Thursday December 11, 1980 –Vumba back to Harare
 |
| A lovely spot - with a grumpy man! |
We woke up
early as usual to find that it was a lovely day. We waited for the drum to
summon us to breakfast, but never heard it, so eventually went down and had a
very nice meal. We went for a stroll around the property after we had eaten and
watch the beautiful little honeysuckers flitting amongst the fuchsias which
made a beautiful background. We also greeted the geese which hadn’t actually
got going – having a late sleep in. There were some very large granadilla (passion fruit) vines growing over one
of the msasa trees and I hoped to pick a bit of the fruit, but unfortunately
there was none that was ripe.
We left
quite early as Eric had phoned to say that he wanted to see me when we get back
to Salisbury – and indeed I want to see him to
open discussions on the details of the proposed move, although most of these
will be resolved with Mike Newman in
Johannesburg.
We stopped
off in Mutare on the way at the Jairos Jiri shop. This has been set up to help
disabled people , especially those damaged by the war. We bought a covered
basket to carry all the groceries we have bought which will also serve as a
basket for Bunny. No one pays any attention to the speed limit so we did the
journey in a little under two hours. (I see
Google maps say it is about 260 km/155 miles and suggest a time of four hours twenty two minutes! Seems the road has
deteriorated or the traffic volume has built up). There didn’t seem to be
so many crows on the way – perhaps they saw us coming or perhaps the best meals
had already been taken.
It was fine
weather all the way although we could see some storms in the distance. We
thought we might hit a massive storm by the time we got to Salisbury, but the weather headed North and
it didn’t even rain.
I went in to
the office to see Eric to start negotiations and Rab took the opportunity to
have a snooze. Hope she doesn’t find the altitude a problem when we are here
permanently. While I was there Rab spoke to Matt who had been having a good
time but who seemed a bit disappointed
that we will be coming to live here.
Postscript
As is often the case with my journals I failed to cover the last day or
two. There was always so much to do when we got home. Although we had made our
decision to go up to Zimbabwe,
it took a bit longer than that to deal with all the bureaucracy to do with
getting work and residence permits. Files were lost and recovered and finally
we set off on 29 July 1981.
Before we left on this next exciting stage of our lives, we shared the first
of many overseas trips, the first of which was in April 1981 and which is the
subject of the next journal, which follows this one.
We had quite an adventure on the way to Zimbabwe when the hotel where we were overnighting
at in my home town, East London, caught fire. This event was captured well by Matt with one of his early
cartoons and Rab had this to say in an extract from a letter to her pals back in Cape Town:
We were staying at the Holiday Inn in East London. I had not wanted to book in there because I
knew from past experience that there were some very rough types who hung around
there – bikies and the like, but Terry said it was easier to make a booking
there because we were staying in another hotel in the Group in Johannesburg.
On Saturday night we
got back to the hotel a little after midnight after a great night out with
Terry’s cousins who live in East London. There
were fewer skollies (rednecks/bogans)
than there were last night but they were
all blind drunk and the dregs of humanity, milling around the hotel entrance so
we had to push our way into the building and into the lift. Matt and Terry got
into bed while I took off my make-up so it would have been about 12.40 and we
were all dozing off to sleep when there was
thundering of footsteps down the passage outside our room and then a
banging and shouting which I took to be a fight in the corridor of our floor.
With that I grabbed the phone and tried to call the front desk as I was darned
if I would put up with these hooligans brawling outside our room, intending to
call the police if the management would not do anything. No one answered the
phone and Terry suggested that the people were likely to be drunk and that
maybe it was a family brawl when we heard a woman’s voice shouting “Oh, my God,
get the children out of here!”
There was more banging
on doors and thumping noises when Matt suddenly sat up and turned on the
bedside light and started to cry, saying “Mom, Mom, it’s a fire, it’s a fire!”
Terry and I were both still convinced it was drunken hooligans fooling around
at this stage but we thought we’d better investigate. Getting Matt up (still
crying and shaking) and putting his track suit top over his pyjamas, I grabbed
the first thing I could find – Terry’s anorak which I put over my nightie – it
reached about eight inches above my knees. Then I grabbed my handbag and my
jewellery which I had put in a Holiday Inn ashtray (kept as a souvenir). Terry was
still half asleep as he pulled a pair of denim shorts over his shortie pyjamas
and was ready to go when I asked him “What about the passports?”. He picked up
his briefcase with all our documents in it (but left his wallet) and we opened
the door into the corridor.
There was chaos out
there. A young bloke was telling everyone to go for the Fire Escape. We
scuttled off down the corridor, Matt
clutching his goldfish, Eric, in a bowl under his arm, still crying and
shaking, with me babbling that it was all a hoax and I’d be writing to the MD
of the Holiday Inn Group. Other people were carrying their suitcases which made
me start to think that maybe there was a genuine fire but the fact that there
had been no alarm and such a lack of organisation and control kept me
wondering. Poor old Terry was even barefoot.
 |
| Matt's view of the Disaster! |
When we got downstairs
to the car park at the back of the building there was still nothing to see but
Ter went over to the entrance to get the car and when Matt and I looked up at
the rooms we saw huge clouds of smoke billowing out of the top of the building.
By this stage Ter had driven over to pick us up and hadn’t seen the smoke. I’m
sure he thought I was exaggerating when I said “Let’s get out of here.” As we
drove around the side of the building, we saw the Fire Engines and the entire
reception, lounge and dining room areas a blazing inferno. I got the shivers
and my teeth started chattering as we drove across the road to park and watch
the developments. After we had been there about half an hour, Ter decided we
had better find another hotel for the rest of the night, which we did, booking
in at the Kings which used to be a very nice, even posh, hotel but which was
now even worse than the Holiday Inn – depressing, tatty rooms – just dreadful.
After we had checked in we went back to watch the fire, but Terry, thinking of
the long drive ahead, suggested we try to get some sleep so we went back to the
Kings. As we arrived there we could hear the glass windows exploding back at
the Holiday Inn. When we got into bed I really started to shiver and shake and
my heart was pounding like mad but we finally got to sleep for a few hours,
waking at about 06.00.
We had a coffee and
then Ter went over to the Inn to try and
retrieve our luggage – I had visions of spending Sunday in a nightie, sandals
and Ter’s anorak with no bra or make-up! The firemen let him into the building
as fortunately the fire had not spread to the accommodation so that was a bit
of luck. He brought back what he could manage and then we all went over to pick
up the rest of our goods. Just as well as the weather had turned a lot cooler
so I hate to think how I would’ve felt in just my nightie The entire place was
awash with water and all the doors had been jemmied open – I suppose to make
sure that they were vacated. When chatting to the firemen who had been on duty
all night they said they thought the fire had started in one of the bars, which
didn’t really surprise me. I suppose this experience is just part of life’s
rich pageant.
No comments:
Post a Comment