There and Back

1  THERE AND BACK

I remember being a worrier as a child.  I can’t think what I worried about.  it was more a feeling, casting furtive glances from mother, to father, then sister, whenever things were said.  More often than not, my mother would be in disagreement with my father, my father would wear his tight smile and may occasionally wink at me.  My sister on the other hand would be telling me through twinkling eyes that she had a new idea for more devious misbehaviour.  I felt as though I had not yet learned the language the rest of my family spoke.  Strangely enough, at the age of forty-seven, I still feel that way.

It was 1975, we were living in the first house my parents had ever bought themselves, with the help of a mortgage, I think.  To me at the tender age of eight, we were a happy family in this large house.  I was friends with the girl next door until she stole my roller skates when, with input from my sister, between us we somehow managed to scratch all the skin off both her arms before she was rescued by her mother and we, with roller skates, were dragged off her, by ours. 

My father announced one day that we would be moving to South Africa.  He was tempted into the three year contract he had been offered by a Company called Sasol and we would be home based in Vanderbijlpark, South Africa.  To me, Vanderbijlpark conjured up visions of vast expanses of land, dotted with giraffe, elephants and the occasional stalking lion.  My Nana must have had the same vision as I remember her remonstrating with my Mother that it would be important for her not to allow us to play outside.

I do not remember having an opinion one way or another on whether I wanted to leave England, my family, friends or school.  I simply remember the excitement at the prospect of living in a warm, mystical land where circus animals came from.

The house was duly sold, arrangements were made, dates planned and goodbyes were said to family in the North East. I remember feeling added excitement at being told we were to spend our last week in England at my cousins’ home in Hounslow.  We spent a fantastic week with them, getting into trouble and getting perpetually yelled at. 

The day of departure dawned and I remember a photograph taken of the four of us all wearing our ‘best’ prior to boarding a plane for the first time for all of us.  You could tell by the expressions on our faces that something new and exciting was about to happen to us all. This was April 1975.

Aeroplanes have advanced incredibly since those days.  I do not understand in what way, but I remember we had two stops on our way to Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg.  One stop at Luxembourg and one stop to re-fuel at Kinshasa Airport in the Congo.  The Luxembourg stop was much the same as being in Heathrow airport, but the Kinshasa stop was when I knew we were in Africa and it was also my first taste of uncertainty at our safety.  We had disembarked the aeroplane at ‘silly’ o clock in the morning and I remember we were led onto an outdoor platform which in my mind looked more like a platform at a train station.  We were surrounded by darkness.  There was an open fronted café on the platform where the passengers sat at tables drinking coca cola.  The air was hot and sticky. Amongst the few hanging fluorescent lighted tubes, there were ceiling fans, lazily wafting around the rising hot air.  We were closely guarded and watched by quite a few uniformed black African soldiers who carried what I now know are AK47’s.  Those were the first guns I ever saw in my life.

On arrival at Jan Smuts Airport, as it was known then, I remember when the doors of the aeroplane were opened; the sun blazed and dazzled my eyes.  I also remember the heat rushed in to greet us.  After going through all the checks and baggage claims, we were shown onto a minibus which gradually filled with other English couples, none, I remember, with any children that were my sisters’ or my age.  As the journey began, all the adults broke into introductions and swapped stories of how they came to be there.  Most of the British men were also beginning three year contracts with Sasol and would be based in Vanderbijlpark.  For now, the destination for all of us was the Van Riebeeck Hotel. Vanderbijlpark. 

The Van Riebeeck Hotel was one of those places that as an adult you would call a ‘shit hole’ but to me at that time, it was paradise with outside areas full of exotic, tropical plants, sprinkler systems everywhere and most attractive of all, it had an indoor bar where all the adults seemed to spend a large proportion of the few days we had there. 

Within a short space of time, we were housed. I remember it being Von Wielligh Street and the house having a tin roof.  Our first experience in that house of a full electrical thunder storm bringing heavy rains and large hail stones, left us all with our ears ringing for days.  Life soon settled, Dad began working, I’m not really sure what my mother did with her days at that time.  Christine and myself were sent off daily to attend Pinedene School. 
School was stricter in South Africa in those days compared to schooling in England.  An exact uniform was required, one for winter and one for summer, even the knickers had to be per exact requirements!  We were taught cursive writing, ‘up light, down dark’ strokes and woe betide you if the work you turned in wasn’t neat.  You had to raise your hand before speaking and you had to raise your hand in the hope of being given permission to go to the toilet. The hardest part for both my sister and myself was enduring the ‘immigrant Afrikaans’ lessons.  Afrikaans as a language, was a compulsory part of education, immigrants were not excused.  At that time, certain parts of the country were still struggling with becoming bi-lingual with an area either being predominantly Afrikaans speaking, or predominantly English speaking.  Vanderbijlpark / Vereeniging were still very much Afrikaans speaking communities. 

At some point after a year or so of living in Vanderbijlpark, my father got fed up with the company he worked for, or perhaps it wasn’t the company, but the job, or maybe the people, who knows.  For one reason or another he decided the time was right to up sticks, find a new job and move house.  We ended up in a suburb called Germiston, which was a little more English and a lot more affluent.  My father had somehow managed to get a job that paid really good money.  The house was great.  A sprawling back garden was also home to such a large tree, that it was used as a landmark to direct people.  My father rigged a ‘monkey swing’ from one of this tree’s lowest branch.  Endless hours of fun were had around this tree.

My Mother had secured a job working for a large supermarket chain called Hyperama, For those who are familiar with this chain, this was in the days when Hyperama’s branding was still Red and not Green as it is now.
My sister and myself were sent off to join a new school called Sunnyridge Primary school.  I remember being very happy in this school as well as happy living in this house. 

During one end of term school holiday, my mother took us to work with her.  There was a lot of hustle and bustle going on in the large promotional area of the shop.  It had turned out that on that particular day there was to be an appearance by the original cast of the New Avengers.  For the life of me, I cannot remember what on earth they were promoting as this was clearly long before the days of video tapes or DVD’s but there I stood with my sister and watched as a stage was rigged and set up with props, posters, microphone stands and other paraphernalia.  Somehow or another, without me really having any knowledge of it, the crowd had grown as the time grew nearer for  Joanna Lumley, Patrick Macnee and Gareth Hunt to emerge on stage.  The result was that when they did arrive on stage, the crowd surged forward to the stage and being at the front with my sister, I remember slowly being crushed from behind.  Fortunately for me, Mr Gareth Hunt had seen me, took pity on me and promptly lifted me up and allowed me to sit on a chair on the stage for the duration of their performance! Great fun! 

Television did not arrive in South Africa until 1976.  It seems amazing to a lot of people I talk to that it arrived there so late.  However, it has left me with an amazing memory of what life was like without Television.  Our evenings revolved around, completing homework, and eating supper while listening to Springbok Radio’s , Jet Jungle or The Mind of Tracey Dark and various other brilliant radio shows, some of the best ones, we were not allowed to stay up long enough to listen to. 

Our only window to the outside world of pictures meant going to a ‘Drive-In’ movie in the car with my parents over a weekend.  Drive-In’s were a source of great fun, particularly during my teenage years. There were many dotted throughout Johannesburg, Vyfster and Topstar to name a couple I most frequented.  Sadly, due to there being too much light in the skies nowadays, they have all closed.  I find it particularly sad that this wonderful form of old style entertainment will never be experienced by any more generations and also makes Jeremy Taylor’s song “Ag pleez Deddy, won’t you take us to the Drive-In?”  totally meaningless. 

The arrival of Television to South Africa gave us another memory to laugh at.  My sister and myself had become friendly with two girls our own ages in the same street.  We were often in each other’s homes.  On one occasion, the two girls had excitedly invited us to come and watch Television at their house and I’m sure, they were quite convinced that not only were they the first people to have acquired a Television in the street, but also in their minds, possibly the World!  We agreed to attend after school the very next day. 

Transmission started at four o clock in the afternoon and ended at eight o’clock with The News alternated one night in English and one Night in Afrikaans.  On the first occasion of our seeing Television with our two friends, at five o’clock an episode of Black Beauty was screened, after the first five minutes, both my sister and I announced disappointedly, that we had already seen this episode.  Imagine the disbelief on their faces!!  Not only was Television a new thing in itself, but a re-run was simply incomprehensible!

Because my mother had a job and school finished at two fifteen in South Africa, my parents employed what was commonly known as ‘a maid’ who would be at home with us in the afternoons.  Her name was Ella, in my mind, she looked about a hundred and twenty years old.  Her face a map of wrinkles, the whites of her eyes a roadmap.  On the premises in the back garden we had lodgings for house staff, known as a ‘Kaia’ most houses at that time had Kaias.  This dwelling consisted of a square concrete room, with a small window and a metal door, next door was another room consisting of a stone sink, shower and a toilet.

This was where Ella lived.  She furnished her room, with a single bed, all four legs precariously balanced on top of three layers of bricks.  Being inquisitive young girls, we asked Ella why she had her bed on top of these bricks.  She explained that she was scared of the Tokoloshe and did not want it to ‘get’ her in the night.  The Tokoloshe was a small devilish-like imp that apparently was no taller than half a foot.  Apparently this imp was the bringer of death and other untold miseries. Most natives swore by his existence.  However, if you built your bed on bricks, even if he came in the night, he was not tall enough to cast his evil spells on you.

There was no electricity in the kaia and I often found it comforting to sit in Ella’s room, it would smell of the paraffin light that she kept burning, even in the daylight hours.  I remember looking for Ella one day and, not receiving a reply to my calls, went in search of her.  I found her at the back of her wash room with a bucket of water, vigorously scrubbing at her teeth with a lump of coal!  “What are you doing?” I cried.  “Brushing my teeth!” she answered with a dripping black gummy smile.

Ella would meet us at school and walk home with us, sometimes it was just my sister and myself, other times there would be a gang of us girls, all walking the same way home from school, peppering Ella with questions about, when would our boobs grow and when would we get hair under our arms, what was it like to give birth, get married etc.

But, I also remember that in those days, Africans walking around ‘white’ suburbs in the late afternoons had to have ‘passes’ in those days, this was like an ID book, giving their names and the purpose of their being in the particular suburb they were found in.  If they did not have passes on them, they would be immediately arrested by the Police and Lord knows what cruelties they were then subjected to.  Some, of them of course, were actually up to ‘no good’!  A theory that in today’s Politically Correct world, is unheard of.

Politically, South Africa was in turmoil by 1976, and this was in fact the year of the now historical ‘Soweto Riots’ Propaganda has a lot to answer for when it shows the world white police men randomly gunning down innocent Africans ranging in age and gender.  What it did not show was the white police men being shot at first by a few Africans who were using the thronging mass of an African community as a shield.  Nowadays, it matters not.  The history books have been re-written anyway.

The days marched on and life was good, we wanted for nothing, we ate well, got lots of fresh air and exercise, we learned to swim, had a holiday in Swaziland one year, our hair went blonde and our bodies became the colour of copper and although we were young, we knew we hadn’t left a life like that behind us in England. 
On the 16th October 1977, we were helping my mother prepare supper in time for my father’s arrival home from work. My father eventually walked through the door and pointedly ignored us all including the dog, who was his favourite.  Ignoring Benny was so out of character that nobody said a word.  We laid the dining table and sat down to a frosty silent family meal.  In fits and starts, it transpired that my father’s ultimate hero, Elvis Presley, had been found dead, I burst into tears and sought out  Benny for a cuddle.

Many months later, my father was slowly recovering from the shock of Elvis Presley having died, when my mother received the sad news that her father was unwell and in hospital back in the North East of England.
I know that there had been some discussions around the problem of whether to return to England for a holiday, or whether to return to live, either way, I somehow found myself sitting in front of my toy cupboard with the job of separating what was to be packed and what was to be given away.  We were returning to the United Kingdom.
I do not remember having an opinion one way or another on whether I wanted to leave South Africa, my friends or school.  I was excited at the prospect of seeing my family again!