Tuesday 15th March, 2010-03-16
My Dear Jeremy,
I do not recall whether we enjoyed much of a social life. There was a Club but we never were Club people especially with young children to look after. I was also kept busy making clothes and writing letters.
There was the Church which was not consecrated so all denominations could hold services there. Wynne and Geoff Longley from the hydro-electric station came in to church every Sunday and then would come and have tea with us. Geoff belonged to the Baptist church and often took the services. Wynne was brought up on, I think, a Plymouth Brethren Mission station where her Mother was a doctor. Wynne played the organ. Sometimes Michael took the service in good Methodist style and I remember playing the organ for him once or twice. Wynne was a very serious Christian and would drive through the bush once a week in the evening to attend Bible Study with Michael and me. They had two daughters and I remember driving out to the station and having tea with them.
Social contact with the PA, Provincial Administration, was more formal. I thought they were rather snobbish and was once appalled to hear two young wives introduce themselves to each other through their husband's public schools. They ignored me completely. When we were invited to a cocktail party we all dressed up in our best.
I do not remember the man in charge of the Boma but I do remember his wife. She ran the Brownies from her house and Jill belonged to the Brownie Pack which she really enjoyed.
I recall going to a formal dinner party after which the women retired to powder their noses and the men went out into the garden to relieve themselves. It is so good for the plants you know. I couldn't help being amused at the vision of these suit-clad rather formal and a bit pompous men being good to the plants.
The CEO, Chief Education Officer, Ken Balcomb came to the end of his tour and we did miss him and Kay as being South African they were less formal than the English. Mr Goddard came to take Ken's place. He seemed to be a very unhappy man and your Father found it very difficult to work with him for quite some time. However, Mike kept up his cheerful and positive outlook on life and was determined not to let Mr Goddard get him down and just went on whistling. Years later when Mr Goddard was dying of cancer in England he wrote to Michael..
Food was brought in by truck and airplane and vegetables were scarce. Once I bought a bunch of carrots one of which Christopher gnawed on the way home. I was so cross with him, I grabbed it away and slashed out with the bunch and hit him on the nose. What a thing to do, I am sure I was mortified afterwards. There were no cattle in this part of the country owing to the dreaded tsetse fly so we used tinned powdered milk which had to be mixed with water. We used Klim or Nespray, depending on which make was available.
I was now getting quite good at making bread but I never came to terms with the wood stove. I would mix a cake and when I was ready to bake it the temperature had risen so high it was right for pastry but by the time I mixed the pastry it had cooled down again. I would just walk out the kitchen and leave the cook, Towel, to cope with the situation. He had more patience than I did. Meat must have been flown in too and chicken, which we only had on special occasions, was expensive.
By this time I was pregnant with Timothy and Christopher came home from school. We drove him back down to Lusaka at the end of the holidays as we had to visit the dentist. Dad always said we paid for another extension to his fine house in Lusaka. The next year a lady dentist who I think was of German descent visited us at Kasama As there was no electricity her drill was manually operated by a young African man who turned the handle to make it work. That was quite an experience.
When the window frame in Christopher's room just fell out having been eaten by the white ants, it was time to move to the new house on Golf Course Road on the other side of Kasama
Love you, Mum