Livingstone

Livingstone, 1952-1955

Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, now Zambia

My very very first memory is leaning out of a train window, watching the world go by, smelling the smoke, seeing the steam, the wind and exhilaration in my face. Around two years old, I'm on a sleeper train with a hissing and tooting steam engine from Johannesburg to Livingstone with my mother. Dad went on ahead a while earlier to get things ready, and now we are joining him. He has a new job as a works manager at the Zambezi Sawmills. The only other thing I remember about this trip is the number of helpful men. Many years later I came to realise how, erm, daring such a trip was for an unaccompanied woman (well, apart from me) on an overnight train in the middle of nowhere in the colonies... Mother was slightly built and honey blonde, with stunning looks and figure, but as strong, resilient, and sharp as spring steel, absolutely not one to be messed with. Nothing held any fear for her, and if there were men involved she knew exactly how to handle them. Sassy, we might say, with some serious attitude. One of her favourite stories was the time she took a toilet break while working her shift in a war-time factory in England, and was hunted down by the supervisor who found her smoking in the cubicle with her legs up on the door. "Just what do you think you're doing?" was the supervisor's question, and my mother's reply was, "Well obviously, I'm minding a horse". She was sacked on the spot.

My next memory is driving the Ford Prefect. I'm standing on dad's lap, probably aged around four, he's got hold of the gear stick and is pushing the foot pedals, and I'm moving the steering wheel pretty randomly. He's telling me to steer straight but I'm having too much fun just waggling the wheel, so he puts me back onto the passenger seat. In my memory we just miss hitting a hooting swerving car going the other way. A couple of years later, I remember dad's brand new Austin A55. He's picking me up from kindergarden after lunch, and I'm looking around for the black Ford. He leads me over to this gleaming sparkling pure white vision and tells me to get inside. I can't contain my excitement and joy, and jump around on all the seats on the way home.

Now I'm in the movie theatre, watching the wicked queen in Snow White stir her cauldron of hate and evil spells. I'm screaming and screaming, dad's trying to tell me its just a movie and everything is OK, but it is pitch black and the sound track is hurting my ears and he reluctantly takes me outside. We walk away slowly and I cheer up pretty well in the sunshine and blue sky.

Dad brings home a blue plastic inflatable paddling pool with two rings that take forever to blow up. He puts in some water and I splash around, I guess I am about four years old. Later that day he deflates it, folds it up, and puts it on the kitchen table. I go into the kitchen while he and mother are not around, and see that next to it is a fixing patch of plastic and a tube of glue. I get the kitchen scissors, and cut out a matching patch from one of the rings. It is very pretty, and I enjoy comparing the repair patch with what I've just cut. I cut out another patch, this time from the bottom, the plastic is smoother there and a different blue, and compare that. Pretty soon, I have a whole bunch of sample patches, I've established that they come in just two types, and I'm beginning to think what to do with the glue, no problem sticking it back together surely. They return, and I cannot understand what they are saying or why they are shouting. Mother is crying and wailing, and dad's eyes seem to have water in them as well, but I'm not sure. He gently puts me to bed.

Like almost every other colonial family, we have two local servants, one a housemaid, the other a gardener. It is the gardener's job to look after me when I'm not at kindergarden or school, and we share activities. Sometimes I follow him into town when he has an errand, sometimes he follows me when I decide to wander off down the road in search of something interesting. One day he dresses me in my Wild West Sherrif's play suit and we walk down the street waving at passers' by, I guess I'm three years old or so. I loved that play suit, and wore it out in fairly short order.

At the end of the street I do a Big Job. That's a poop, a number 2, or a bowel movement in other language, but I only knew about a Little Job or a Big Job until I was, oh, maybe 10 or 11, and frequently mis-communicated when visiting others, so I quickly got into the habit of not saying anything at all at other people's houses and just barging into one room after another until I find the toilet. The thing about this Big Job is that it happens quite suddenly; normally I am potty-trained and given my signal the gardener has plenty of time to get my pants down and squat me under the nearest bush. Anyway, I say nothing and just enjoy the warm feeling as it slides down my leg. But there is more, and I squeeze my buttocks repeatedly, but that has no effect, not only do I have a nice warm feeling down my whole leg, but it slips out from under my trouser leg and starts trailing along the ground. I shake my leg, but it doesn't want to detach and get left behind. The gardener comes over to see what I'm up to. After a moment, he grabs me around the waist, lifts me up, and we run home. He's running pretty well, and I'm laughing with enjoyment, we hadn't ever done that before in quite that way, it is fun. But there is something strange about my Big Job, it isn't brown, it doesn't smell, and it continues to drag along the ground as we run home... I still have no idea how the doctor at the hospital stuffed my intestines back inside, or indeed why they've stayed there ever since with not the slightest hint of any trouble.

I'm lying in my bed under the mosquito net, having wonderfully vivid swirly visions of the garden and the house. I am delirious with malaria. I climb out of bed, giggling, and chase a crocodile around the room. Mother comes in, puts a dressing gown on me, and we drive to the hospital. While we are waiting, a nurse walks by with a pile of huge stainless steel surgical instruments on a trolley. I start shivering and wimpering uncontrollably, imagining I am about to be sat on the trolley and have the steel instruments strapped to me like the small boy sitting next to me with polio and his wasted legs cased in steel rods. I run outside. Mother runs after me and drags me back in. I'm hysterical, and the nurse takes us into a small isolation room, where I gradually calm down and fall asleep. When I wake up, I'm in a bed next to the boy with polio legs, but feel much better. A couple of days have apparently gone by. I'm quite used to the hospital, I know where the toilets and bathrooms are, I'm unsurprised by what is for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the nurses seem to know me. It feels a bit like home, actually.

Mother (curiously, it was always "mother" and "dad", never "father" or "mom") has dressed me in some stiff khaki shorts, knee-high grey woollen socks, brown shoes, a white shirt, and a green blazer. It is the school uniform, I am off to my first day at school, aged five. I hold my school bag, a tiny shiny brown cardboard suitcase with a single silver latch and a brown tin handle. I'm told to open the suitcase anytime I am asked. Lost inside the cavern of the bag is a single sandwich and an apple. I eat neither, the sandwich dries out within minutes, and the apple is a sour green Granny Smith. I see a bright yellow piece of paper stuck to the lid underside. Some years later after I've learned to read, I see that it says, in large bold hand-written black capital letters, "Lester Gilbert", and below that the name of the school is printed above the words, "Bus pass, paid". The school bus pulls up, and mother puts me on the bus. "Goodbye", she says, "Do what you are told." The bus driver points to the empty seat next to the door, and I sit down. I'm curious and a little apprehensive, but otherwise unconcerned.

In the second half of the year, we leave Livingstone and drive to Chingola in the Austin A55 where dad has a new job as the manager of the Nchanga Iron and Steel Company.