RMS Pendennis Castle
scratched on it . It took about a week to arrive at the Copper Belt at Kitwe in time to start the school ’ s new year .
I was soon busy teaching mathematics and the history of the southern half of Africa from 7:30 a . m . to 12:30 p . m . At that time , federal schools were for non-natives which meant that the students were mainly the sons of copper miners originally from South Africa . Looking back on those days , I recall that most of the boys just wanted to finish school and go mining . They were not very interested in what I had to offer , especially since the students were graded and placed accordingly into forms . My students were in the lower ones . I recall a teenager with a farming background presenting me with a sack from which emerged a two-foot python . I was relieved when he assured me the snake was harmless . Later I saw a local newspaper photo of a twenty-foot plus python that had swallowed a small deer !
The school hours reflected the temperatures through the day . After 12:30 p . m . it was time to go home for lunch and then a nap . Later in the afternoon there would be sports . With the miners ’ connection to South Africa , rugby was the number-one game , and the quality of rugby was impressive . Soccer came in a poor second . An English colleague and I were the soccer coaches . A real bonus on the school grounds was a big , outdoor , unheated swimming pool . The sun kept it warm most of the year .
The climate varied . November was hot and very humid with daily lightning and thunderstorms
that drove us under our kitchen table . The rains eased off in April and it became very dry . It cooled so much in July that it was sweater weather .
Our first house had a wood stove for cooking , but later we moved to a modern house with all the facilities . Behind our house there were banana trees , a mango bush and pawpaw trees . The flora in the area offered a great variety of flowering trees and the fauna included snakes , and lizards that changed colour readily . There were hippos in the nearby Kafue River though we did not see one in this part of the river . The Africans cornered them for the meat . One man , trying to help , was savaged to death by a hippo when he tried to shoot it .
We visited Kafue National Park and stayed in a rondavel — a typical African house . Besides warthogs , wildlife was not too obvious until we ventured close to the Kafue River . There appeared to be nothing but large greyish boulders in midstream , but then some of these surfaced to become a herd of hippos . They are bottom feeders ; however , they come onto the river banks at night to feed on the vegetation .
Our visit included a stop at Victoria Falls also named the Smoke That Thunders . En route I was the only one to spot a lioness disappearing into the bush , but we all saw two elephants emerge from a sand bar in the Zambezi River . Major roads were well paved , but elsewhere they consisted of two parallel hardtop lines that looked like railway tracks . These roads were fine until another vehicle arrived , at which time the custom was to move onto one track and then pass or be passed .
Our six-week Christmas holidays took us to the beaches at Durban , Beira in Mozambique , Harare the capital of Zimbabwe and east to the hill country on the border with Mozambique .
Zambia was a wonderful experience for us . To this day , I follow closely the fortunes of Zambia and its people . � news & views WINTER 2017 | 47