Growing Up In Africa

[Chas Lotter]

My brother is turning 60 and his daughter-in-law is making up a memory book for him to mark the occasion.

This was my contribution. You may enjoy it.


Pull up a log and sit down by my fire. Make yourself comfortable. The whiskey is over there, pour yourself a shot, gaze into the crackling flames and listen…..

Let me tell you a story about two young boys growing up in Africa; growing up in the wild, free days when the cities and towns were small and the bush was vast.

First, though, some background. When the dust and the noise of World War II died down, our father demobilised from the South African Air Force and joined the South African Airways in Joburg as a radio technician.

There he met our mother, a typist, fell in love and proposed. The course of true love was not easy, though, for her mother refused them permission to marry saying “No bloody German is marrying my daughter”. He was Afrikaans, not German, but that made no difference for, in those days, race – and even culture – were burning issues in society. Our father, being our father, told her to take a hike and married our mother anyway.

My brother Norman, and I, were born in Germiston in Johannesburg but we were not destined to stay there long. Our father wanted something better than a job at SAA and a matchbox house in Germiston - and, besides, the wanderlust was pulling at his soul. So he taught himself farming from books and then began writing to farmers in far-off Rhodesia, asking for a job.

And so, in the early 1950’s, our father, our mother and two small boys packing themselves and their worldly goods into an old car and began the journey from Joburg to a farm, north of a tiny little town in Rhodesia called Bindura, where our father had gotten a job as a farm assistant. Despite the trials and tribulations that were to come, it was the best decision our father ever made. We left the dust and the dirt and the noise of the city behind, settled in the wide open African spaces and began to live through one of the golden spaces in our lives.

We were isolated. Even Bindura town was far. In the rainy season, when the rivers were in flood, the only way to get supplies from town was to drive to the river, walk over the rushing brown waters using the old pedestrian suspension bridge, get someone to take you the rest of the way to town, buy your supplies and return home by the same route.

There were no schools out there in the bush. Instead, we had radio school. Once a day, our mother would sit us down, switch on the radio and Norman and I would take our lessons from the teacher on the radio.

Electricity was precious. Our parents did not use it except for lighting. Our mother cooked our food on a stove heated by firewood and our hot water came from a donkey boiler – a 44-gallon drum with a fire built underneath it.

Life could be dangerous. One day, our father was setting a backburn to try and stop a bushfire which was threatening the farm. Then the wind changed. Next thing, the backburn was coming at him and he was running, trying to outpace the racing fire. He just made it to a stream and got across in time – otherwise Norman and I would have grown up without a father.

Wildlife abounded. One day our father had to shoot a python – a monstrous specimen which had killed and eaten a calf. He stretched the skin out to dry on our outside kitchen wall and it ran around two sides of our kitchen. A neighbouring farmer – a tough, dried out old man – was attacked by a leopard and killed it with his sheath knife. He was lucky to have survived and bore the dreadful scars of that attack for the rest of his life.

(But wait – I hear you murmuring amongst yourselves. Do you really think it was such a hard, harsh life? No, a thousand times, no. We grew up owning the endless African spaces. The world around us was ours, full of life and vigour and beauty. Norman and I did not need TV, cellphones and the internet for, all around us, was far more than we could ever absorb.)

With our parents we explored the land around us, fished in dams and rivers, climbed kopjies, went on picnics and watched the wildlife – all with so few other human beings around that the world was truly ours.

And we laughed. Our father had a problem with neighbouring tribesmen who would deliberately let their cattle stray onto the farm where he worked and eat the farm’s grazing. He would round them up, the tribesman would apologise – and then do it again the next week. So, one week, he rounded them up and broke out the paint. Testicles were painted blue, yellow circles were painted around their eyes and fanciful patterns decorated their bodies. He invited the entire neighbourhood to come and enjoy the fun, then told the tribesmen to come and collect their cattle. The neighbours laughed, the neighbours hooted, the neighbours made suggestive comments and the embarrassed tribesmen never tried to graze their cattle on the farm again.

Then our father decided to go farming on his own. He packed in his job and moved to a farm in the Gatooma area. At first the years were good. Norman and I were older now and we were allowed to explore the African bush on our own. We would come home from school, drop our bags, grab our pellet guns and head off into the bush. There were only two rules – be home by dark and, after dinner, do your homework.

We knew every inch of that farm; we climbed every kopjie and explored every patch of Mopani bush. We shot birds for our lunch, cleaned them and cooked them over an open fire. We were part of the African bush.

We had hard years on that farm, too. Seven years of drought came. Year after year, the crops withered and turned brown. Norman and I drove tractors for our father for he could not afford to employ tractor drivers. For years, the only meat we ate in our house was what the three of us managed to shoot in the bush.

But life was glorious. For all its trials and tribulations, we had freedom, we had the African bush – and we had the family, always the family, the tight-knit family.

Then it was over. We were no longer children. A war came along. Norman served honourably in the British South African Police and I served in the Rhodesian Army Medical Corps. Norman went to university in South Africa. We both met the women with whom were we to spend the rest of our lives, married them and raised our children.

Norman moved, first to South Africa and then to Canada. A few years later, I moved to South Africa. We both raised our children in foreign climes where they grew and prospered.

Now Norman’s children have children. It is my fervent hope that one day, they will have the privilege of visiting Africa and drinking of her waters. The golden age, the wide open spaces and the freedom of the 1950’s and of the early 1960’s are gone but still the raging, burning orb of the African sun drops into the sunset waters of the Zambezi river, still the baboons bark in the kopjies, still the wildebeest run, taking frantic flight across the veldt and still – wide open spaces exist to be explored and savoured.

[GameFarmer]

Thanks for the nice read. It conjures up some many memories of my own childhood, albeit not in Rhodesia. Unfortunately those days are just that. Memories. There might be the odd fading picture or two, but our written words are the only way to preserve those precious memories for our children.

[JS4]

Thanks for sharing Chas - nice read!

And we laughed. Our father had a problem with neighbouring tribesmen who would deliberately let their cattle stray onto the farm where he worked and eat the farm’s grazing. He would round them up, the tribesman would apologise – and then do it again the next week. So, one week, he rounded them up and broke out the paint. Testicles were painted blue, yellow circles were painted around their eyes and fanciful patterns decorated their bodies. He invited the entire neighbourhood to come and enjoy the fun, then told the tribesmen to come and collect their cattle. The neighbours laughed, the neighbours hooted, the neighbours made suggestive comments and the embarrassed tribesmen never tried to graze their cattle on the farm again.

Aah yes, the days when one could still paint a tribesman's testicles blue...

[FrankH]

Nice piece Chas.

[abhm]

Chas, you have this gift in your writing to take me along those same dusty paths, drinking the same water and revelling in the freedom of two brothers in the bush. Thank you so much for sharing. Bryan

[shuban]

Thanks once again for sharing Chas - nice read!