Chapter 7 - The Place of the Killing

 

I have always liked trains, even though sometimes during the war waiting on a cold, bleak platform for one, long past it's appointed time, tears of impatience and exasperation would come to my eyes, and a nonchalant porter or portress 'couldn't care less'.

 The South African trains are fun. There were bunks to let down at night, a folding wash basin, good meals to be had in the dining room. Besides this there were many stops at stations with just a raised platform and a large signboard with names like Malapye, Nyamandlovu, Serowe, (where Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama thought to live in harmony) Mafeking (ghost of the past) and many more. By each of these stations squatted a native compound, scraped bare of growth and alive with children and native dogs whose only food was the scraps given from the train by commiserating passengers. The children were in all stages of dress, from nudity to 'G' strings, rags up to a decent shirt and shorts. They all cavorted and begged or sometimes displayed for sale some carved wooden animals or ornaments, or some baskets and all seemed light-hearted and carefree, but the women beside the huts, pounding the meal for the everlasting porridge, were often sullen or disinterested. Their men were either working elsewhere, or perhaps sleeping off the effects of a 'beerdrink' but they were seldom to be seen.

We slept two nights on the train, and early on the second morning we drew into Bulawayo - The Place of the Killing - past railway lines blocked with goods wagons, and everywhere native men squatting, walking, and occasionally working.

The locomotives were enormous smoke- belching steam trains, built in Britain long before the war. They were coal- burning in South Africa but changed to wood- burning further north. The wood was loaded onto large tenders at pre- determined places from enormous piles of cut wood which lined the tracks for mile after mile. I suppose it was thebeginning of the massive clearing of the bush and forests which changed the appearance of large areas near the 'line of rail'.

We were taken by a native driven taxi to a small but pleasant hotel. The day was dull and with a dust filled wind that teased our hair and wrinkled our eyes. It was Empire Day, and the shops were all closed. Few white people were about, as the holiday had kept them from their place of business. Bulawayo is normally a busy place where money is made and spent - the latter often before the former - as credit is a tempting evil few resist. I found in fact that shop assistants at that time paid little attention to cash customers and a large healthy bill was much more respected. Bulawayo was never a mining town but it still retains a flavour of those times when prospectors would come in on a 'bender', and the bar on a corner with swinging half-doors and the wooden floored Bioscope (or picture house) nearby could call up a picture of the past. There are good shops with roofs built out over the pavements as shelter from the hot sun or torrential rains, very wide roads where cars can park on the middle and at either kerb, these planned by Dr Jamieson it is said, wide enough for a team of oxen to turn in.

After a week or two of sounding out our prospects for business we settled down on 50 acres of land, 8 miles from town, in a rather faded bungalow, and prepared to work hard for a place in the metaphorical sun.

 The town was very 'wild west' with the wide pavements and certainly the bars with their 'bat-wing' doors and in some cases hitching rails for horses and sawdust on the floors.

 It is not the purpose of my story to tell you here the trials of our business venture - that will make a different kind of story one day - but during the months of our stay in Bulawayo, I got to know the town and business life as I took a job ( to preserve the family capital to some extent) in one of the large offices. The wide door was open to the street and 'boys' selling peaches, oranges, avocados, grapes and guavas came and went frequently with the wares. and a considerable amount of eating was indulged in during business hours. There is a free and easy atmosphere in these overseas offices quite different from the staid and businesslike gloom in Britain, and as far as I could judge efficiency was not much impaired. Clerks might slip out for a coffee or a beer, a pair of nylons or a bag of sticky cakes without comment from the seniors, and on special sports occasions arrangements were made for several employees to have a few hours off in turn. Our grey day of introduction to Bulawayo gave place to cold weather, when the open door of the office chilled us so much that an electric heater at our feet and a jacket did little to comfort us. I could hardly believe this was Africa, Johannesburg had a little snow.

During these first months my nose felt always dry and my throat ached and I was heavy for sleep, but this phase passed off as I became used to the climate and the altitude. The cold did not last long and then gradually came the heat, until, sitting at my desk perspiration would trickle down my back and legs, and I recalled visits to the Botanical Gardens in Glasgow where the tropical plants room had been my pleasure - heavy steamy heat that clung to my skin and made me feel one with the vegetation there. In the evenings it was a joy to walk in the dusk down the streets of closed but lit shops wearing only a thin frock and an undergarment, lapped in comfort by the warm air.

There were regular dances at the hotels, when people from many walks of life appeared resplendent in evening dress, and only accents or behaviour marked them from those accustomed all their lives to ease and luxury. There were four bioscopes, and these were much attended, not in the casual way we attend all but premieres, but on time and in gala dress. The show is not continuous, and is preceded by a display of advertisements, a cartoon, sport or travel short and the news, then again the advertisements, this time so familiar that nearly all the audience departs to an adjoining cafe for coffee or drinks or a chat, and then back for the main picture.

I take a complete film show as a relaxation and I found these social occasions rather irksome at first. At times, enterprising dress shops gave a mannequin parade. Quite well done, and well liked I think, and as there are so many interruptions in a Rhodesian film show, an unusual and pleasant one is quite welcome. This country is very dress conscious and well dressed in the main. Prices compared quite favourably with those I had last seen in Britain and wages were higher, but no-one seems to save. Rents are very dear, foodstuffs plentiful, tempting and quite expensive.

The natives too are dress conscious and have an eye for good materials and style. Any money they make is spent on clothes, after they have bought the 'boys' meat and (maize) meal that is their staple food. The butchers shops are always full of a queue of natives at one end of the counter, buying for their 'misses' or for themselves. At that time they paid 6d a pound for their meat but it is twice that much now. Their varied garments were a fascinating study - some composed almost entirely of patches, either sewn by themselves or machined by an Indian for a few pence. Most have now khaki shorts and either a bright colourful shirt or a network of rags which one wonders how it can be possible to take off or put on. The town women mostly wear short cotton dresses discarded by a 'missus' and affect coloured crochet berets which cover the lovely shape of their heads, but which pleases them because it suggests the possibility of hair, and they can grow no more than the tight curling fuzz close to their scalps.

Indian traders are plentiful and many Indian families have now their own cars and good houses, and their children attend Indian schools in gym costume, and have an African 'nanny' to attend them. Their feeling of superiority is apparent. They have one night a week set apart for them and for 'coloureds' at the bioscope, but the African cannot go.

Bulawayo has a lovely park full of flowers and flowering trees, good modern public buildings and schools, a large and popular bathing pool and a race course where local business and professional men run their horses, and the ladies of Bulawayo can be seen in unprofessional mannequin displays at every meeting.

At night when the bioscopes close, and drinks are not to be had in the hotels, there are three or four stalls parked outside the Town Hall, where those reluctant to finish the night's entertainment can draw up their cars and order from native waiters, who rush forward with trays bearing such succulent fare as 'cullied lice', mixed grills, chicken rolls, tea or coffee. The Africans in their white suits, flitting across the road with balanced trays, chaffing each other and showing off with an eye to the white men, seem very happy, and to sit there when the town is bedded down and the flowery trees heavy in the hazy light from the stalls, and street lamps, the air warm and the knowledge of a sunny morning to awaken to, is a very pleasant relaxation.

The weather gets hotter and more oppressive. There is a tension in the air which gives the months of September and October the name of 'suicide months'. Clouds begin to form in the sky, building up for the rains, and then they come sweeping in after a rushing wind and down in torrents, the gutters awash, and the gulleys across the roads, which are so disconcerting at first when driving in Bulawayo, are full of storm water, keeping it under control until it can take its turn in the mad rush down the drains. Thunder crashes and lightning flares and then from the earth comes the cool rich smell of rain-soaked vegetation, and the tension is gone. The sun beams out again and over the days builds up its force, to explode again in another storm. Out of the town the roads become black, sticky mud, the parallel tar strips lift out of the mire and cars must go warily indeed. Natives lying in shop doorways as watchmen, curl their blanket tighter round their heads and sleep on, as wild animals in the bush curl deeper in their lairs and await the calm.

Enough of Bulawayo! That enterprise was not to be, and on a sunny April day just as the rains were finishing, we loaded our old second hand car with provisions, blankets and crockery. and set off for the north, to see a very different Africa, the British Government's Africa, Africa for the Africans. The Black North.

Our business was a construction company using a specialist sprayed concrete. It was a good system and we built a house for ourselves using it. After only 6 weeks in the country I was shot in the leg with a shotgun ..which should have laid me up, but I was still able to carry on learning the business from my father and even driving our 5 ton lorry with a plaster on my leg. The business broke up for personal reasons.