Chapter 19 - Eleanore's Visit

In September our elder daughter Eleanore, who was in Bulawayo, wrote to say she was coming up for a holiday. She was very envious of our life in the bush and longing to join us and we were delighted at the prospect of showing her our 'Tarzan' existence. She could get a train as far as Broken Hill, wait for two days to catch a bus, which at that time was a very rough affair and very slow, as the Africans stopped by every village to buy mealies, paw-paw, or kasava. The villagers would swarm out, and the African passengers and there would be a great deal of talking and laughing and no worry about schedules. Eleanore was the only white person travelling that day, and although she was frustrated by the many stops she enjoyed the new scenes and activities, and reached the Crested Crane Hotel at Mpika stiff and tired but happy to see us there to meet her. She had left Bulawayo on the Saturday night and got as far as Mpika by Wednesday afternoon and as we still had some 300 miles to do in the truck we decided to spend the night at Mpika and leave early the following morning.

The Crested Crane Hotel was the only hotel in 600 miles of the Great North Road, Mkushi, near Broken Hill to the south and Mrs Neale's little Rest House to the north being the nearest, but in spite of that it was seldom crowded, and we easily got rooms. The hotel itself was a rambling red brick bungalow owned by A P Marriott who had once been in the B.S.A. Police, but was now elderly and fat and ran his hotel just as he wished, refusing to be polite to those he disliked, but being the soul of kindness to unfortunates or people he took a fancy to. He disliked humbugs, cheats and those with delusions of grandeur, and of course, he was either liked very much or disliked intensely. He was 'A P' to everybody and known far and wide.

We had dinner in a large room with murals of wild animals around the walls, looking out onto a large field which was used as an air stop for small planes, which A.P. would re-fuel. The hotel had a plant to generate a certain amount of electricity, but each bedroom had it's candle for after ten o'clock the supply was usually cut off. Eleanore was enthralled with her new surroundings. We all spoke at once to try and acquaint her with all that she was still to see, while she in turn was full of questions. We had had a tiring but very happy day and fell onto bed in candle-light, well content.

The next morning was as usual full of sunshine and warmth and although the grass was beginning to wither and brown, around the Hotel where A.P. had it watered, there was greenery and moist earth and a rich smell of vegetation. Birds were singing their repetitive little tunes, no wild joyous birdsong like in England, but definite rather doleful sets of notes which African birds have. After a good breakfast we packed ourselves into the vanette and off we set up the Great North Road once again, pointing out the little there was of landmarks, but rejoicing in the lovely sunshine and the occasional sight of a grand grouping of rocks and valley, or a lovely red leaved tree, or a strange heavy bird with a blood red wattle, looking for snakes.

Roy had been left behind at our camp and when we arrived in the afternoon the fires were smoking into the still air and our long low bush house with it's open veranda welcomed us with two braziers glowing with charcoal standing on the dirt floor and the table laid for the evening meal. Simon, Unit and any others we passed on the road near the camp, welcomed us extravagantly with their curtseys and 'Mapoleni, Mama. Mapoleni, Bwana. Mapoleni, Mama Hilda', and then waiting to have Eleanore introduced to them, noting her height and weight, her hair what she wore and how she behaved. 'This is Mama Eleanore, from Bulawayo' I explained, and she would get a rather more serious curtsey as a newcomer, and cries of 'Au-We, au-we!' which was always used to indicate surprised interest. 'Oh, this is wonderful' said Eleanore 'the house, the camp, the people, animals - everything'.

When we had first come, the nearby villagers had spied on us from a little distance behind trees, and if Alex or Roy stood up they would run off like deer but by now they were more familiar, and at times it was difficult to have any privacy as we were a great novelty, especially the young ones, the like of which they had never seen Eleanore had a great wealth of hair which they stared at with awe. They knew we liked eggs for it was one thing we often bought from them with salt- as much salt as the size of the egg. They loved salt and could not often get it and at that time they had nowhere to spend money--but what impressed them was having so much hair and being egg eaters. They believed that if they ate eggs they would lose their hair. The pure African cannot grow hair longer than the thick curly covering over the skull, and if one of them did have longer hair, it indicated a mixture of blood.

Hilda's hair was darker and not so long as Eleanore's and while they had been interested in Hilda's appearance, they were even more impressed with Eleanore. While the men were at work we three would play records on the battery radiogram we had recently purchased and it was strange to hear Beethoven's symphonies swelling out into the sunny, dreaming afternoon air among little crowds of African women and children who were fascinated with this box which made sounds unintelligible to their ears which were only attuned to African drums and stringed gourds and hand pianos - little squares of wood with strips of metal tied at one end which were played by plucking at the loose ends with the thumb.

Inspector Abbott the Policeman who lived 16 miles north of us had lent us his collection of Handel's Messiah and we found that the only record which gave a response from the African women was the Hallelujah Chorus. One woman in fact rolled in the dust, ululating from the back of her throat as is usual under great xcitement, and although we were glad for the musical appreciation, it was rather alarming to see her. We found also that they were not responsive to beauty, at least as we see it. I tried sometimes to draw attention to a magnificent sunset or other scenic beauty, but Unit would look vaguely around and say 'where is it, Mama!'.

 We found we quite often had a visitor, people passing up or down the Great North Road, curious about our little road , might call in for a cup of tea, and a policeman who had been installed near Tunduma to build a Police post was glad of an occasional visit to and from us. He was all alone with hundreds of natives and one day for our interest and his native's entertainment, he organised a dance. The clearing was lit by a huge fire and the music was the drums and a home made guitar and of course, the singing. The main dancing was in a circle round a drum either the women or the young boys and they did a shuffling back and forward step, picannins slung on their backs in a cloth, mostly sleeping peacefully but perfectly content while the rythms wailed on and on.

Our Inspector Abbott had had soup prepared and this was ladled out to their great pleasure, then on with the dance. Beer brewing had not been allowed for this occasion as he wished the dances to remain respectable, though even without beer one routine had to be stopped as proving rather too crude for my young daughter to see. The men formed a circle while the women shuffled round and picked their man to whom they did the same backward-forward steps nearer and nearer, then joining in the dance. There was also a solely male dance where each man in turn threw himself with a leap and a twist into the centre of the circle raising clouds of dust and excitement.

Africans love to dance and sing and they are very good at harmony, their songs are mostly simple songs of every-day happenings and very often nothing but repetition of a sentence as to lyric and a rather monotonous refrain, but the timing is always perfect. A favourite song from the copperbelt is "I am a penny", and they have many about various Bwanas who have done peculiar things -"Bwana John from Tanganyika" was one popular one, but I could never find out what he had done !. It was a good night and then back again to our bridge again.

Some of the visitors we had were travellers who had come down across the Sahara heading for Southern Africa and their journeys would be worthy of recounting because of the primitive conditions of roads and facilities at that time.

Again here it seems as though the Europeans of the '80s and '90s have adopted a few things from the Africans !!. The same applies to 'music' and 'dance'.. one wonders whether 'civilisation' is going forward or backwards! I remember the 'dance' well. It was very exciting and 'sexy' and I can understand my parent's concern for my sister's moral welfare. (They didn't seem to be aware of mine!). Her comments about the monotonous, rythmic music with repeated simple phrases of meaningless lyrics seems to be unimportant nowadays when 'pop' music seems to be exactly that.