MY DAPPLED LIFE - A QUILT OF MEMORIES. CHAPTER TWELVE. ZAMBIA

Chafing under the yoke of penny-pinching

The continued lack of money was beginning to take its toll on Séan.  I had become inured to poverty which had prevailed in my life ever since we had left Holland.  But Séan had made very good money before he married me and was chafing under the yoke of having since become penniless.  Life without a car in South Africa with its vast distances limited our movements considerably and it did not look as if we would ever be able to buy another one.  It almost seemed as if we were having a run of bad luck.

Coffee and pies

Every evening as we came home from Johannesburg we would feel half starved.  Once when we changed trains in Benoni we found there was always a lovely fire burning throughout winter in the station waiting room.  Piping hot coffee and pies were served.  Near payday when the dibs were temporarily in tune I sometimes asked Séan to come out with me in Benoni and have coffee and a pie next to the open fire in the waiting room to rally our resources before stepping onto the next train and continuing our journey. 

Zambian Copperbelt

One day we were sitting there waiting for the next train when Séan showed me an advertisement in the newspaper for miners for a mine in the Zambian Copperbelt.

“I thought you were scared of the mine,” I said.

“I am,” he said, “It’s a terrifying existence.  But to watch my family squirming in misery for lack of money is worse.  Look at these fringe benefits!  Free housing, water and lights, medical benefits and a pension.  I say we go for it.  What say you?”

“I’m in.”

Mining village

Séan applied for employment in the mining village and got the job.  He gave a month’s notice immediately but it would take six months before all the red tape had been completed and he would receive his first full month’s salary.  How we subsisted on my wages in the interim remains a miracle to me.  Our housekeeper who was always first to be paid even though all of us were on short commons learned to stand dead still, press her back to the wall and play possum whenever one of our creditors was banging on the window in order to reclaim the fridge or the washing machine because we had fallen behind on the instalments.

Meeting Mom at the bus stop

One day Nicolette crossed the street and went to stand at the bus stop. We were living just beside an overhead bridge and there were slip roads on both sides of the double carriage highway.  How she got across is anyone’s guess.  A lady driving past picked her up and took her to the houses in the neighbourhood.  When she got to my house the housekeeper had not missed her.  Nicolette had told the lady: “My mommy come.”  It was the second angelic miracle in her short life.  But if I had stopped working we would have starved to death and the housekeeper promised in future to lock up the house like Fort Knox.

To Zambia

Three months later Séan left for Zambia.  My father lent him the money for a train ticket but he arrived there in mid-month and it would still take six weeks before his first full pay-day.  Meanwhile I sold the house for the same amount we had paid for it, although we had painted and fixed it up inside and out at high expense.  We still owed money for paint to the hardware shop.  I put my furniture into a removal van and informed the driver that Séan would pay for it at the other end.  The coup de grâce came when we discovered that during all the months he had not worked on the South African mines, his mine workers’ union fees had not been paid and that these had to be covered before he could be allowed underground.

Springs

While I continued working in Johannesburg as long as it would take, the buyers moved in and allowed me to stay on in the main bedroom but this was not an ideal situation for either family, so I moved to my parents’ home in Springs.  My mother bought air tickets for the children and myself.  Finally, six weeks to the day Séan had left home, our son, Nicolette and I flew to Zambia.

Travel

The trip was horrendous.  I sat at a place with a table on which the two children rolled, curled, climbed and yelled at the top of their voices.  There was a Catholic nun sitting opposite the table who was reciting one rosary after another.  

Among the passengers beyond, a middle-aged lady was seated who looked as if during her teenage years she had been one of those girls at school everybody automatically votes in as head-girl.  She was spare and attractive and dressed in a simple blouse and skirt of impeccable cut.  The air hostess had told me that she was the wife of the mine manager in the mine village where Séan was working.  

I was wondering what she and the other passengers must be thinking of me, lacking in control over my children as I was.  This was, of course, understandable, since I had worked until the day before leaving South Africa and the children had been looked after by others, so I had not established many rules with them.

Kind understanding

Only once the eyes of the lady with the strong personality met mine; at a time when the kids were at their noisiest and I realised why the mine manager had married her.  I was looking around wildly and deeply embarrassed, at a loss what to do next, when across the aisle she smiled and gave me an almost heart-stopping look of infinite patience and indescribable maternal warmth, contained amusement and empathy – one mother who had been there, got the T-shirt and sent the postcard, who knew exactly how it was with the other in the latter’s hour of need.  The look said: “Loosen up.  This is what all kids do, given half a chance; not just yours.  Who’d be a mother, hey?”  For a moment my heart opened and shut. 

I remembered that look when years later I read in the book ‘He and I’ that Our Lord had said to Gabrielle Bossis: “A look can go straight to the soul and touch it.”

I was never to meet that mine manager’s wife in the mining village, for we did not move in the same circles.  But I’m still grateful for that look.

Reunion

Séan was waiting for us at the airport and we drove back in a car he had borrowed from the local Catholic parish priest.

I was crying with joy as I had missed Séan so horrendously. In the car, the children, worn out by their antics on the air trip, fell asleep and did not bother us.

Arriving in the village that night in the private house Séan had hired while on the waiting list for a mine-house, I found my own familiar furniture.  Immediately I felt at home. The house had a long passage and on its wall reposed the largest spider I had ever seen.  I pushed the kids inside the bedroom, gave Séan a shove into the passage to take care of the spider and returned to cower in the bedroom with our offspring.  There was silence in the passage and I feared that Séan was dead.  When he re-entered the bedroom, having removed the spider outside, he was roaring with laughter. 

“Never mind if I get poisoned, as long as you are OK, right.” 

“You’ve got it in one,” I replied.

Debt-free for the first time

Three days after our arrival, Séan received his first full pay cheque and it amounted to two hundred and fifty pounds.  You will realise how much money that was when I tell you that our house in South Africa had cost two thousand five hundred pounds.  I had been earning sixty pounds in Johannesburg and had not received a salary from Séan for over five months so this pay packet represented five months of his salary to me.  

We immediately sent my parents the money we owed them for our transport and were completely debt-free for the first time in our married life. Séan started saving which was easy, since we were not paying for rent, electricity, lights or medical aid.  Séan bought a bike and cycled to the mine at night as he worked shifts.

Although my grinding money problems were thus ended as though by magic, I was very lonely in Zambia.  I tried to be the best mother to our son and Nicolette I could ever be, because they had seen so pathetically little of me during their earliest years.  I went to church and the few shops in the tiny town pushing our son in a pushcart while  Nicolette stood on its little step, holding on to the side bars.

Furniture

I had given my fridge to my mother who was paying off the balance of the instalments, so I had been delighted to find a fridge and stove on the premises.  Most of my neighbours had arrived without any furniture and were issued basic furniture for lounge, dining-room and bedroom for seventeen pounds.  It was odd to go from house to house and see the same wooden furniture in each.

Insurance

A man started visiting us who was called Andy and wanted us to take out a large insurance.  I told Andy I did not feel we were ready for this yet.  Andy called me Girl.

“Look, I’m not a salesman, Girl.  I’m simply your friendly adviser.  Just imagine Séan here kicks the bucket.  Where do you and your kids stand?”

“Ah please, Andy,” I implored.  “Just drink your tea and let’s talk about the news.  I don’t want Séan to take out insurance before we’ve been here just a little longer.”

“Ja, but what if something happens in the meantime?  Then you’ll be caught napping, won’t you, Girl?”

“It’ll be me caught napping, Andy – not you.”

“Of course, Girl.  I only want the two of you to regard me as your friend.”

He and Séan must have been meeting at the club or the pub in my absence, however, for one afternoon his car swept up our driveway and Séan disappeared through the back door after a hasty injunction to me to tell Andy he had changed his mind about signing those papers after all.

“Andy,” I said desperately, “you know I told you we weren’t ready for insurance yet.  Now I want you to keep dropping in on us but as a friend, not as a rep.”

Andy spent five minutes telling me what he thought of my craven spouse while I stood, my head bowed.  Then he faded from our lives.

Angels on point duty

My son still couldn’t walk, but he crawled through the house with the speed of a meteor.  One day I was watching him and Nicolette play in our unfenced back garden from the kitchen window when a knock came to the front door.  It was Father Ludwig.  He kept me talking for a while but I had a dreadful sense of panic about my son so in the end I excused myself and ran out.  

Outside, a lady holding my son on her arm called out to me, "Is he yours?"  I took him from her, apologised and thanked her. She introduced herself as Jane and her husband as Earl.  I took our baby to the house. Again I felt that the angels had been on point duty and I gave heartfelt thanks to God.

Firm friends

Naturally after that Jane and I became firm friends and I still remember her with great affection.  She was an English girl who had been nursing in London when Earl, an Afrikaner tourist, had come in as a patient.  His surname was Le Roux and he was pelting his fellow patients with banana peels.  The sister of the ward told Jane to go and stop him and she walked over to him.  “Mr le Roux, I’m sorry but this is not permitted.”  Two weeks later they were married.  By now they had three children; a boy and two girls.

Jane and her parents had lived with her grandparents.  Her grandfather had been working in the consulate in India.  One day when she was reminiscing, I asked her what position her grandfather had held. 

“No particular one,” she replied.  “He was just one of the personnel force.”

“Wasn’t he the consul?” I asked and she laughed.

“Well, ja, he was,” she said.

“So why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I wouldn’t have told you if he had been in jail either.”

That was Jane, humble, accomplished and a good friend.

Following Mom

One day she discovered that whenever I got up from my chair to leave the room, my son would get up and walk behind me.  The minute I turned around, my son would plop down on the floor.  The first time we put this to the test, the young man was busted.  Soon he was joining his sister and all the children from the street whose mothers brought them to visit in their games.

We lived in a street which faced the jungle.  Eight miles on the jungle road was the Belgian Congo border where there was strife. Zambia did not appear to be having any troubles. Shortly after we arrived, the country became independent.  There was great celebrating in the streets in which we cheerfully took part.

Fr Ludwig and the crucifix

Meanwhile, I was for the first time since my children were born, spending all my time with them.  Father Ludwig spoke fluent Chibemba.  He was a missionary to the core, and faithfully ministered to his parishioners.   

One day, two missionary priests in long white robes returned from Belgium and visited him on their way to the Congo.  Father Ludwig brought them to us for lunch that Sunday.  The older of the two looked not a day less than seventy but it turned out that he was only forty-two.  Such was the stress of the strife in the Belgian Congo. 

In our town, no church had been built as yet so we had Mass in the church hall.  I belonged to the Women’s League and Fr Ludwig was running bingo sessions on Tuesday nights, which I couldn’t attend because Séan worked shifts.  Nevertheless, at the church hall I ended up scrubbing out ten rooms and washing windows for my sins. The people said they would attend only if Father took out the massive wooden crucifix on Tuesdays.  As saintly as Fr Ludwig was, he wanted to get that church built.

I was washing the outside windows when he climbed up, took down the crucifix and tottered perilously down again.  I thought: “Gosh Father, how can you?  Who are they to tell you what you cannot do here?  Is their money that important?”  Suddenly tears by the cupful washed his face and he kissed the sculpture of the crucified Christ with what I can only describe as tenderness.  I realised then that churches were not built without a measure of pragmatism.  

Vegetable garden

Green vegetables were hard to come by in Zambia and Séan started growing our own beans and tomatoes.  Every house except ours in the street had banana trees so everyone I knew offloaded their surplus bananas off on us.  A Dutch family in our church had a magnificent vegetable garden and they gave me some produce when I told them Father Ludwig was bringing a visiting priest to our house for lunch.  The visitor was also Dutch.

“I know him,” the lady said.  “Please ask him to come and see us too.” And I promised.

After lunch the visiting priest sat back with a contented sigh.  “You should be the housekeeper at our presbytery,” he said.  “Where did you get those lovely greens?”

“From Mrs A’s garden,” I told him.  “By the way she knows you and asked if you would come and see her afterwards.  I said I’d ask.”

“Lovely family,” Father Ludwig commented. I heard later that the family duly received a visit. 

I have never forgotten the wonderful vegetables.

Image courtesy of ChatGPT with CN Whittle "Priest with crucifix"

A number of names have been changed