NOVEMBER MEMORIES

WELL I remember Guy Fawkes day as a child. We would dress up a doll in a pram supposed to be an effigy of Guy Fawkes and go to neighbor’s houses asking for “A Penny for the Guy!” and singing “Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, We see no reason should ever been forgot” Of course the pennies went on sweets generally black and white striped bull’s eyes!

Guy Fawkes’s father died and his mother remarried a Catholic. Guy was converted to Catholicism. He went off to Spain to fight against the Protestant low countries where he was known as Guido. Returning to Britain he subsequently met Thomas Winter who introduced him to Robert Catesby dedicated to restoring Catholic James 1^st to the throne. Catesby found an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and enlisted Guy Fawkes to take care of the gunpowder needed. An anonymous letter prompted the authorities to search Westminster Palace where Guy Fawkes was arrested for treason and sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered. He jumped off the platform beneath the scaffold, fell and broke his neck. Each year Guardsmen search the Houses of Parliament looking for explosives, a ceremonial remembrance.

Here in South Africa the memory of Guy Fawkes is fading into obscurity although families light fireworks on designated areas only. Animals are usually frightened by the bangs and run away so that the SPCA is busy rescuing frightened dogs and other pets. When I was a girl and lived in Fish Hoek everyone went down to the beach and lit their own fireworks. Of course this was dangerous and eventually stopped.

Guy Fawkes coincides as it does with Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light celebrated over five days during the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. The ceremony celebrates victory over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. Our Indian communities light fireworks on designated areas.

November is a time when the fall of the Berlin wall is commemorated and of course Britain holds Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen in both World Wars and other conflicts. Remembrance Sunday on the 11^th day of the 11^th month is always the second Sunday in November when armistice of the Second World War was signed in Potsdam in Occupied Germany by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

In March 2000 I was due to attend ITB, the largest tourist exhibition in the world in Berlin, Germany. I had worked out that the cheapest way to get to this city that I had never been to was to drive to Windhoek in Namibia and fly from there to Frankfurt where I would catch a train to Berlin. I was heavily loaded with the travel books that Susan and I produced, Discovering Botswana and Inside Zambia. I duly arrived at the airport in Windhoek only to be informed that Air Namibia’s solitary Boeing had flown to Beira in Mozambique where the Zambezi had burst its banks on the flood plain leading to its estuary to rescue stranded people and deliver food and medical requirements. I sat at the airport for over twelve hours so only departed the next day.

Arriving at Frankfurt airport I was unprepared for this huge airport with its myriad elevators to the various outlets and train stations. I struggled with my boxes of books balanced precariously on a trolley, onto an escalator and down to a station where a train to Berlin was expected an hour later. The train arrived, with the gap between it and the station an obstacle to be surmounted to load the boxes aboard. I looked around desperately for help. Spotting a group of Japanese tourists I gestured with my hands, pointing to the boxes and then pointing to the train. “AH, AH, SO!” The Japs replied and loaded my boxes on board with bows and exclamations. I thanked them sincerely and could only hope that they got the message!

I arrived in Berlin at midnight! It was minus 15 with snow everywhere. Fortunately I had kept the long ski jacket that I bought many years before for a ski trip to Austria and was warm enough. A porter came to help and got me a taxi who very kindly found me a reasonable B & B.

Next day I managed to catch the necessary train to take me to ITB, a huge building and another taxi to deliver me to the door. I walked and walked and walked until I found the Botswana exhibit, my new boots beginning to bite! By the time that week was over my feet were in agony but I was determined to spend the last two days when the show was over to see something of Berlin and together with some other exhibitors caught a tourist bus to Potsdam where the armistice was signed in 1945. I could not face my boots again so put on a pair of sandals with socks. We alighted into deep snow and the tour guide looked at me and enquired “Are these your African Shoes?” I said “Yes” The guide shook his head in disbelief! However after the tour I felt that I had visited a very historic site.

The following year Susan came with me and did not really believe me when I told her just how cold it was. She wore her grandmother’s Burbury overcoat and shivered! We stayed in the old part of the city called Mitte formerly part of Communist Berlin behind the Berlin Wall and were walking along a side road when I glanced to the side to see coats hanging from rails in a small alcove. From the look of the women who were selling these coats and their accents I deduced that they were Russians down on their luck. I took the lead and bought Susan a hip length silver fox fur coat for 35 euros! She ummed and ahed. “This is real fur! I can’t wear this.!” “Look around you, all the Berlin people are wearing fur, besides people at the show will think you are wearing fake fur and this animal was killed a long time ago!”

She was as warm as toast after that and we enjoyed our stay. We had found accommodation in a private flat on top of an eighteen story building. Our beds were on the floor and there was one armchair and a small table. We bought slabs of chocolate filled with liqueur and chomped them in bed with our books in the evenings. Susan is a smoker and had to go downstairs to stand outside the entrance in the snow to have a cigarette! We managed to find our way on the trains and found a lovely warm pub in Mitte that served everything with heaps of potatoes!

We would walk to Potsdamer Platz where the first breach of the Berlin Wall was on 11th November 1989 and at the Brandenburg Gate a month later. From here it was no distance to the Brandenburg Gate and we ventured inside the famous Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. This hotel was one of the best in Europe in its heyday but was largely destroyed in World War 2. A small portion of it operated until 1997 when it was restored. We also enjoyed walking to Charlottenburg Palace that was built in the 17^th century and expanded in the 18^th with beautiful gardens.

The next time I went to Berlin I was alone but my friend Tiaan Theron, a tour guide in Botswana and his German wife Sabina were there to visit her parents. They invited me to a Turkish restaurant with their Berlin friends. I was chatting to another Botswana friend when Tiaan asked me to refrain from talking about my varied travels. He explained that their friends had never left Berlin. I could not believe it! However one of them told me to go to the Museum that was situated in a shopping centre. I did and there was the story of Berlin from the time it was a group of small huts on the river.

I was fascinated because it encompassed the growth of the city and the country and eventually the Nazi regime and the basis of Hitler’s creed if you like to call it that based on his book Mein Kampf that chronicled his belief in anti-semitism. I was gobsmacked because I realized that Robert Mugabe the President of Zimbabwe had based his regime on the same creed. Mugabe died recently after completely destroying his country by looting, becoming an absolute dictator and causing so many Zimbabweans to flee to Botswana and South Africa. Today in South Africa we have the EFF the third largest opposition party whose leader Julius Malema was a great fan of Mugabe and whose policies in my opinion mirror that of the Nazi’s of yesteryear.

Now to Remembrance Sunday. Susan and I had attended it in London on a couple of occasions but the one that sticks in my mind is the time we went just after the dreadful attack on the World Trade Centre in New York by terrorists on September 9^th 1963. I had been staying at my son Mick’s house in Hout Bay and arrived to find his maid ironing with one eye on the television. I saw these aircraft approaching a tall building and gasped.” Something dreadful is about to happen!”

Here we were in London in November staying with our friends Andrew and Leane who lived in London and were adamant that we should not attend as a terrorist attack was expected. Susan and I decided that terrorists or no terrorists we were going to attend. I had my trusty ski jacket on and as we came up the steps of the underground I was stopped as I walked under the metal detector frame. The policewoman searched me politely but thoroughly and eventually decided that I had some oil on my coat but harboured no firearm or bomb!

We stood behind a group of young men in Burbury coats who were drinking from hip flasks as they cheered the elderly service men and women, some of whom were in wheel chairs marching by, all having served their country in some conflict across the globe. The young men heard Susan and I chatting and turned round. “The Boers are here!”. We all laughed as they were referring to the Boer War in South Africa in 1888 to 1902 when Britain and South Africa were at war because the Boers had rebelled against the English. Local farmers were called Boers and the British at the time under Lord Kitchener destroyed their farms and put their women into concentration camps so cutting their line of supplies. The Boers were renowned marksmen and moved around the country on horseback. Some Afrikaners of today still hate the English!

Looking across the road we could see the snipers on the roofs watching for terrorists. The Queen arrived and walked entirely alone to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in memory of those service men and women. A minute of silence ensued and not a pin could be heard dropping or a child coughing. Her Majesty was completely exposed to the danger of terrorists except for the thorough security of the intelligence and Police Force. Having laid the wreath as the minute of silence ended the crowd rang with the anthem “God Save Our Queen!”

The Union of  South Africa came into being on 31^st May 1910 eight years after signing the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the 2^nd Boer War on the unification of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.  Subsequently the country was granted independence in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster.

I was born in 1939 and still remember going to the ‘bioscope’ in Plein Street in Cape Town. We had to stand to the playing of God save the King before the film. Entrance was sixpence and entitled you to a red or green cooldrink. I remember seeing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta and Bobby Breen with his incredible soprano singing Somewhere over the Rainbow! Years later when we moved to Fish Hoek I had a friend called Maureen who had a lovely voice. We would walk the dunes around Peers Cave that often had a vlei at the base. One day Maureen stood on one dune and I on the other while she sang the same song, her voice carrying across the vlei between us. (A vlei is a stretch of shallow water.) Magic!

I still have a picture of Her Majesty the Queen on my fridge. One year we were in Mozambique at Jangamo Bay when the Royal Wedding of William and Kate was on. I was watching it on the television in a local bar. Mick came up dripping wet from the waves and shook his head at me. “You and your Royals!” I smiled back at him. “You don’t realize that they were part of my growing up!”

Well I remember the day H.M.S Vanguard arrived with their Majesties, King George and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses. My father had promised to take me to see the destroyer that had served in the war enter Duncan Docks. The day was very hot and his favourite prize pig fainted so I had to listen to the radio while we poured buckets of water over the sow! However my mother’s cousin’s husband was a chauffer for the Government Garage and drove the Royal Family and General Smuts around the city. He told how Princess Margaret was a great mimic and would ‘take off’ the various dignitaries including General Smuts.

Princess Margaret

When the Royal Family were to move upcountry they travelled in the White Train, its coaches pure white pulled by a great steam engine. I was coming home from school, about 7 years old and had to catch a train at Observatory, change at Salt River and catch another to Kuilsriver. My train stopped at Bellville, was shunted out of the way, the passengers all detrained at the station where we waited for the White train to come through. The wait was long and I got very hungry. The friendly stationmaster bought me a mincemeat pie with sticky filling that looked like dead flies but I ate it happily. The White Train duly appeared and I had a good view of the Royal Family through the windows.

I arrived at Kuilsriver station very late with my mother frantic with worry. I had to walk home, some three miles and was further delayed by a flock of sheep being driven to the nearby abattoirs. A Mrs. Brindle lived near our small farm and drove up the gravel road each day like some racing driver. I was slogging along slowly behind the flock when she came through, sheep scattering in all directions with the shepherd jumping to the side in fright while I cowered in the ditch at the side emerging with my uniform filthy! My mother was not amused!

When I lived in Maun for a couple of years my grandsons then grown up would play pool with the Princes who loved Botswana and the Delta where the British Special Forces did exercises with the Botswana Defence Force each year. The Princes were like most youngsters and they enjoyed partying as most young people can in Maun with their bodyguards well in the background. The tale goes that William went home in the early hours with a mate and slept on the sofa. In the morning the father kicked him off the sofa, saying “Who the hell do you think you are, sleeping on my sofa!” quite unaware of who the errant young man was, only the future King of England!

On that I will end this blog and take it to TJ on this very hot Sunday where his son Greg will be prevailed upon to give young Jack, my dachshund a bath as the old back does not like bending down any more!

STEAMING ALONG . . .

My earliest memory of my father’s occupation was during the Second World War. I was born in 1939 and I remember Father leaving in the early hours of the morning to go work. His and the job of many others who failed the medical for the army or who had special skills was to see that the trains taking the soldiers up to the East African theatre of war would get there without mishap.

My father had tried to join the Cape Town Highlanders and I remember photos of him in his kilt. He was turned down because of flat feet. I also remember the air raid sirens that meant we had to gather at a large house on the corner. I still remember that house clearly.

Anyhow the war ended as wars do and I continued to grow up. My parents bought a chicken farm together with their Welsh neighbours but Father continued to work at the Salt River workshop. He had run away from school at the age of 15 to join the railways as a messenger boy. His father was head foreman at Salt River Works but it took years for Father to climb the ranks.

We moved to Fish Hoek when I was ten. I quickly made friends and the three of us ran wild along the sand dunes surrounding Peers Cave. We did not know then of its history and that Bertie Peers had discovered the intact body of what was in those days called a Strandloper (beach walker) although Bertie called him San. Later he became known as The Fish Hoek Man and lived around 12000 years ago.

My friends and I swam and dived for sinkers among the rocks along the famous catwalk and sold them back to the anglers who had lost them! One year we were idling away in still water on rubber car tyres when two dorsal fins approached. We were terrified as they came nearer but they then started leaping and we were relieved to see these porpoises as they were then called. The two became our friends and ultimately began to play among the bathers in the breakers. Their pictures made the press and they were called Fish and Hoek. A few years later they disappeared.

After these adventures  I had to join my Mother and sister to endure talking Afrikaans at the evening meal so that my father could become fluent in that language. His teacher, fierce Mrs. Bock, would know if he was not practicing and we would all get a lecture on just how important it was for Father to qualify and progress up the ladder in Salt River Workshop.

The Nationalist Government practiced job reservation for English speakers favouring any Afrikaner above them regardless of skill. Luckily my Grandfather and his father worked under the United Party for they both progressed to become Chief Foreman of the Salt River Works.

As a South African Railways employee Father was entitled to a free pass on the railways. Each school holiday my sister Veronica and I would plan our journeys. As long as we did not travel the same route twice we could wander around South Africa by rail!

Of course this was still the age of steam. Well I remember the train stopping at Laingsburg to take on water and coal and an extra engine to haul the carriages over the Hex River mountains the second highest in South Africa. This chain of mountains is the gateway to the interior and the long flat plains of the Klein (small) and Groot (great) Karoo, a semi desert that extends across southern Africa with the typical kopjes (low flat topped hills) of these plains. The name came from the Khoikhoi word garo (desert)

The first white man to graze his sheep and goats along this incredibly fertile Hex River valley was Roelf Jantz van Hoeting. He kept his flocks under the mountains of the red sand above the rock of the Lions. The valley is now known for its vineyards and fruit orchards.

The mountains were capped with snow in the winter and we were snug in our compartment with its green plastic seats/beds snuggled under our bedrolls. The conductor would check on us regularly and we would be escorted to the dining room for dinner. The linen was heavy damask, the cutlery heavy silver and the crockery embossed with the railways insignia, the head of a springbok, the leaping (Pronking) animal that became the name of the National Rugby team. It was fun watching the countryside whizzing by while we ate wonderful South African dishes.

The engines chuffed chuffed with the effort of pulling up the incline and gave long toots when they achieved it! Merino sheep graze the indigenous Karoo bushes while lonely windmills pump their water. The herbs lend a distinctive flavor to the lamb. Sir Abe Bailey one of the men who made millions from diamonds at Kimber together with Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Banarto would insist that Karoo sheep travelled with him by sea to England and Welsh lamb on thee return voyage such was his regard for the flesh of these sheep.

The climate in the Karoo is one of extreme cold and heat. In later years I would hear the old farmers say “Seven years of drought, seven years of plenty!” The extreme cold kept parasites to a minimum and great stud farms emerged over the years breeding some of the finest thoroughbreds in South Africa. One family, the Birch Brothers, predominated and well I remember that when their yearlings came to the yearling sales in Johanesburg they still had the imprint of the halters put on when they were weaned and turned out in the huge camps.

The Karoo is now world famous for the many fossils discovered here. The sedimentary rocks reveal a picture of African wild life and landscape of around 255 million years ago. The latest find is of a dinosaur that was the largest animal on earth during his lifetime.

My Father continued on his way up the engineering ladder until he became head foreman at the Salt River Works like his father and grandfather before him. Progress was however coming and the age of steam was waning. When I was eighteen my father was already in charge of changing the rail transport system of South Africa to Diesel electric.

I left for the UK in 1958 on one of the famous Union Castle liners with their lavender hulls and red funnels. A bank played “Now is the Hour when we must say goodbye!” on the quay and coloured paper streamers connected passengers and loved ones being left behind, breaking as the tugs moved the liner away from the dockside.

Arriving at Southampton my father was at the station to meet me. There was some trouble with the engine of our train to London and we were delayed. Well I remember him striding off to find out what the trouble was. Not long afterwards he was striding back and the train moving slowly off. He swung with long practice onto the footplate of a carriage and made his way back to me a grin on his face as he told me that he had spotted and fixed the trouble!

We stayed one night in London and the following day took the Flying Scotsman to Glasgow where Father was overseeing the construction of the new diesel electric engines. Of course this train was pulled by a diesel electric engine but it carried me through a white countryside to arrive in Glasgow in a snowstorm!  A far cry from sunny South Africa! Father was stationed here to check the components of the diesel engines and did so in Germany and Manchester at famous engineering firms like Metro Vickers.

The original Flying Scotsman was world famous and of course a steam engine. It was built in 1923 at Doncaster Works and its route was London to Edinburgh. The train is now in the National Railway Museum.

Eventually my Father returned home with the great new engines following him by ship. Finally the great day came when South Africa would change from steam to diesel. My father was invited to be on the footplate of the last steam engine to leave Cape Town station. The Cape Times newspaper ran a half page article on the 100 years of service the Goodwin family had given the South African Railways with a magic photo of Father with clouds of steam surrounding him!

What a difference when my friend June and I took the train from Johannesburg to Maputo. The tablecloth was plastic as were the knives and forks and the cook was drunk so dinner was off!

Another very exciting journey was on the Tazara Railway from Kabwe in Zambia to Dar es Salaam but that story will keep for another day!

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN EIGHTY YEAR OLD

I turned eighty years old yesterday, the 26^th January. I was born in 1939 and the Second World War began in the September. On these warm nights I have lain awake thinking about the events I have seen and experienced during these years.

I think the earliest memory was of the air raid sirens that would require us to gather at Aunty Phyllis’s house nearby. I remember the house clearly and I must have been three years with the war into its third year. I remember my father in his Cape Town Highlanders kilt being photographed with his mates,  however he did not pass  the medical due to a missing little toe and in any event he was needed by the railways to maintain the steam engines that pulled the trains taking soldiers up the East Coast where they were to engage the German army in German East Africa. One of his mates never returned and another came back with one leg.

My paternal grandmother, Granny Goodwin who was Cornish, was born on a ship in Sydney harbour (I never did hear the full story). Granny had bought me a sunhat, a pair of sunglasses and a little cardboard suitcase. She lived opposite us at Hazendal that is now Sybrand Park in Cape Town. One day I was very cross with my mother so donned the sunhat, packed the suitcase and ran away to Granny Goodwin! The next morning she gave me mealie pap (maize meal porridge) for breakfast and I hated it so ran back!

My two cousins Jean and Tom Swarbreck lived nearby, as did Tommy Webb, another cousin. My father had grown a field of prize strawberries that were ready to harvest on his birthday on the 24^th October when we would enjoy them with my mother’s homemade ice cream that I still make for my grandchildren. One year the naughty boy cousins picked and ate the strawberries before the birthday and were given good hidings! Not to mention the sore tummies!

Every year my father would have a bet on the premier horse races such as the Metropolitan Handicap in Cape town and the Durban July in Durban. He would have a bet and take part in the railway workshop sweepstake. I was six when the Durban July was to be run and I fancied a horse called Mowgli who was favorite at 9-2 along with his rival Radlington who was 12 – 1.

Mowgli as a two year old had dropped in the middle of a race. He was odds on favourite and was racing to what seemed certain victory when he checked in his stride and dropped back falling as if he had been poleaxed. The veterinarians put it down to heat stroke.

Because of this incident my father was convinced the horse would not win and changed my bet! Mowgli and Radlington were locked together at the finish and the judge took ten minutes to decide that Mowgli had won by a couple of inches. My father had to pay me out as a matter of honour! I had no idea then that horses would play a prominent part in my later life or that I would write a novel called July Fever that would be launched at the Durban July in 1980 to rave reviews in the press.

Durban July Photo Finish 1952

When I was seven and attending Observatory Girls school my parents sold their house, and decided to go into a partnership with our neighbours, Lalu and Taffy Ovenstone and buy a chicken farm in Kuilsriver. They decided that I had to continue at that school and I had to walk three miles to the station in Kuilsriver, take a train to Salt River, change onto the suburban line and get off at Observatory. This was when I became aware of the race division in the country with separate carriages and benches for white and black people.

The second world war was over and in 1947 King George, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, were due to visit South Africa arriving on the frigate Vanguard. My father promised that he would take me to the city to watch the ship arrive. Crowds were due to line the streets and the dock area. The day dawned and I was so excited to see all of the fanfare, but the morning was incredibly hot and my father’s prize pig, a huge animal, fainted with the heat. We spent the day pouring water over it while listening to the arrival on the radio! I was bitterly disappointed, but the pig recovered.

One afternoon on the way back from school my train was stopped at Bellville station and everyone told to disembark. It was explained that the line had to be cleared for the White Train carrying the Royal Family was due. Imagine my delight when I had a first class view of the King and Queen and the two princesses. The Station Master realized that I must be very hungry while waiting for my train to reappear and gave me a pastry with what looked like squashed flies in the middle but I ate every bit of it before my train arrived and delivered me safely to Kuilsriver where my mother was frantic with worry.

The Royal White Train

Later I learned that my mother’s cousin Amy Van der Schyff’s husband, Richard was a chauffeur for the Government Garage and had driven the Royals around Cape Town to all their appointments. He told us how Princess Margaret, a wonderful mimic, would take off all the dignitaries including General Smuts, the Prime Minister!

At the time my little sister, Veronica had polio and one leg was in calipers. She was pushed around the property in a pushchair and would ask for it to stop while she gazed into a wooded area. When asked what she was looking at she would say “A funny little man.”

Finally Lalu asked her to describe the little man. She did so and when next in the village Lalu asked about the previous owner who had died before we moved in. The description tallied with Veronica’s description. Apparently the owner had hated cars and declared that no vehicle would be allowed on his property! My parents had an electric blue Terraplane and the car would never start on the property but would once down the driveway and onto the farm road.

Behind the chicken runs was a stretch of fynbos the Afrikaans name for the indigenous vegetation now world famous for the spring flowers in the Cape, and I would love to walk through this veritable garden picking proteas and then selling the flowers on the farm road! The freedom fed my sense of adventure and my imagination. This experience would influence my life.

Holidays were spent on train journeys as my father had a first class free pass being a railway employee. We could plan our journey providing we did not retrace our route and loved travelling around the country listening to the sound of the train, tucked up in our bunks at night with the stars above. Meals in the dining car were special treats with spotless white linen, heavy silver cutlery and smart waiters while little stations passed by in the blink of an eye.

When I was ten my parents sold the farm and we moved to Fish Hoek on the Cape Peninsula. Fish Hoek nestles against the Cape Mountain chain on False Bay in the Indian Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean washes against the other side of the mountains. I joined the girl Guides and as a patrol leader took my patrol on weekend camping trips up the mountains. My friends and I loved the beach with its catwalk along the rocks where we would dive, pick up lost fishing sinkers and sell them back to the fishermen.

One day my friend and I were having fun in the waves on car tyre tubes when two dorsal fins approached. Our hearts stopped, thinking that they belonged to sharks but then the dolphins leapt over us and joined us in a great game. The two were photographed, made headlines and were named Fish and Hoek. They returned each summer for a few years.

I achieved my Queen’s Guide badge. Sir Herbert Packer was Admiral of the Simonstown naval basin. Britain owned the naval base at that time and I was presented with my badge by Lady Packer at Admiralty house. Lady Joy Packer was a writer and novelist. She wrote a book called Grey Mistress about her husband’s destroyer and the various ports they were stationed at over the years and a novel called The Valley of the Vines set in Constantia near Cape Town famous for its wines.

I grew up, left school and became a student nurse at Groote Schuur Hospital, that later became famous when Doctor Chris Barnard did the first heart transplant there. This was where I met my first love whose family had a yacht moored at Royal Cape Yacht Club. We would sail on the yacht around Cape Point to Simonstown or up the coast to Saldanha Bay. During the Suez crisis in 1956 we were returning from Saldanha in a thick fog and the many ships crowded the bay waiting their turn to dock having been rerouted around the Cape as the Suez canal was closed. Their various foghorn calls warned other vessels of their presence to prevent collisions, we were so afraid of bumping into one in the impenetrable fog on our way back to the yacht club.

My father, who was now Chief Foreman of Salt River works as were his father and grandfather before him, was sent to the UK and Europe to vet the new diesel engines that were being manufactured there by the great engineering companies for the changeover in South Africa from steam to diesel for the railway network. My mother was unhappy with my boyfriend and dispatched me on the Union Castle Mail ship to join my father. The mailboat as it was called left every Thursday from Cape Town docks and took 12 days to sail to Southampton.

A band played Now Is The Hour when the time came to say goodbye, and streamers waved in the breeze between passengers and loved ones left on the quay, tugs hooted and the ship began to move breaking the strands of streamers. Table Mountain towered above as the ship turned her bow towards the open sea leaving the Fairest Cape behind. My boyfriend’s yacht escorted the ship through the dock and out into the bay before finally turning back. The year was 1958, I was eighteen.

Union Castle Liner Leaving Cape Town

My father met me in Southampton where we were to take the boat train to London, then the famous Flying Scotsman on to Glasgow. There was a delay with the departure and eventually Father strode down the station, gave advice as to the fault and then we were off! One night in London and on to Glasgow covered in snow. I spent two weeks with a friend of my father’s, a district nurse visiting crofters in the Kyles of Bute before heading for Manchester where I replied to an advert for air hostesses for the brand new British European Airways. I was part of the second intake and my new friend Sue was in the first intake.

We flew Dakotas to the Channel Islands and Ireland. These aircraft had done service in the war as had the pilots who were of ex Battle of Britain vintage! On one occasion we had engine trouble and landed on deserted Biggin Hill, a famous airfield during the war. From Dakotas I was transferred from Manchester to Heathrow where I worked on Viscounts, a turbo-prop aircraft and finally the ill-fated Comet after which I returned to South Africa.

In later years I lived at Langebaan where the flying boats used to land after their long journey across Africa where one of their stops was at an island called Jungle Junction in the Zambezi River. How far air travel has progressed over the years especially with the wonderful Boeing aircraft.

Now we are in a new industrial revolution and certainly my youngest grandchildren will experience a very different world. There were to be many milestones as the years passed by, and no doubt I will write about them one day..

A WEST COAST CHARACTER

Paternoster is a small fishing village on the West Coast of South Africa. At least it was a small fishing village when this story started. Today it is trendy with the quaint West Coast cottages turned into restaurants or holiday cottages.

The name came from a wreck a long time ago. The crew could be heard singing the Lord’s Prayer as they waited for the ship to sink with no possibility of being saved.

The Paternoster Hotel was known far and wide for its grilled crayfish and enticing bar. One could sit on the stoep and watch the locals as they held out large red crayfish for sale and joked with their customers as only the coloured folk can do; all have a keen sense of humour.

On the other side of the headland is St. Helena Bay. Here is a fairly large harbour and along the coastline fishing factories that spew forth a vile smell when the wind is in the wrong direction.

Vasco de Gama the Portuguese sailor, landed here on 7^th November, 1497. He described the bay as calm and tranquil. He was the first European to meet the local Khoi people. There is a monument to his landing. The bay was named Bahai de Santa Helena after Saint Helena, a devout Christian and mother of Constantine.

Because of its position the local fisher folk called it “Die Agterrbaai.” (The bay at the back). One day I was exploring the area and came across a caravan parked near the shore. A burly man was bent over a fire cooking fish. I approached him and we chatted. His name was Pieter Pieterse and he was Afrikaans. His companion was an English woman, Jenny, but he called her “Die Engelsman.” (The Englishman)

Pieter Pieterse had his own television show where he showed his viewers how to cook the abundance of seafood that the West coast offered. I called on him many times and we would exchange tales of our travels. Pieter had traveled up and down this coast and ventured deeper into Africa as had I.

My daughter and I were planning a trip up to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia that runs along the top of Botswana to the confluence of the Zambezi and the Chobe river and where the borders of four countries meet. When I told Pieter he made me promise to stay at his camp on the Kwando River up there. Then he gave me his little seafood recipe book and inscribed it in Afrikaans “Aan Molly wie ook weet van die ver plekke. Mooi Loop.” Translated it means “To Molly who knows about the far places. Go Well.”

We duly traveled well through Botswana up the Western delta, crossed the border into Namibia, camping at Popa Falls. Popa Falls is right at the corner where one turns either left to Rundu or right to Katimo Mulilo. The falls are really a series of rapids where the river runs down the Western delta. This river rises in Angola and when it rains there the river comes down and floods the Okavango Delta. The flood spreads out like the fingers of a hand forming channels and islands. Then comes the dry season and the water recedes waiting for the next flood.

The Caprivi Strip runs directly from West to East depending upon which was you are traveling and has an interesting history. Before Nambia became a German protectorate the area was known as Itenge and for a long time was ruled by the Lozi kings, later becoming part of British Bechuanaland Protectorate. (Botswana)

At the Berlin Conference (1890) Count Leo von Caprivi, was the German negotiator. There it was agreed between Germany and Britain that the strip would be added to German South West Africa allowing Germany access to German East Africa and in return Germany would relinquish her interest in Zanzibar and the North Sea Island Heligoland that Britain had. The treaty was known as the Heligoland. So it was done; however Germany had forgotten that the Victoria Falls stood in the way and so the access to German West Africa (Tanzania) was blocked.

The following morning we set off east until we came to a track running alongside the Kwando River. The going was bad with thick sand and along the riverside the vegetation high. However we finally found the entrance to Pieter’s camp. What a delight! A reed and wood structure right on the high bank of the river. Bird feeders hung everywhere. The children (we traveled with Susan’s four children aged between four and ten) were delighted with it and spent their time feeding the bulbuls and birdwatching.

After two days we headed east again until we came to Katimo Mulilo, the capital of the Zambezi region, Namibia’s far eastern extension. The name comes from the SiLozi language and means douse the fire. In the early days the Lozi people would paddle their canoes down or across the river carrying the coals of their fire. They often moved their villages when the river flooded. The embers were for re-lighting a fire when they arrived at their destination.

The South African army was stationed at Katimo Mulilo as from 1940 to 1981 the government administrated Nambia after the end of the Second World War. This was a period when they were fighting the ANC and Swapo the revolutionary forces of Nambia and South Africa.

Whilst there, for some unknown reason the Commander of that unit decided to build a toilet in a large baobab tree! My grandson Shaun was determined to have his photo taken in the toilet as his father had been stationed there and had told him about it.

From there we took the Ngoma gate road crossing into Botswana and the long road south back to Robertson where Susan lived on a thoroughbred stud farm with her husband who was the stud manager. Here I picked up my car and made my way back to the West Coast. A few days later I had a glass of Robertson wine with my friend Pieter and told him all about our travels, a far cry from his camp on the Kwando River some 2000 kilometres north east of where we sat.

Sadly my friend died a few years later in tragic circumstances leaving his “Engelsman” alone. I still treasure his recipe book and many a time have consulted it, especially when snoek were running. This long game fish is much like a barracuda. It is very good on the braai (barbecue) basted with apricot jam!

 

TO LAKE TANGANYIKA

My daughter Susan and I together with my grandson Shaun flew into Lake Tanganyika about 10 years ago. The pilot warned us that the airstrip was just long enough to land the aircraft and sure enough I thought we would land up in the palms at the end of the strip! As we approached we could see beneath the crystal clear waters and spied huge crocodiles and hippos.

 

Mpulungu is  the Zambian town at the foot of the lake and that country’s only port in fact has been in operation since the 1930’s. The lake is shared by Burundi, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), Tanzania and Zambia. The town is situated between mountains with very rocky soil so that the main occupation of the townspeople is fishing. Temperatures are high. Cement and sugar are exported from Zambia through the port to traders in Bujumbura in Burundi and Kigoma in Tanzania.

 

It is difficult to get to Mpulungu.  After our return flight the air service was discontinued. From the South you would take the Great North Road via Mpika and Kasama. Charter flights land at Kasaba Bay but then you have to transfer to Mpulungu by boat for some 60 ks.

 

We were transported by vehicle to the jetty at Mpulungu where we were met by our hosts and taken by motor boat to Ndole Bay lodge. Our little rondavel nestled among the tropical vegetation and Shaun and I asked our host if we could swim in the lake. He said that crocodiles seldom ventured into the little bay but to keep a good watch out! Shaun snorkeled among the wooden posts of the jetty spotting vivid chiclids while I kept watch until it was my turn and Shaun kept his eyes open.

 

The water of the lake below 600 feet is dead or fossil wateer and supports very little life. The surface water is moved by wind and wave and fish and other organisms are at home in it. Storms can raise the wave height to around six metres and rain can come down in buckets! The water is clean and fine for drinking. The lake is known for its tropical fish namely the cichlids and these are marketed to aquariums around the world. Angling offers Nile perch, atruly delicious fish and the rare Golden perch. Nkupi is the larges cichlid in the world and the usual eating fish by the lake people. There is also a thriving kapenta industry.

 

As Shaun and I left the water’s edge gunfire could be heard from the north and our host reassured us saying that the fighting was in the Congo not much further north that the lodge!

 

David Livingstone called this an area of unsurpassed loveliness. The lake is 677 miles long running north and south and is the longest lake in the world. It contains nearly 7,413 sq miles of water, almost seven times that of Lake Victoria. The lake is part of the Rift valley and is the lowest part of the valley. The reserves along the lake are protected by the countries that share its shores and comprise Nsumbu National Park, Zambia, Gombe Stream National Park and Rusisi Natural Reserve in Burundi and the Mahal Mountains National Park in Tanzania.

 

A ship that still plies the lake after over 100 years is the M V Liemba. She was originally commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm the second of Germany for defending their territory on Lake Tanganyika from the Belgians and British.

 

She was a well armed warship some 70 metres long and 1200 tons and was built in Papenburg, Germany in 1913 and packed into 5000 numbered crates and shipped to Dar es Salaam and from there to the lake and reassembled.

 

When Germany began to lose the war and her troops retreated from German East Africa her captain scuttled her, filling her with cement. They removed her guns for other use. However her loyal engineers covered the engines with thick grease and when she was re-floated upon Winston Churchill’s instructions in 1922 they were to carry on propelling her around the lake until the mid 1970’s when they were replaced with diesel engines. She was then named the M V Liemba.

 

She was made famous by a novel written by C.S. Forester in 1935 that was turned into a movie, The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.

 

In 1993 she was overhauled and given a double bottom for safety. Her speed was 112 knots and ten 1^st class cabins were installed as well as 18 2^nd class cabins. She can carry 600 passengers and cargoes of maize, rice and pineapples.

 

1n 1997 the M V Liemba and another lake steamer called the Mwongoze repatrieated 75000 refugees from Zaire after the fall of Mobuo Sese Seke.

 

The M V Liemba’s voyage around the lake startrs at Kigoma in Tanzania and ends at Mpulungu in Zambia taking around three days.

 

When we were there in this very remote corner of Zambia the male owners of the two of the lodges had fallen out and were not speaking! Any communication was through their wives on the radio. One can only shake one’s head at the absurdity of it with no other company to keep!

 

So often in my travels through Southern Africa I have found history in little known corners of this continent and Lake Tanganyika was no exception. I am eternally fascinated!

 

 

OF CHILDREN, DREAMS AND MORE

I left school when I was sixteen, was expected to go to work, earn my living and start paying back my parents for raising me. Thereafter I was to marry well. End of story. Well it did not happen like that and after sailing to the UK and becoming an air hostess in the second intake of British European Airways that subsequently became British Overseas Airways and metamorphosed into British Airways, I loved the life and stayed there for two years. Finally I returned to South Africa and had a lump in my throat when the silhouette of Table Mountain rose from the Atlantic to welcome me and other returning South Africans.

 

I had lost a love and married by the time I was twenty one with my first child on the way. That was my daughter and a boy arrived some eighteen months later. I dreamt of the boy being a doctor. It never occurred to me that the world was moving on in spite of the fact that women had won the vote quite a long time ago, to dream of what my daughter would become. Then I had a niece and a nephew. It was not my prerogative to dream of their path in life although I saw a lot of them in their early years.

 

I married again and had a laat lammetjie – late lamb as we say in South Africa, a son,and decided he would be a civil engineer. Well as they say the best laid plans of mice and men!  Life moved on and my world turned upside down several times but I somehow survived.  

My daughter married a horseman and he became the under manager on a thoroughbred stud farm. My sister’s children were still very young and we would all spend a lot of time on the farm. My sons had taken paths I had never envisaged. The older one was studying to become an accountant, a surprising choice with a creative parent but obviously that gene did not transfer to him. Later he married and had a blonde little girl who is now grown up, doing a post graduate course at university and next year is off to Aspen where she will work on the slopes and then tour South America. I must admit I could not imagine what she would end up doing when she was younger. However she is an amazing artist so some of the old block has rubbed off.  

My niece began dancing during her teens and performed at the Opera house in Cape Town and finally at Sun City near Johannesburg amongst other venues. She continued after school taking a path that neither I nor my sister had envisaged until her knees took strain and she veered off into another direction.  I well remember having a family party at the farm and this little girl was reluctant to leave the fun and go to bed in the little guest cottage. “Come!” I enticed her, holding her hand and skipping. “We will take the short cut over the paddock! Here we go! Tip Toe through the tulips!” The child looked at me in amazement; looked at the green grass then stamped her little foot. “Aunty Mols there ARE no tulips!”

Her brother also took an unexpected path when he began driving horse trucks and when in the UK actually drove for the Prince of Wales! Trucking became his life whilst his passion for hunting has landed him in the Karoo owning a game farm!

My daughter had four children and we dragged them through Southern Africa while we researched material for our guide books, Discovering Botswana, Discovering Namibia and Discovering Zambia.  The children turned out no worse for wear in fact today have a lust for travel! They have displayed tenacity in life that I hope has come from our travels. Now grown up and scattered throughout South Africa they have all sorts of strengths and weakness, ambition and creativity not to forget loyalty and love.

My youngest son chose to be an electrician and moved on to IT. Thank heavens for that as he can guide me through the intricacies of the internet and Amazon etc.  He lives in Johannesburg with his wife so that I am able to spend a lot of time with his boy of eleven and a girl of four who are giving me loads of pleasure enjoying them just as they are. The boy is riding well, carrying on the family tradition of its affiliation to horses and the girl – well when they are that age they already know how to wind their fathers and uncles around their little fingers. This time I am making no predictions!

Below is my painting of my niece dancing the Flamenco!

SAILING THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS

Seeing Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands, so destroyed by the hurricanes that have swept over the Caribbean reminded me of a trip my eldest son Mick and I took, bare boating around these islands.

 When Mick turned twenty-one he came into his inheritance and wanted to live a dream he had of hitching lifts on yachts around the Caribbean ending up at Antigua. However he had not as yet traveled abroad on his own and was a bit apprehensive.

At the time I had a share in a Miura yacht and was preparing for my local water’s skipper’s ticket.  Unfortunately I had a bad fall off a horse and thereby hangs a tail. My friend Jenny and I were exercising hounds for the Cape Hunt Club on Sir Lowry’s Pass in Cape Town when I fell onto the hard ground. Jen rode off to the stables, my loose horse following. Here she climbed into her little Volkswagen Beetle and came to fetch me well armed with a flask of whisky. She poured this down my throat and somehow manhandled me into the car! Off we went to Groote Schuur Hospital, the very same where Chris Barnard had performed the first heart transplant.

The young intern in casualty pulled up his nose at the reek of whisky as Jen had spilt some over me and I had been sipping all the way for the pain was enormous. However he ordered an Xray and diagnosed a pelvic fracture. “How did this happen?” he asked. “Oh!” answered Jenny, “We were hunting men in the mountains and my friend got over excited and fell off!” The overworked intern packed up laughing and told us that there was nothing for it but bed rest for a couple of months!

Mick was at that time doing his national service in the South African Army and deep in Angola where the South African government was at war with the ANC. I could not afford a nurse so something had to be done and my friend telephoned Army Headquarters and explained the problem. Fortunately Mick had only one more month of his service to complete. The Army flew him out of Angola and when he walked into our little home on the edge of Zeekoe Vlei forty eight hours later I got the fright of my life. He had been with the horse platoon and was six foot two. He was so thin I hardly recognized him but told me that the horses’ food was more important than rations for the riders. That was all I ever heard of his stint in the Army.

He spent that last month doing admin at the Cape Town Castle and together we planned our trip. We decided to bare boat around the British Virgin Islands for ten days sure to bump into other yachties and Mick could get a lift onward whilst I would fly home. However the bareboat operation required me to have my skipper’s ticket. I had already passed the written exam on navigation etc. One gusty South Easter day found me sailing out of Simonstown harbour still on crutches, to take the practical test. Just getting out of the rocking dinghy onto the yacht was a feat! The South Easter is a fresh wind with choppy seas and part of the exam was to demonstrate a man overboard situation. The examiner judges when your concentration is on the sails and flings the marker buoy over the stern and shouting man overboard!  You are expected to react swiftly, order one of the crew to keep their eyes fixed on the buoy, go about and pick up the imagined man. Crutches or not I came through with flying colours and won my skipper’s ticket.

Now we could book flights and decide when to go!

A friend offered accommodation in her flat in New York so we flew there and took in the sights – I still remember the giant hamburger I was faced with and the dog walkers with their teams of dogs of all sizes besides of course the usual tourist things to do and see. People walked along the sidewalks with earphones in their ears to music. Never having been to America I realized that the country was so vast, I could never cover it in the time I had. I opted to visit Kentucky as my life had embraced horses and in particular thoroughbreds. We visited the great stud barns in Kentucky and saw some famous stallions such as Seattle Slew.

Next stop was Washington and the white house etc. A magic moment was to a club to a club in downtown Georgetown where we listened to jazz.. Here we bumped into some rowdy South African clay pigeon shooters.

Miami was to be our jump off point for the Islands and of course we took in Disney World. We loved it and Mick fell in love with strawberry daiquiris! He got well under the weather from imbibing too many and I had the job of getting this long body back to the hotel! We flew out the next day to Puerto Rica landing at San Juan and from there on to Tortola and Virgin Gorda. I have just seen the havoc of the hurricane flooding the streets of San Juan.

The yacht we were given was smaller than the Miura and more lively with a shallow keel. She felt far more zippy and the very fresh breeze made me a bit nervous until I got the feel of her. I was used to the lovely solid keel beneath my beloved Miura. It was raining and choppy when we left  Virgin Gorda for Peter Island where we dropped anchor in a very secluded hurricane hole. For of course we had chosen hurricane season opting for the cheaper rates! I made a reluctant Mick row out and drop an extra anchor just in case as the weather was miserable. After a few Pina colada’s we went to our bunks wondering if we had made a big mistake coming at this time.

The morning dawned with the sea like glass, so clear you could see the fish swimming below and the local pelicans diving for their breakfast! For the next ten days we sailed around, snorkeled amongst shoals of barracuda and those little striped jobs – I can never remember their name, visited Dead Man’s Chest Island where Blackbeard the pirate had marooned his badly behaved crew with just a jug of rum to drink and a cutlass. At the end of the punishment period not many pirates were left alive. Robert Louis Stevenson in his immortal Treasure Island took this legend and came up with the ditty below in 1883.

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum

Drink and the devil had done the rest

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

We ultimately sailed to the American Virgin Islands and  put into St Thomas harbour, still trying to find a lift for Mick and time running out. This was a very up market marina and we parked our yacht next to a huge motor yacht with towering superstructure. We went ashore and then returned and filled up with water preparing to set off out of the very tricky harbour. I had to reverse and as anybody who has sailed knows it is not an easy thing to do especially with a cross breeze and I gently bumped the monstrosity next to us. The owner was decked out in whites and a Captains cap and jumped up and down in fury so we made haste out of that situation!

Two days before I was due to fly out we met a French couple who were cruising the Caribbean in their old Norwegian fishing boat. They invited us aboard and offered wine. To this day I can still remember the rose wine, quite the best wine I have ever had in spite of the fact that I am a great fan of our South African wines. They very kindly offered to take Mick on to Bermuda where he was sure to get another lift and that was the end of our time together. I flew out and left him polishing the brass on the fishing boat! However the fishing boat took him to Bermuda where he found another lift and ended up in Antigua!

 

 

 

 

 

A Farewell

The road to Nata in Botswana and further on to Kasane seemed endless. The road reaches ever north until you land up at the Kazungula ferry on the great Zambezi. The queue for the ferry is long. The truckers line up there in no predictable order with the private cars taking the back seat. Finally the ferry ploughs across the river from the Zambian side and some of the smaller cars are able to tuck in behind the huge transport vehicles and drive aboard. Fern was accustomed to the procedure through customs and immigration and the potholed drive to Livingstone in Zambia. She had started off early as she had an appointment for a flight over the famous Victoria Falls.

 

Arriving she made for the deck on the Zambezi, one of her favourite spots to view the great river and ordered a Mosi beer. Then she glanced at a newspaper lying on an abandoned table. The headlines read – Famous Yachtsman – there was the obituary. How she remembered him.

 

They had both been in a bad place with their respective marriages. Miserable. He had a workshop near her home where he built dinghys. She would walk over and have tea with him at ten o’clock each day. Her husband was his best friend; but her husband had declined to teach her to sail so he had taken her onto his Flying Dutchman and given her a lesson in dinghy sailing. She had leant out and lost the sheet and disappeared overboard into the pea soup water of the lake.He had hauled her back on board laughing! She was hooked on sailing from that moment.

 

Fern had a friend, Jill, who had a riding school nearby and who was a budding playwright. Fern was learning to ride and her love of writing stuck a chord with Jill. Jill had written a play called Cowboys in Space. She was adamant that it had to be staged at the Masque Theatre in Muizenberg and involved all her friends and acquaintances. She held auditions and Fern and her lonely friend ended up as the leading actors. It was hysterical and such fun. Innocent days until after the play.

 

Now he was dead. She remembered their love affair. Not madly romantic, just comforting at a time when they both needed succor. It ended gently when she had finally made the break with her husband. Some years passed and one of his family was dying. It coincided with the opening cruise of the yacht club and she was there with her daughter and her granddaughter. The club was crowded and there was not enough seating. Suddenly she saw him sitting on a table at the back and climbed up next to him. After greeting her, kissing her cheek, he gripped her hand, smiling. “I think of you so often. Our time together was so precious!”

 

She reached up returning the kiss lightly, squeezing his hand. He continued. “I am going after the funeral. I live in the UK now, but I am not well and the doc’s say that I could go at any moment, but I will always remember our affair and the joy of seeing you once again no matter how much time I have left.”

 

She lifted his hand, opened the palm and placed a kiss in it. “Take that back with you!” He closed his fist and put it in his pocket. A childish thing, but meaning so much. He left the next day.

 

She watched the Zambezi flow on its inevitable journey, much like our lives, to the abyss of the Victoria Falls that awaited it and tossed the newspaper, whispering goodbye, to its turbulent rush. The flight of Angels was waiting for her and she would say her final goodbye when she could look down at the mass of water throwing itself over the cliff then continuing its rush through the gorge on its way to the Great Kariba dam, onwards through another great dam, Cabora Bass ultimately to its delta in Mozambique where it emptied itself into the Indian Ocean. She would one day cross the Zambezi on a wooden ferry on yet another trip north in an African country.