1980 - ZIMBABWE Exploratory Visit - Salisbury#1

Saturday December 6, 1980 - Salisbury

We both woke up at about 05.30 but managed to get back to sleep until 06.30 when the coffee was delivered to our room. We put a call through to Matt, who was staying with our friends the Crones. It took about twenty five minutes to get through and we were pleased to hear that he sounded bright and chirpy.

Meikle's Hotel

While Rab was showering and getting ready for breakfast, I went down to the hotel lobby to get some postcards to send to our friends. There were none of the cartoon cards I had seen on previous visits. The assistant finally found one, but it was the only one available.

After breakfast we set of for town to get some idea of what was available in the shops – and what the prices were. Electrical goods were very expensive – a stove costing about R400 in South Africa selling for about Z$700 here. Men’s clothes seemed to be about the same price.

We went right through all departments in the main store – Barbour’s. Virtually no toys – poor Matt! There were board games – including a Muppet game – and some locally manufactured toys made out of cloth and wood. Very few imported toys and most of them cheap plastic ones. The only cars, for example, were small Playart ones. Rab mocked what fabrics were available. There was some lovely oak furniture and in a special section of the basement some fancy goods including locally made pottery but very little else. Rab said it all reminded her of the shops in East London. (That isn’t the East End of London, but my home town, in South Africa. A small town on the border of some of the artificially created ‘homelands’ it was a bit of a hick town.)

The tambala nuts we wanted to buy were very expensive at Barbour’s so we went to OK Bazaars to look for them there. (Tambala nuts are very large peanuts grown in Malawi, in currency terms there are 100 tambala to a Malawi Kwacha – you really can be paid peanuts in Malawi!) Of course, being a Saturday the shop was jam packed full of people – referred to by the white Rhodesians as ‘locals’ unless they were using more derogatory terms. Despite the crowds everyone was very good natured. (This was in contrast to the black people in South Africa who tended to be surly en masse – fpr understandable reasons.) We could not find any tambalas there but we had a very interesting talk to a (white) lady about living conditions. She was promoting local Cold Duck (which was awful as all local wines were.).

It was becoming quite warm, so on our way to the next shop I bought an iced lolly – greengage flavour – which was very refreshing. Next stop was a shop called Phillips which sells wine, coffee and tobacco where we bought our lottery tickets for the draw next Friday. (At this time all gambling, other than horse racing, was banned in South Africa, so no lottery there.) we drifted in and out of a couple more shops before finding our tambalas at another supermarket chain – Macey’s. we also bought a selection of biscuits, sweets and cereals for Matt to sample. Someone had told Rab that there was no choice of breakfast cereals, but in fact there were four or five to choose from.

The office had arranged for me to have a car while we were in Zimbabwe – a white Peugeot 404, the workhorse of Africa. I picked that up from the basement of our building after we had done with the shopping and went on a drive around town. First call was the old school – St George’s College – then the house where I lived and the suburbs like Highlands and Gun Hill. Everything is so  beautifully green and lush and the gardens looked lovely. Bougainvillea is everywhere. College looked a bit seedy and unkempt, I thought with the grass long and uncut and full of weeds.

St Georges College -  boarders' and staff quarters. The tower is a water tank

Back at the hotel we didn’t bother to have lunch – just tambalas and a couple of beers and thought we might watch a bit of television before going out. On Saturday TV begins at 14.15 with cartoons followed by Magic Circle starring Ali Cat, much to Rab’s disgust – not much to watch then.

We went out to see Eric and Deirdre Padbury (Eric was General Manager and the plan was that I was to take over from him when he retired.) before going on to my cousins the McBeans for afternoon tea. The Padburys have a lovely golden Labrador pup called Major, another ugly little black sort of skipperje called Scamp who has ugly protruding lower teeth, four cats and an aviary. The McBeans gave us a warm welcome and after tea with them we took Margie for a drive. She led us to St John’s School which is one that everyone has recommended. It certainly looks very nice indeed and I will try to see the Headmaster next week. It is a small school which goes up to Standard 6 and seems to be run on similar lines to Wet Pups. (Matt’s school – Western Province Preparatory School.)

We picked up Duncan on the way back and all went into town for a meal. The McBean girls had gone to the Ice Show with their Granny and spent the night with her. The restaurant was called the Clovagarlix and the décor was in line with the theme of Asterix. The inside of the restaurant was made to look like a log cabin in parts, while on the plastered areas were murals of characters from Asterix. The menu followed the theme and the prices were in “sestersii”. There was a good folk singer and a very noisy crowd of farmers from Lomagundi were mocking him. They were really very funny and we had a great time with everyone joining in the singing.

It was raining gently when we left which had cooled the air down a bit. We had intended having an early night, but finally got to bed at about 23.30. we saw several odd cars and vehicles on our drive – mainly peculiarly shaped military vehicles – but the one thing that really astonished us was seeing a Chevrolet Rekord Station Wagon for sale for Z$18,500. what a price!