Roses Under the Miombo Trees (30 page)

And what of us, the little family that left the new Zambia in early 1965? We sailed as planned from Southampton for Cape Town on the MV Pendennis Castle for a new life, I with some misgivings, Mark armed with guidance pointing him in the direction of work in computer systems. ‘
I don't think we shall stay here long'
, I wrote home in an early letter, ‘
as really politically it is most unsavoury and unchristian'
. But we did – I for seven years, Mark to this day, seeing in the new, democratic South Africa. Cape Town was and is a beautiful city and we led a good life – a life full of privileges reserved for white people. Ironically it was the injustices of apartheid that taught me to regard black Africans with greater respect, to see the good women who worked for us – first Victoria Nkosi, then, when she was ‘endorsed out' to a remote so-called homeland in the Eastern Cape, Vivian Mpendukane – as individuals deserving of my consideration and regard, not least for the resourceful ways they coped under the weight of a system that constrained every aspect of their lives. I stood with other women members of the Black Sash outside Parliament and on street corners, in silent protest at the continued injustices (the sash representing mourning for the death of the constitution and the rule of law), ignoring my father-in-law's unspoken displeasure. But by 1970 Mark's and my marriage had foundered and we divorced. Needing work, I found it at the university's computer centre, where my boss – the ‘Prof' – was Dennis Parkyn; and by 1972 he and I were living together, planning his year's academic sabbatical in England. Paul, Caroline and his son Geoff came with us to Bristol.

There we took the difficult decision to stay here, despite the consequences for our families and the separation from their father that it meant for my children. Life in the English Midlands, after a period of readjustment, has treated us well, Paul and Caroline receiving an excellent state education, Dennis working at Birmingham University in the department of computer science. I developed a late-start career in personnel management in the National Health Service, moving by degrees into training and ultimately into self-employment in organisation and personal development. Geoff after college set up a successful business until his untimely death in 1994. Drawing on Mark's experience, I encouraged Paul and Caroline to go through the psychological testing process that would help them find careers to suit their abilities – and so they have, and I am very proud of them. Paul is an agronomist managing projects overseas wherever sugar cane is grown – which seems to be on almost every continent now. He and Marilyn and their two children, our grandchildren James and Ellen, inevitably have a much travelled life, from a base in Oxfordshire. Caroline is a senior speech and language therapist in the NHS, a job she finds worthwhile even though it is a much less stable organisation than it used to be. She, Patrick and their two daughters Olivia and Rachel live a full life in Sheffield.

A part of me remained in Africa, though, and in 1985, as my son went to university, I started to wonder what had happened to Victoria and her similarly aged son and daughter, for whom she had had such educational ambitions. The letter I sent, to the last address I had, was the start of a correspondence that continued until her premature death from heart disease in 1989. It was the start, too, of many years of educational sponsorship with her family, first for her daughter Pearl at the only ‘black' university then open to her, then nurse training for granddaughter Mandy, followed by college for Mandy's younger sister Beverly (Victoria loved to give all the children English as well as Xhosa names, and Mandy, I am proud to say, is called after me), and most recently school and university for Victoria's youngest granddaughter Siphokazi, born after her grandmother's death. We have given her the English name of Ursula, after my mother. Watching them grow and develop and make their way in the world, forging close family relationships with them as our visits have become more frequent, has been immensely satisfying.

Our first visit to South Africa, in 1997, after democracy had miraculously replaced apartheid, was an emotional one. There was the joy of meeting up with old friends, including Jiff and Alan Bowmaker, of seeing Dennis's son Dave and his family, of enjoying Cape Town's beauty once more. But my most vivid memory of that first trip is of stepping out of a little plane in East London in the Eastern Cape, to be met by Victoria's family. For those readers who did not live in South Africa under apartheid, it is impossible to describe the emotional impact of being able to walk into a restaurant with your new black friends to enjoy a meal, of being able to go with them to the best beach, of hearing their plans for a future unfettered by the old oppressions. In Cape Town we met up too with Vivian and her family, in particular her daughter Amanda, who now lives a successful life in Johannesburg with her husband Ike and three children.

I have lived in Britain for nearly 40 years now, and Dennis and I have returned to South Africa many times, always deriving great joy and satisfaction from old relationships sustained and new ones cemented. However, it feels too daunting, the idea of trying to revisit those harder-to-reach corners of Southern Africa where, as a young woman, I spent such vividly remembered years. The closest I have come to them has been through the world wide web. Besides, I find now that the act of writing this memoir was the journey I needed to make, so perhaps after all I have travelled enough.

EPILOGUE

Time Travelling with Google Earth

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the journey of writing this memoir, my reading has filled some of the yawning gaps in my ignorance. The following have been especially valuable:

A History of Rhodesia
Robert Blake, Eyre Methuen 1977: the full and authoritative history up to 1977.

The Past is Another Country
Martin Meredith, Andre Deutsch 1979: Includes a detailed account of Southern Rhodesia in the run up to and during UDI.

The State of Africa: a history of 50 years of independence
Martin Meredith, The Free Press 2005: Spans the whole continent over the second half of the 20
^th
century.

Going Home
Doris Lessing, Michael Joseph 1957: Lessing's clear-sighted descriptions of the people and country of 1950's Southern Rhodesia are full of insights.

The Africa House
Christina Lamb, Viking 1999: True story of an English gentleman realising his dream of a grand estate in the African bush – not far from Abercorn.

House of Stone
Christina Lamb, Harper Press 2007: Traces the intertwined lives of a white farmer and his family and their black nanny, examining how Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's long history of conflict comes to divide them.

Mukiwa – a white boy in Africa
Peter Godwin, Picador 1996: memoir of growing up in Rhodesia, living and fighting through the country's vicious civil war.

Mimi and Toutou Go Forth – the bizarre battle for Lake Tanganyika
Giles Foden, Penguin Books 2004: Hilarious, barely believable history of how a small group of eccentric Britons broke Germany's domination of the lake during World War I. S.S. Liemba in her previous incarnation stars.

Harvest of Thorns
Shimmer Chinodya, Baobab Books 1989: A novel in a clear black Zimbabwean voice, covering the country's transition from civil war to independence and beyond.

Beloved African
Jill Baker, Covos-Day Books 2000: Biography of John Hammond, committed to black education in a Southern Rhodesia increasingly beset by conflict between black and white, and between traditional and modern cultures.

The Dust Diaries
Owen Sheers, Faber and Faber 2004: Part biography, part memoir, part travel book, based on the life of Arthur Shearly Cripps, poet and maverick missionary, vividly conjuring rural Mashonaland in the early 20
^th
century.

Footprints in the Dust
Ian Mackinson, Ian Mackinson 2003, Mutende, Mill Close, Nursling SO16 0XE: memoir of a long-serving administrator in the protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, full of vivid descriptions of life and service.

Blood River: a journey to Africa's broken heart
Tim Butcher, Chatto and Windus 2007: gripping account of a journey tracing the river Congo from its source near Lake Tanganyika to the Atlantic ocean.

I have had help from many people as I mined my memories, wrote and rewrote this memoir. I am grateful to my brother Simon Watson and to Isabel Gillard, who read and commented on work in progress, Simon more than once; to John Watson for sharing his Rhodesian memories, anecdotes and photographs, and for his description of the roads; to Jiff and Alan Bowmaker, Colin Carlin and Ian and Barbara Mackinson for filling many a gap in my memories of Abercorn and its people. A special thanks to Jacky Medway, best possible writing partner, whose insights and gift for posing just the right question at the right moment played a vital part in my getting the project off the ground, and later breaking through ‘stuck' moments.

Jayne Watson (no relation!) captured images for the chapter headings with both talent and patience at my numerous comments and requests for editing. Finally, to Dennis, my infinitely supportive and tolerant husband, who put up with my absences as I travelled in my head through distant memories, reappearing – late – for lunch with an abstracted look in my eye; who listened to my ruminations on early drafts, read and reread them and who, after all that, was still prepared to do proof reading and give me encouragement – to him my most heartfelt thanks.