Chapter 9 - Livingston to Lusaka

My husband went to sort out customs and immigration matters and possible business, so we then decided to push on to Lusaka, the capital of Northern Rhodesia. We had heard how rapidly it was expanding and what a lot of building was going foreword. Livingstone had once been the capital, and what a romantic setting for a capital city - but no doubt there were good and sufficient reasons for it's being left.

Another hundred miles of monotonous bush brought us to Kalomo where a humble hotel drowses beside the mail order store of Macmurgas. We pulled in for a drink, a meal and a chat with the very rotund proprietor and his wife, the store manager and a few tobacco farmers.

It was a pleasant oasis, and here we met with the famous out-station hospitality. A handsome fair man in a bright tartan backwoods shirt insisted that we spend the night at his farm. He was one of those who had a grant from Govt. to help buy the land and it was up to him to make a success of it. He went ahead to warn his wife of the advent of four strangers, and we followed leisurely the eight miles onwards. Their house was a long, low building of burnt brick, sparsely furnished, with gauzed windows in place of glass, built by themselves and not yet finished. A gentle dark wife and jolly baby welcomed us. It seemed to be the back of beyond, but at sundowner time, up came three couples from neighbouring farms, and the talk was of crops, supplies, Africans and sewing patterns. We were accepted with friendliness but no curiosity.

On the road next day, we met no cars, no wild animals, and few natives; just bush on either side of us, merging into a blur of green, with sometimes the cheering sight of a red-leafed tree or bright flowering bush, The radiator of the Brown Arrow had sprung a leak and we were constantly running low on water, and holding our fingers crossed that we would find water in time. We had already put into our radiator curry, an egg and kassava meal, and had undoubtedly a very appetising soup, but like all soups, water had to be added when it boiled low. We were entertained to a cup of tea and a homely chat with an old couple called Pretorious, when we called at their railway hut for water. They were a real old Afrikaans couple with the family photographs framed on the wall and a surfeit of antimacassars and table mats, and they were happy to tell us of their married daughter in Nkana, the mining town in the Copperbelt, and how fine her house was.

We passed through Choma, drowsing in the sun it's boarding school the busiest part of it, and on to Monze, 60 odd miles beyond where we refreshed ourselves at the only hotel, then on to Mazabuka.

These bush stations are very similar one to the other. They comprise a small collection of one storey white houses and a few shops kept by an African or Indian, with a hotch-potch of goods on sale, no window space at all, and consequently a dim interior. There is usually a one story hotel with a dusty veranda, Land Rovers or cars parked close up to it, and in certain areas farmers' trucks and an implement or two to be seen. There may be a nondescript club with a tennis court, and out of the main street, a collection of brick thatched buildings which is the Boma, or offices of Government native administration. Here the Union Jack hangs still in the heat, and is raised and lowered at sun-up and sun-down by an African whose duty it is, sometimes accompanied by a bugle or the beating of a drum. These government messengers are smartly dressed in navy blue tunics trimmed with scarlet, stockings, boots and a black fez. The Police wear navy woollen jerseys and khaki helmets, stockings and heavy boots of which they are inordinately proud.

Dress is important to their prestige and they have a snobbish outlook towards those of their brothers who still wear a cloth, or the children who wear no clothes at all. I believe even the native prisoners find a certain consolation on the fact that they can wear a strong drill tunic and trousers faintly printed with sparse arrows.

Kafue Bridge

Through Mazabuka and towards Lusaka the scenery changed. Here was a farming area and it was pleasant to see undulating ground worked and cared for - long vistas down dreamy valleys where we were told game abounded, and on the Munali Pass which had a certain ruggedness like Scotland, then across the Kafue on an old pontoon pulled by Africans hauling on a wire stretched across the river. A new bridge was being put up there - one of the wartime bridges from the Thames, and with the heavy traffic of public works travelling up and down to the river, the Kafue Hotel verandah was clouded in dust.

This was a bridge that was dismantled from the Thames and my father had been offerred the job of dismantling it before we left UK.