Chapter 13 - Building the Bush House

 

Alex was packing the truck for his first journey into the bush. There was a lot to be remembered, for once there he had no shops or neighbours to rely on and his immediate programme was to recruit some local labour and establish a bush house near to the Kalungu River where there was a bridge to be built.

Our son, who was then seventeen, was full of enthusiasm and with his khaki hat of the back of his head, short khaki shorts and an open white shirt, he handed up boxes of groceries, tools, rope, tent poles, camp beds, water bags and all the impedimenta for their trip. Alex, up aloft, tried to find a cool place for the perishables, and a good distribution of weight for the heavier articles in preparation for a journey of three hundred miles over rough dirt roads. June was the best time of year, for the rains had been over for two months and the roads had dried, but not so much that the thick dust would envelope them continually. The heat too, had not built up yet, so travelling would be comparatively pleasant.

Around the vanette there were the inevitable curious Africans, noting all the packages and enquiring from each other as to the destination and purpose of such a journey and it would not be long before every African in the area would know just what was afoot. As Alex got down from the truck, one of the Africans approached him, 'Bwana, I want a job!' He was a stockily built and not very young, and had about him a steadiness, a control, that was not seen in most of the Bemba tribe. 'What kind of job?. I'm going to Kalungu, near the Tanganyika border, and will be living in tents...what can you do ?'. The African smiled and looked down at his hard, bare feet. 'That is near my home and I want to go there. I am a cook'. 'Can you make bread--without an oven?'. 'Yes, Bwana'. Alex looked at him, liking his quiet assurance, but, from experience, cautious. 'How do I know you won't leave as soon as you get to your home - that you just want the lift?' 'I will not leave, Bwana'. 'Right!. Get your things on the truck, and we'll be off in about an hour's time. Have you got a citupa ?' The African produced his card which all working men collect from the District Commissioner and on which is marked the date of starting and finishing jobs. signed by the employer. He had been signed off a month previously as a cook from a local house, so was not running away, and all was in order.

Citupas are rather like our own work cards in that they can protect both the employer and the employee, but unlike our cards they became very unreliable when it was found that they showed a bad record of perhaps twelve jobs on a month, or a year or two with no record at all - which often meant they had been in prison for theft . The cards could be destroyed, and a nice clean new one obtained from the D.C. They were also stolen or lent or purchased, if favourable, to get a job, and names were borrowed or adopted as required. There was also quite a business in references, as some of the new 'schoolboys' could write a fair hand, and could copy a good reference into the little notebook all Africans carried. The best way to employ an African Was to look at his citupa and references with reservations and to choose him by ones own judgement. We found an African with a ready smile and a sense of humour was always the best one to employ, and those with a scowl or a whine were to be avoided at all costs.

Simon Sinkala was our 'treasure's ' name, and he was not a Bemba. He was of the Winamwanga tribe and belonged to an area near the Tanganyika border. This tribe had been oppressed far in the past before the white man come, by the Bembas, who had been a violent warrior tribe who killed and enslaved any weaker tribes in their path. Later when we talked about this, Simon was to tell me 'The Bembas killed all our men and stole all our women, The men's heads were stuck on the poles of the kias (huts)' I asked if there were many. 'As many as these stones' he said, pointing to a heap of stones on the bridge site. Although the tribes now lived and worked together at times, there was still a lurking fear, and on the first occasion on which we bought a group of Winamwangas to live in a camp site a few miles from the camp site of Bembas, there were pleas for a gun 'to protect us from the Bembas who will kill us'. 'They are not allowed to do that now', I said primly, and with that assurance, and the sight of my husband and son, strong and confident, and with a gun, they were content.

Alex and Roy had found their site with a little difficulty as the territory was completely new to them and the path itself down to the river was only bush land with trees pushed down where they impeded progress. The Roads Dept. had done this and left, but with the map the men had, and the spot marked 'mile 38' from Isoka, which was the last and only bush station they had passed through after leaving Kasama, they found the clearing and bumped over the tough grass and small anthills, dodging the remaining trees, until they came to the river, two miles from the road. There was no sign of life, but the broad brown river flowed oilily with ancient outcrops of stone on the far bank.

The afternoon was well advanced, so the first thing to do was to get the tent up for the night, as there is no twilight to use, and by six o'clock all would be dark. The three men unloaded the truck, put up the tent with food supplies inside and camp beds installed, lit the hurricane lamps, and when Simon had built a blazing fire outside they enjoyed their first tent meal together as the big red sun blurred out over the sky in orange and purple on a background of smoky blue, and sank perceptibly behind the horizon leaving the chill, black night. During the night they were disturbed by coughings and grunts, the knocking over of tins and the obvious visit of nocturnal animals, but although the gun was loaded and ready by the tent flap. They were too tired and too wise to investigate. The men were the intruders,

The next morning was brilliant, as early morning in the African bush usually is - a dancing, sparkling brilliance which sets the blood dancing along with it. Huge glittering cobwebs festooned the grass and the river had lost it's oiliness and tumbled round the rocks questingly, reflecting the far off cloudless blue sky. Simon proved as good as his word, and by digging a hole in the ground and using a cleaned paraffin ton as an oven he managed to produce a very good loaf until our house was built and the little black 'dover' wood stove was set up in an adjoining grass hut with the stove pipe pointing well above the thatch and to windward of the house.

'Now for labour' said Alex 'and then we can get a house built and collect Mom and your sister' and Roy replied with a smile, 'Right, where do we start looking?' 'I have a gang of road boys coming this morning to start off with cutting poles and gathering grass and then we can employ local boys as we need them.' 'I have brothers who will work for you Bwana' said Simon, 'If I can go to my village I will tell them to come' . He stood quietly, trying not to show how anxious he was to get home, with the expression of a well trained butler anxious only to please. 'Yes, Simon, you can go but you must first wait until the house is prepared for the Mama, and while we go to Kasama for her you can go to your home'.

This is interesting in view of recent events in Zaire and Rwanda which contain related tribes. The opression and massacre of subject tribes was stopped under European rule but restarted almost immediately on 'independence'.. but nowadays it is put under the guise of 'anti government rebels'.

 Labour was not long in arriving as bush telegraph in Africa is most far-reaching and quick. I suppose it is because every tiny incident different from their norm, is noted and passed on from one to the other, and as they move about, hunting or moving villages or families, or visiting for beer drinks of funerals, activities of strangers are soon known. Huge, apparently empty landscapes suddenly produce a village full of curious Africans, and men with the promise of money and food and the satisfying of their curiosity as to what is going on, and the prestige of belonging to such an outfit, are not slow to join, though many get 'tired' after a week or two and leave to go back to their villages and talk for hours about the strange ways of the white man.

The 'road boys' (from the normal Public Works Dept.) had brought the poles and grass and with a little trouble found one long pole to make the ridge of the roof, so with all the available labour and Alex and Roy to supervise and help. The frame was up, grass was lashed to the poles with lushishi (tree bark stripped and rolled on the knee to make a tough string ) and the floor tamped down with wet mud. It was a large house, and consisted of one main veranda with the outside walls built only to waist height on the side facing the river, and at the back, three bedrooms separated by walls made of poles and 'dagga' which is a laterite or anthill mud puddled in a large dug hole and slapped on to the poles with enthusiasm, to dry and crack and be plastered again.

Alex and Roy made frames of poles for a window opening in the bedrooms, as this was beyond the scope of African architecture, They build their Kias in a circle of poles with one door opening, and a round grass roof - made on the ground and slung up when ready. They build a fire in the centre with little if any opening for the smoke and sleep in a warm but very smoky room wrapped in a blanket and lying on a grass woven mat. I often wondered why they did not try more elaborate houses as the poles and grass were there for the taking and the land was unending and free, but as the headman usually had a rather bigger kia set a little apart, I supposed that it was not 'done' to have ideas above one's station.

In about ten days our house was up, and most useful of all, the 'Rhodesian Boiler' built outside at the back. and supplying hot and cold water to the house. Every European house in those days had it's Rhodesian boiler. A stand was built of bricks or concrete and on it side by side were placed two drums with piping fixed in each, leading into a sink or bath in the house. Each house employed a 'stick and water' boy whose sole job was to keep the drums filled with water and to gather wood for the fire maintained under the hot water drum. In bush stations there were a few stand pipes from which water was drawn, and boys could be seen filling and rolling drums to and from the houses. In the bush of course, the water was carried from the river. Water was always used carefully as for some months there was a drought and then baths had to be given up in favour of watering vegetables. For a few weeks before the rains the rivers would become very low and sometimes completely dry in the bush and then the vegetables would wilt and the few poor cattle perish and the villagers would make their fires up and have a feast. The women would look further afield for water holes for their cooking and await the rains.

I remember travelling about a thousand miles north just before the rains with a leaking radiator, and the difficulty to obtain water; we would go a hundred miles without seeing a drop, and then perhaps manage to get a tin fill from a village by paying in money or food for it. There was mealie meal, curry powder and a few other coagulants in the radiator by the time we reached our destination and we smelt like a travelling hot food shop!

The bath Alex and Roy built was a very superior article. They had used a galvanised camp bath as a mould, with shuttering around it and poured concrete in, which turned it into a rather opulent looking streamlined chariot, but rather rough and cold to the bottom when in use. I feel sure that although our house will by now have been fully digested by white ants that bath is still sitting there beside the river and that black archaeologists of the future will point it out to their students as an example of the Colonists Era.

Our sanitation was very primitive, though not so primitive as the Africans who used the river and the bush. We had a hole dug about 12' deep with a wooden- holed seat above it and a grassed screen around it, and a tin full of earth to throw down for decency's sake. It was quite adequate, but I never felt alone. I always expected a snake to glide in, or to step onto an army of Matabele ants on the march or to sit on a family of itching caterpillars..(which I did).

The ground around our house and around the kias of all villages in Central Africa, was scraped clean of all vegetation, leaving nothing but the reddish brown earth and although this was not so attractive as a grassy bank would have been, it was very necessary to enable one to see snakes and other dangerous animals if they approached, and I was glad of it, also in the dry weather where there was nothing to catch fire and spread quickly. There are many fires before the rains and huge sections of bush are burnt and blackened. It is fascinating to watch on a dark night, a distant hill encircled with a coronet of fire, or a thin thread of it snaking down a hillside in patterns, but to pass by a roaring sheet of bush with hawks hovering over it to catch their terrified prey as it tries to rush for safety, is a more realistic experience and highlights the real terror of fire in the bush.

 

 

 

 

Part of the pay for the men working on the bridge was with food.. maize meal and meat. We had been 'issued' with a .303 rifle for protection and hunting. Although only seventeen I was nominated the hunter and continued to supply our 200 workers and their families with at least 1 lb each per week. The local languages I know do not have a generic name for 'game'. The word for 'meat' (nyama) is also the one used to describe animals in general. This perhaps explains the Africans attitude towards animals.... not as individual beasts but simply as meat-on-the-hoof.