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!
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