadowed with dozens of trees.  We especially liked the Jacaranda trees with their purple-blossomed branches.  People were out walking in the cool post-shower air.  This was the start of rainy season which typically meant that there were gentle showers in the morning and again in the afternoon.  I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that we were totally enchanted.

Returning to our hotel room, we opted for a short afternoon nap as jet lag and all the excitement had exhausted us.  It was about 4:30 when we laid down, thinking that we would head downstairs to one of the hotel restaurants at about 6:00. 

We awakened at 10:00 pm.  Obviously, we had missed dinner.  It was Sunday, and the whole city was ready for bed by now.  So, I called room service.  Unfortunately, they had locked everything away for the night.  All that we could get was some hot tea with milk and a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream.  We took what we could get.  My porter buddy was happy to deliver it to me no matter how late it was!  I placed a wake-up call for 5:00 am.  I intended to be the first person at the restaurant for breakfast.

The next morning I went for a quick jog.  I hadn’t been able to exercise in the last few days and didn’t want to show up at the recruiting office all out of shape.  My running shoes got pretty muddy from the field that I found to run in.  In a hurry to shower and get to breakfast, I left the shoes behind the bathroom door to clean later. 

Pegi was waiting for the porter to bring her a hairdryer.  We had left our personal appliances behind since we knew they would burn up in the 220 voltage.  Because of the trade sanctions and the scarcity of foreign exchange to purchase imports, the Jameson had only one hairdryer per floor.

I called room service for Pegi so that she could eat while I went down to the restaurant.  We were both hungry and desperate for coffee, so I ordered her a full breakfast with two scrambled eggs, 2 strips of bacon, a bowl of fruit and a pot of coffee. 

Seating myself in the hotel grill, I was able to help myself to a bowl of fruit:  guava, mango, grapes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and grenadilla (passion fruit).  A waiter brought me a pitcher of coffee with real cream which I also liberally splashed over my bowl of fruit.  My waiter returned to get my breakfast order.  He was a pleasant looking African man with an engaging smile and a twinkle in his eye.  Maybe he had heard about the crazy American who was tipping at 100 times the going rate?  His English was very good, with an accent that I would soon come to appreciate that was part British, part Afrikaans, and uniquely African.  He called me “boss” which was the equivalent of “sir.”

“What can I get you to eat, boss?”

“Do you have a menu?”

“No, boss.  You just tell me what you want and I will get it for you.”

“Oh, okay!  Well, I would like two scrambled eggs, bacon, two slices of toast and keep the coffee coming.”

With a quizzical look on his face, he looked at the other side of my table and asked:

“Two eggs boss?”

“Yes, I am pretty hungry and would normally have more eggs, but two eggs should be enough, especially with all this fruit.  I don’t want to stuff myself.”

“Two boss?  Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure.  Two will be enough.”

Looking around at the handful of people who were at the grill so early, he said,

“Okay boss.  Two eggs!”

About 10 minutes later, as I was finishing my second bowl of fruit, he returned with an entire plate of eggs—must have been four or five, with a side dish of about four strips of bacon and another plate with six slices of toast.

He placed them in front of me and then set an identical order of eggs, bacon and toast across from me.  Looking around the room with a look of concern, he smiled and withdrew.

You see in Africa, “two” means two servings.  When you order eggs, you don’t order American style by the number eggs, but by the number of plates.  I suddenly realized that when he had been looking across the table and around the room, he believed I was expecting someone else to join me.  He understood me to be ordering eggs for two people and was probably expecting to see my wife.

I did manage to make a dent in all the portions he set before me.  I was embarrassed enough at my mistake.  I couldn’t leave the second order untouched.  It was a good thing I had gone for a run that morning to ramp up my metabolism to burn calories!

As I came back to our room where Pegi had just finished with the communal hair dryer, room service arrived with her breakfast.  Yes, you guessed it.  There were two servings of eggs, bacon, fruit and coffee.  I had a little of the coffee, but I didn’t have room for anything else.  And I had an 8:00 appointment with Major Lamprecht at the recruiting office.  I would have to get my running shoes cleaned off later for an afternoon run or I might be too big for the Rhodesian Army!  (Later that afternoon, I discovered that our porter had cleaned the shoes for me, washed and ironed my shoelaces!)

Next:  25 — Fit or Fat?  (Salisbury, Rhodesia:  Nov 1976)

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