ex_colonial
MIA
As I mentioned in the Thread on S Africa going down the Zimbabwe route I will try & put a few thoughts together on my time in N. Rhodesia.
This is the first bit, getting there.
It was the smell that I noticed first, a dry, dusty, smoky smell overlaid with a tang of burnt jet fuel, that had a hint of something indefinable in it, was it a slight animal sweaty background? I couldn’t decide, but the air was cooler and much fresher than the stale canned air of the South African Airways Boeing 707 I had just emerged from.
So this is Africa, the mysterious Dark Continent that I had read so much about in my boyhood, home of Tarzan, where the Mau Mau had just been beaten, where the Congo had just erupted into civil war and chaos, where I was going to spend the next three years as a colonial policeman in Northern Rhodesia, this was December 1960.
As I walked down the steps, I looked around at Nairobi Airport, noticing the clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight, such a contrast to the cold, grey, grimy, wet skies of my home in South Wales. The soil, very red and dusty between the sparse grass at the edge of the runway. Outside of the door to the whitewashed transit lounge, where I and my fellow passengers were headed while the plane refuelled, stood a tall African policeman, made taller by the dark red fez with the glinting badge of the Kenya police at the front. He was smart, polished boots, ironed khaki shorts down to his knees. Dark blue crew necked pullover, with a polished black leather belt around his waist. As I neared him I noticed the tribal marks scarring his cheeks, hard, dark, rather bloodshot eyes as he looked us over in passing. "I bet he’s seen some things in the last few years" said Hugh, one of my new colleagues I had met the previous day in the departure lounge at Cromwell Road in London.
There were 18 of us, 15 men aged between 20 and 25 and 3 women probably about an average of 5 years older. We were the next intake going to join the Northern Rhodesia Police, recruited in the UK to boost the numbers as violence broke out over the northern borders with the Congo, Tanganyika and Nyasaland. The men were a mixture, Irish, from both the north and south, Scots, English and Welsh with one South African of English origin. A mixture of backgrounds, public school, grammar school and secondary modern, one ex army officer, 4 ex UK policemen, 1 ex BSAP, Southern Rhodesian policeman. The others like myself, a mixture of various mundane office jobs, but all looking for that new, slightly glamorous, to our eyes, future which was the Colonial Police.
Having just been seen off by my attractive former girlfriend, I was not impressed with the quality of the would be policewomen, the oldest, who
looked about 30, a mousy ex RUC policewoman from Northern Ireland, was, as the Americans would say, homely, the next oldest, in her late twenties, was a tall blond Londoner who was an ex NAAFI manageress who had spent quite a bit of time in Cyprus, but had a long, slightly hard, horse like face, the youngest, who was about 25 was a pretty Scots girl, the only problem was, as Hugh had said, she was well on the way to having quite an impressive moustache, this was made worse by the fact she had a very pale clear skin and very dark hair!
The previous day when we had all congregated at the Cromwell Road terminal in London, we had recognized that we were all in the same party and introduced ourselves. I had got friendly with Hugh, a South African of English origin who had served 3 years in the British South African Police in Southern Rhodesia. Jock, a Scottish, rugby playing ex public school boy and Derek the ex national service Army officer. We seemed to be able to chat amicably and excitedly about what our new life would be like, whilst drinking numerous pints of beer. We had sat together on the plane and at the 2 stops en route in Rome and Athens, talking about our backgrounds and what we were looking for in Africa. Hugh had been a constable in Southern Rhodesia and looked forward to being an assistant inspector. Derek thought there was more opportunity in the colonial police than the army after the demise of national service. I was looking for adventure in Africa as I had missed national service. Secretly it was also largely to do with unrequited love, my former girlfriend who was 2 years older than me and whom I thought was sophisticated and attractive, had turned down my offer of undying love and marriage, for a far more secure future with her boss, the owner of a chain of travel agents in South Wales. At 20 I was devastated, to the extent that I had actually considered joining the Foreign Legion "to forget", fortunately common sense had prevailed, when I discovered the pay was terrible and the fact that various masters had torn their hair out trying to teach me French for 5 years in grammar school to the point where I achieved the magnificent total of 16 % in my GCE O level, most of which was probably given for me writing my name on the exam paper. So when the advert for the Police had appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" it seemed the ideal answer, comparatively good pay, lots of excitement, and the lure of Africa!
Jock was an ex Scottish public school boy who had been sent down from university for various offences against the system, mainly drunkenness and
lechery, his father, who was a big name on the Scottish legal scene, had encouraged his son to go abroad to avoid embarrassing him further. A remittance man Derek called him.
We were served a typical English breakfast by a team of quiet efficient Africans with bare feet wearing long white robes. After a few hours we were called back to the plane for the next leg of our journey to Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia. The pilot pointed out Mount Kilimanjaro as we flew over it, I was surprised to see the snow on it even though it was virtually right on the equator. Later we flew over the Zambezi river, which ran through the countryside exposing large tracts of sandbanks on either shore, the pilot explained that was because it was at the end of the dry season, a couple of months later and it would have been full to bursting, flooding much of the plain below.
This is the first bit, getting there.
It was the smell that I noticed first, a dry, dusty, smoky smell overlaid with a tang of burnt jet fuel, that had a hint of something indefinable in it, was it a slight animal sweaty background? I couldn’t decide, but the air was cooler and much fresher than the stale canned air of the South African Airways Boeing 707 I had just emerged from.
So this is Africa, the mysterious Dark Continent that I had read so much about in my boyhood, home of Tarzan, where the Mau Mau had just been beaten, where the Congo had just erupted into civil war and chaos, where I was going to spend the next three years as a colonial policeman in Northern Rhodesia, this was December 1960.
As I walked down the steps, I looked around at Nairobi Airport, noticing the clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight, such a contrast to the cold, grey, grimy, wet skies of my home in South Wales. The soil, very red and dusty between the sparse grass at the edge of the runway. Outside of the door to the whitewashed transit lounge, where I and my fellow passengers were headed while the plane refuelled, stood a tall African policeman, made taller by the dark red fez with the glinting badge of the Kenya police at the front. He was smart, polished boots, ironed khaki shorts down to his knees. Dark blue crew necked pullover, with a polished black leather belt around his waist. As I neared him I noticed the tribal marks scarring his cheeks, hard, dark, rather bloodshot eyes as he looked us over in passing. "I bet he’s seen some things in the last few years" said Hugh, one of my new colleagues I had met the previous day in the departure lounge at Cromwell Road in London.
There were 18 of us, 15 men aged between 20 and 25 and 3 women probably about an average of 5 years older. We were the next intake going to join the Northern Rhodesia Police, recruited in the UK to boost the numbers as violence broke out over the northern borders with the Congo, Tanganyika and Nyasaland. The men were a mixture, Irish, from both the north and south, Scots, English and Welsh with one South African of English origin. A mixture of backgrounds, public school, grammar school and secondary modern, one ex army officer, 4 ex UK policemen, 1 ex BSAP, Southern Rhodesian policeman. The others like myself, a mixture of various mundane office jobs, but all looking for that new, slightly glamorous, to our eyes, future which was the Colonial Police.
Having just been seen off by my attractive former girlfriend, I was not impressed with the quality of the would be policewomen, the oldest, who
looked about 30, a mousy ex RUC policewoman from Northern Ireland, was, as the Americans would say, homely, the next oldest, in her late twenties, was a tall blond Londoner who was an ex NAAFI manageress who had spent quite a bit of time in Cyprus, but had a long, slightly hard, horse like face, the youngest, who was about 25 was a pretty Scots girl, the only problem was, as Hugh had said, she was well on the way to having quite an impressive moustache, this was made worse by the fact she had a very pale clear skin and very dark hair!
The previous day when we had all congregated at the Cromwell Road terminal in London, we had recognized that we were all in the same party and introduced ourselves. I had got friendly with Hugh, a South African of English origin who had served 3 years in the British South African Police in Southern Rhodesia. Jock, a Scottish, rugby playing ex public school boy and Derek the ex national service Army officer. We seemed to be able to chat amicably and excitedly about what our new life would be like, whilst drinking numerous pints of beer. We had sat together on the plane and at the 2 stops en route in Rome and Athens, talking about our backgrounds and what we were looking for in Africa. Hugh had been a constable in Southern Rhodesia and looked forward to being an assistant inspector. Derek thought there was more opportunity in the colonial police than the army after the demise of national service. I was looking for adventure in Africa as I had missed national service. Secretly it was also largely to do with unrequited love, my former girlfriend who was 2 years older than me and whom I thought was sophisticated and attractive, had turned down my offer of undying love and marriage, for a far more secure future with her boss, the owner of a chain of travel agents in South Wales. At 20 I was devastated, to the extent that I had actually considered joining the Foreign Legion "to forget", fortunately common sense had prevailed, when I discovered the pay was terrible and the fact that various masters had torn their hair out trying to teach me French for 5 years in grammar school to the point where I achieved the magnificent total of 16 % in my GCE O level, most of which was probably given for me writing my name on the exam paper. So when the advert for the Police had appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" it seemed the ideal answer, comparatively good pay, lots of excitement, and the lure of Africa!
Jock was an ex Scottish public school boy who had been sent down from university for various offences against the system, mainly drunkenness and
lechery, his father, who was a big name on the Scottish legal scene, had encouraged his son to go abroad to avoid embarrassing him further. A remittance man Derek called him.
We were served a typical English breakfast by a team of quiet efficient Africans with bare feet wearing long white robes. After a few hours we were called back to the plane for the next leg of our journey to Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia. The pilot pointed out Mount Kilimanjaro as we flew over it, I was surprised to see the snow on it even though it was virtually right on the equator. Later we flew over the Zambezi river, which ran through the countryside exposing large tracts of sandbanks on either shore, the pilot explained that was because it was at the end of the dry season, a couple of months later and it would have been full to bursting, flooding much of the plain below.
