Interlude - Life In Zimbabwe between trips

INTERLUDE

Soon after we got back to Harare from our August 1982 trip to Europe we received word that the Lord High Ruler of the company – Peter Dugdale - would be back in South Africa for a board meeting and would like another trip on Lake Kariba, having enjoyed his first visit the previous year so much. He was bringing his son and his wife.

No problem for us. Rab had overcome the fear she had on the first trip of being confined in the close quarters of a boat with the wives of the most senior people in trhe Company. Of course as it turned out they were great folks and we had a lot of fun together. There was a hint of what was to come when, as we sailed out of the harbour at the start of the voyage, Jill, the wife of the South African CEO, took the top off a bottle of gin, threw the top overboard, and poured the contents of the bottle into eight glasses saying that it saved getting up for a refill.

The Gloria tied up on Kariba - we used her often

One of the joys of living in Zimbabwe was the chance of frequent visits to Lake Kariba – only 365 kilometres from Harare. There were boats for hire, some of our clients also had corporate boats to which we had access and in the fullness of time I persuaded my Board that we should also have a boat, which we designed and had built, just in time for me to have the maiden voyage before I was transferred to Australia. But that’s another story.

Dixon Hambalala the Gloria skipper

The fishing and game spotting on the Lake were both superb. The Lake was full of tilapia – referred to as bream – which were good eating fish and tiger fish which with their needle sharp teeth and streamlined bodies made for a great fight on light rods – they were good to eat too, although a little bony if not filleted correctly. The entire southern bank of the lake – about 200 kilometres was a game reserve and full of elephant, buffalo and buck plus the big cats that go with such game – mainly lion and leopard. The only negative about a trip on the Lake was that swimming was very dangerous – there were many crocodiles, unseen during the day but easy to see with a spotlight at night as their eyes reflected the beam of the torch.

Sunrise up the Umi River - flows into Kariba

The trip was a good one and we saw a good deal of game including a herd of elephant having their noonday bath who were most annoyed at our interrupting them.

Two VERY annoyed young elephant

Giraffe at Hwange

A month or so later we had another visit from another Main Board Director and his wife. One of the features of these visits from VIPs in Head Office was that they tended to cluster in the Northern Hemisphere Winter. Nothing like a trip to a warm tropical country to get away from the grey weather. This pair didn’t fancy going to Karbia, so we took them to Hwange Game Reserve, home to the biggest herds of elephant in the world plus all manner of other game. Hwange is close to Victoria Falls, so we included a trip to show them the Falls where we had an amusing encounter with a baboon.

Dad being raised to a decent height.

My father’s birthday followed – his 70^th and my brothers came up from South Africa for the celebration – strange to think I’m now his age then – we thought he was getting old. I now realise we were wrong. More friends came up from Cape Town for Christmas – old pals Sue and Mike and their two boys. They decided to travel by train a three night/three day journey because they thought the boys would enjoy the excitement. They had a bit more of that than they had anticipated when the train ahead of them was ambushed by dissidents left over from the War of Independence and their train was held up for twelve hours. 
 

With the Crone family on the Zambesi

They soon recovered and we had a great time together –up to Hwange where we saw a lot of elephants, on to Victoria Falls and finished off with a three day cruise on Kariba.

Sea Quest on Kariba

Life was pretty good in Zimbabwe. We had more visitors thoroughout the year, many of whom were business colleagues anxious to see the sights – particularly Kariba, so they would often arrive on a Friday morning, giving us a good weekend of fishing before starting work on Monday.  The new lenses I bought in London for my camera were put to good use too.

We had a couple of trips to South Africa for shopping and Board meetings – the former because the lack of foreign currency in Zimbabwe and the currency restrictions which applied meant that there were very few imported items of food or anything else. We would drive down – 1,200 kilometres each way – every few months to top up things we missed – like black pepper or tinned tuna or …. We also had one trip to Durban to see Rab’s Mom and her stepfather – and other pals. So, quite a busy year.

I had another trip to Europe – without the family this time  - before we had our next holiday. I kept a diary but will not be publishing it, although I am transcribing it. The trip was mainly business related and my journal contains some rather pointed and judgmental remarks about some of my colleagues which might be actionable if published. The occasion was the annual international conference when the heads of operations in all the territories where we had subsidiary companies gathered to discuss plans and projects. On this particular occasion it had been agreed that the ‘bright young men’ from each territory would make the presentations to the conference highlighting some of the issues that they had identified as being essential for the future. I was the selected ‘bright young man’ for Southern Africa

Great idea – in theory. In practice, of course the old dead wood serving on most of our boards and heading up most of the companies simply didn’t understand the points being made in the papers we presented and/or took them as being critical of the current regime (which of course they were!). The other point that we hadn’t counted on was that being selected to make a presentation at this conference was the corporate equivalent of having a large target tattooed on your forehead. Within five years there were only two of us left out of the ten who made the presentations. The rest had been culled, a fate I avoided by the narrowest of margins – but that’s another story too.

I did manage to fit in a flight on Concorde to see our friends in the USA, which ticked off one of my three travel targets – the other two being to travel on the QE II and the Trans-Siberian Railway. We managed the first – as detailed in the next journal to be published – but I failed completely to persuade Rab that the Trans-Siberian was something that WE would want to do. (I think she was right, although I might have found it interesting!)

The Concorde flight came about because I had a very smart travel agent in Harare who was skilled at eking out value for every dollar spent. Since I was entitled to a Business Class ticket and I was going to a couple of European countries on my way to London, she said she could get me a one way ticket to New York on Concorde for only £200. Too good to miss that! BUT, she cautioned British Airways would most likely  argue about this fare and if they did she gave me the trump card of giving me the FCU (Fare Construction Unit) calculation. This was the way in which different currencies were stabilised by the airline industry. Under no circumstances was I to disclose the source of the calculation.

Sure enough I did have a bit of trouble with the British Airways office in London and although I finally got them down to £550 for the flight, they would not budge any lower. So I played my trump card. That got the Manager out of his box demanding to know where I had got the calculation. I stonewalled him, merely asking if it was correct. He had to concede that it was in the end, very reluctantly, but warned me that I should not try this trick again. Not sure if they put me on a ‘bad boy register’. Maybe that’s why we had some pretty bad flights on BA over the years.

My flying visit to the US aboard Concorde is on the next blog.