Money was in short supply for our family. We began our life in that house in Southerton with nothing except mattresses on the floor, gradually acquiring other oddments of furniture as we went along. Still very little, though. John and I started school almost immediately at Lochinvar Junior School. Peter went to Southerton Primary School. The academic year would end in December, after which we would have six weeks of school holidays.
In late January, John and Peter began their new school year at their respective schools, whilst I, who had reached the end of my junior school years, started high school. I attended Lord Malvern School, a few miles away. I caught a bus to go back and forth. I have no idea how John got to school, though. Peter was so close to his school, he could walk. Perhaps my parents took John before going onto work in Salisbury, and maybe someone else collected him at just after 1pm, when the school day ended.
I remember two things about living in this house: not having money to spare and being scared. The fear came because at 12 years of age I was responsible for my two brothers, aged 10 and 6, every day from 1:30pm or so when we’d get home from our respective schools. Then, we would have a sandwich lunch, followed by the required afternoon rest period. We would lie on our beds and read until 3pm, after which we’d have homework to do. During the long school holidays, we were on our own with no schedule.
My parents would come home together at 4:15pm, but my father would be there only briefly, enough to have a meal with us before my mother would drive him to his second job. My father insisted on leaving my mother the car, even though this meant he would walk five miles home at midnight when his shift ended.
What made things scary for me was that the Belgian Congo, a country north of us, was in political turmoil. Warfare was breaking out, with people being butchered by the local African tribes. The President, Patrice Lumumba, had been assassinated and the Europeans who lived there were fleeing for their lives, south towards Northern Rhodesia or many of them further south still to Southern Rhodesia where they told the most horrific tales of butchery. I recall seeing vivid black and white photos of mutilated bodies, all of which horrified me.
In 1960, my family didn’t understand that decolonization, the demand for independence from land-grabbing, powerful European countries, had begun to sweep through Africa and its native people. The unrest further north in the Congo was brutal, and some of it extended into the two Rhodesias. The Africans living near us began to protest, too, expressing their discontent with the Europeans. They started stoning school buses, which transported only European children, since schools were segregated, and they began marching along the road not far from our house into the centre of Salisbury. Our parents were both at work and we children were frequently on our own. The noise, the chanting, the drumming and wailing, were enough to terrify us. Sometimes, I would hide with John and Peter under the kitchen table, though what good that would have done, remained to be seen.
