The division of the sexes, with the girls taking more of a domestic role both in the home and in subjects studied at school, was the norm in the early 60s, especially in a colonial country like Southern Rhodesia which was very traditional in its almost Victorian values. All high schools were single sex and almost all were segregated. I, a White female in an all-White school, was required to study Domestic Science, so learned how to sew, patch, darn, bake, clean, starch, iron, or, in other words, to become a good housewife for my hard-working husband-to-be. My brother, John, meanwhile, at an all-boys’ school, once again for Whites only, was studying Woodwork, Metalwork, and other useful topics designed to prepare him for the workforce and for looking after cars and the like that he was bound to own later in life.
My father tended to spend his time with my two brothers pursuing various scientific, technical, and engineering-type hobbies. I remember a huge Meccano set that my father bought second-hand for the boys, but which he loved as much as did they. The set came in a box, from which overflowed countless metal pieces: red and green plates, trunnions, flange plates and girders; gold-coloured cogs and gears, silver axles, and black motors, with silver keys for winding them up; washers, nuts, bolts and grubscrews. Using engineering principles and the provided plans, my father and brothers would build working scale models of various kinds. There were often pieces of Meccano everywhere. If there wasn’t room on the table, then the menfolk would resort to the floor. We had no other space available, since we lived in small apartments with only one main room in which we could gather: a living-dining room. The bedrooms were not spacious (the boys shared a room, and I had my own). For a few years, my parents didn’t even have a bedroom to themselves. They slept on a sofa-bed in the living-dining room.
Whenever the menfolk set to with the Meccano, I would soon see them bent over a complicated plan, following word for word the instructions, and slowly gathering the bits and pieces required for building the model. Construction was painstaking work requiring the use of endless nuts and bolts, but eventually something began to take shape. It was rather like watching the Eiffel Tower being built piece by piece. I remember that we were all very impressed when, after much work, they produced a fully functioning grandfather clock, which stood about two feet tall, and which kept perfect time, too. That was amazing! I recall, too, watching my younger brother, Peter, aged about 8, riding around on a long red and green single-decker bus, all built out of Meccano. That, too, worked perfectly. It seemed such a shame to me, if not to us all, that such masterpieces soon needed to be taken to bits, so that the three men could build something else, instead.
