We took off from Blackbushe airport, a former RAF base in Hampshire, in November 1955, soon after my twenty-ninth birthday. As we boarded the plane we felt like experienced travellers. We had often gone by plane from Penzance to the Isles of Scilly and, although it was only a twenty-minute flight, it was more than most people had experienced just ten years after the war. We flew in an unpressurised Viking at only 9,000 feet all the way, so we had a wonderful view of the changing landscape below. The Alps gleamed in bright sunshine as we cruised just above them and then glided down to Nice for lunch, the first of several stops for refuelling. There were twenty-four passengers and a crew of six, and we spent the first night at the Grand Hotel Phoenicia in Valletta, its warm luxury a sharp contrast to cold, wet, battered London.
From Malta we progressed from Benina in Libya to Wadi Halfa, and then to Khartoum for an overnight stay by the Nile. Before dinner we took a taxi ride around the city and saw a fine statue of Lawrence of Arabia on a camel. Many years later I saw photographs of this statue being shipped back to the UK. Finally, we reached Nairobi and the Stanley Hotel. During the journey, I had begun learning some Swahili from the back of the Scottish manual.
‘I can say elephant, lion, snake and help,’ I announced proudly.
‘Well, you certainly won’t need snake,’ said Mary. My mother never saw one in all her life.’ Her mother was South African, so Mary was my authority on all things concerning the Dark Continent, and she led the way in our exploration of Kenya’s capital city.
We had read of the murderous Mau Mau outrages in recent months, but we were still quite unprepared to see most of the white men and some of the women wearing guns. This did not deter Mary from hiring a car and an African driver to take us into the bush to see lion. We had an excellent and exciting introduction into the ways of the bush, and saw many lion and other big game. We questioned our driver endlessly about everything and he responded with evident pleasure in using his fluent English. Back at the hotel that evening, the other guests thought us foolhardy to have risked our lives, as they saw it.
Two days passed exploring Dar, as we in the know call it. I could hardly believe my eyes as we criss-crossed wide streets crowded with Africans and Chinese, Arabs and Indians in traditional dress, alongside Europeans from many familiar cultures. A week before I had been in the Holloway Road. This was 1955, and it was like being in a movie, especially when a tall, handsome Arab in full ‘Lawrence’ garb, a jewelled dagger tucked in at his waist, walked past us.
After three days we were off again, feeling like old hands as we boarded another small plane bound up-country. En route, we experienced several bumpy landings on airstrips to deposit the handful of other passengers until eventually we were the only ones left. Bernie, the pilot, had difficulty believing that we had come to work in such an isolated place, 300 miles from the nearest landing point – the distance from Land’s End to London. As we looked down at an airstrip like a small island in an ocean of bush, Bernie announced, ‘This is Mpanda.’
Down we came, and out onto the strip, our bags and baggage dumped in the dust beside us. ‘Goodbye and take care,’ waved Bernie, climbed back into his plane, and took off!
And there we stood, looking around at no one and nothing. Nothing, that is, but a small round hut some distance away. The silence moved in. We were in the middle of miles and miles of emptiness.
‘What do we do now?’ I said at last.
‘Wait,’ answered Mary. ‘At least it’s not so hot here.’ Indeed, we were over 3,000 feet up, and the climate was reasonably good for most of the year.
So, wait we did – an unreal and slightly scary experience. After a while, we saw a small cloud of dust coming slowly towards us and gradually becoming a lorry. It drew to a stop, and a short nut of a man in a white shirt and long khaki shorts walked towards us.
‘Good afternoon, ladies. I’m Major Gardiner, Henry Gardiner. Sorry not to have been here to greet you, but we usually wait until the plane has actually landed before coming out to the airstrip. We’ve had several wasted journeys when the plane hasn’t turned up. Anyhow, welcome to Mpanda. We’ve been waiting for you for days. It’s good that you’ve arrived on a Saturday. It will give you time to familiarise yourselves with everything before work begins. Now, which of you is which?’
He smiled warmly and shook us each by the hand before loading us and our belongings into his lorry and off we went on the first of our countless bumpy journeys along a rough road in Tanganyika. On the way, the major kept up a running commentary on what we were seeing and where we were going.
We passed the main mine office where we would be working alongside Major Gardiner, who was the chief administrator for the mining company. It was beside a large lake. ‘We built that,’ said Henry Gardiner, with pride. ‘We diverted the water from Lake Tanganyika. You need plenty of water on a mine.’ We passed the Mpanda Club. ‘We’ll take you tomorrow; we always have drinks there on Sunday mornings before lunch. It’s a tradition.’ The residential quarters were, he explained, on the side of the hill, the houses far apart. ‘After all, we have the whole of Africa.’
Arriving at a big, brick-built bungalow with a wide veranda and large, flowering shrubs all around it, the major drew to a stop. ‘This is your house, ladies. I will introduce you to your boys. I assume you haven’t had house servants before?’ He didn’t need an answer. ‘You have five here: a cook and his assistant, a houseboy and his assistant, and a garden boy. They understand English, but I hope you will soon learn some Swahili. I have agreed their wages, so don’t give them any more. That only upsets arrangements for everyone else.’
Major Gardiner had explained on the way that he’d come on from India with his wife, Jean. After independence they’d decided to leave, but they had loved their colonial life and couldn’t bear the thought of living in the UK with its bad weather and socialism. Africa had been the solution. ‘It will see us out until retirement.’
‘What will you do then?’
‘South Africa, of course. Cape Town.’ I often wondered how the Gardiners fared when that beautiful country lost its white masters.
The staff had lined up to greet us: young, smiling, black faces; slim bodies clad in white vests and khaki shorts.
‘They will do everything for you, young ladies. Cook your meals, wash and iron your clothes and keep the bungalow clean,’ said the major, effecting the staff ’s introduction to us. ‘It is particularly important that they – and you – keep the inner doors and windows shut and that they spray all of the rooms, morning and night. We don’t want you going down with malaria – or anything else for that matter.’
On that note, promising to collect us at six o’clock for a small dinner party his wife had arranged at their house, he left, roaring off in a cloud of dust.
Our bungalow was cool and spacious: perfect for parties, we thought. At one end were two large bedrooms, separated by a very large bathroom and, at the other, a kitchen and storeroom. In between was a vast living room with an immense fireplace – the only one in Mpanda, as we learnt. We unpacked the essentials we had brought to tide us over till the arrival of our main luggage from its long sea voyage.
‘I don’t like the thought of them washing all our clothes,’ said Mary in an unnecessary whisper. ‘Not all of them.’
‘I expect they’re used to it, but we’ll ask Mrs Gardiner tonight.’
Dinner was elegantly served and delicious. We began with tilapia, a fish from the lake, followed by beautifully tender venison which, as Jean Gardiner explained, was shot at weekends by engineers who hunted. There was no shortage of game but, as she told us, beef was a different matter. ‘It has to walk 300 miles from Northern Rhodesia. We tenderise all the meat here with pawpaw leaves. Three days in the fridge and it’s fine.’
The other guests that evening were Paolo Cigaleone, a senior mining engineer, his wife Lucia, and two English senior mining engineers. They were all very friendly and answered our questions in detail. We learnt that there were only four wives on the mine, and now we had already met two of them. Most of the engineers were either bachelors or had left their families at home – which might be Italy, France, Austria, Canada, the USA, Australia, South Africa and, of course, Cornwall.
‘We are a miniature League of Nations,’ smiled Jean, ‘though we get on with each other rather better.’ She was wearing a low-cut sleeveless cotton dress, her make-up was understated, and her skin deeply tanned. Paolo Cigaleone was, of course, Italian, and was the deputy to our boss, William Richards. Paolo was a jolly man who loved good food. His wife cooked delectable Italian meals, which we were occasionally invited to share, and she also taught me a little Italian.
Henry Gardiner – we were all on first-name terms now – drove us back in the lorry. ‘We are delighted that you’re here,’ he said with a huge smile. ‘We were not at all sure what to expect. This is an experiment for us, you see. We usually employ male clerks because it’s quite a tough life, but you two will do admirably.’
That was a really nice note on which to end our first evening, which had been a very pleasant introduction to this new life we were entering. And we’d learnt some interesting facts about the people there. Apart from the professional engineers from the four corners of the world, the European miners were Italians from Bergamo, who were housed in a camp of their own. Mary and I never went there, but we would soon sometimes hear them at night, singing operatic choruses as they returned from … somewhere… The African miners, though, were in the majority. The tribal chiefs were paid a fixed amount of cash per head to send us their best men. They, too, lived in a separate camp and, as we came to know, they also sang at night – often haunting African songs, quite new to us. The social life of the mine centred on the club, which was for Europeans only, and this was where we were being taken the next morning at eleven.
I thought sleep would be difficult. Everything was so new and so different, not least negotiating our mosquito nets, tucking them in all around the bed then crawling underneath and tucking the last bit of netting into the mattress.
After satisfyingly hot, albeit rather brownish-coloured, baths, we enjoyed a perfectly cooked English breakfast, but one that began with sugar-sweet, lightly chilled pawpaw dressed with the juice of fresh lime. Coming from 1950s London and post-war food rationing, this was a novelty indeed, and one to which I became easily accustomed. The sun shone on a hot summer’s day, we wore our prettiest cotton dresses and sandals, and speculated, somewhat apprehensively, about the men who would, we hoped, be our friends for the next three years.
‘I wonder what they’ll think of us,’ Mary said. I had no doubt about what they would think of Mary. She was very tall, slim and very good-looking, with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. I was five foot three, my brown hair short and curly and, at nine stone, rather well covered!
When Henry Gardiner proudly ushered us into the club and down the steps leading to a long bar, our entrance was met by a sea of upturned faces and then what seemed to us to be a rather disconcerting ripple of amusement. We were greeted by the men we had met the night before and, once supplied with large gins, enjoyed meeting some of our immediate neighbours.
‘Why were you so amused to see us?’ I asked one of them. He looked embarrassed. ‘Come on! Tell me!’
‘Well, we had a sort of bet about what you would look like, and someone predicted that one of you would be tall and thin and the other short and fat. Of course, you’re not a bit like that really,’ he added hastily.
I immediately resolved to give up cooked breakfasts.
The African barman wore a long white shirt, called a kanzu, and a red fez. He knew everyone’s name and what they liked to drink. As a Muslim, he was forbidden to drink alcohol.
‘But aren’t they tempted?’ I asked my new friend, Jack Carlyon.
‘Their religion is very strong, much stronger than ours. Nothing would make him touch a drop. That’s why they make such good barmen.’
We noticed the whisky drinkers filling their glasses to the brim with water, unlike London men who added just a splash. It seemed soft and unmanly somehow, but when we learnt how much the miners sweated underground – and how much they drank – we changed our opinion about what was ‘unmanly’.
We were introduced to many convivial men that first club Sunday morning and promptly forgot most of their names, but we certainly remembered two monks in white robes.
‘Priests, White Fathers, they’re called,’ Stanley, a senior mining engineer explained. ‘They come here for ten years at a time to look after their flocks.’ He smiled ironically. ‘When East Africa was divided up into separate countries, the churches involved themselves, too. Kenya, for example, is strongly Church of Scotland, but here you’re in a Catholic area. You’ll see the White Fathers on Sundays chasing the Italians to get them to Mass. They are excellent company actually, very well educated, and they play a good game of bridge.’
Gradually the men left for lunch, coming to say goodbye to us before revving their lorries in farewell. We returned to our new home with Henry, who checked to see that our ‘boys’ were looking after us properly and that the traditional Sunday curry was ready.
‘You’ll find transport very easy,’ he told us before leaving. ‘One or other of us will always be ready to take you to the club or the dukas. The dukas were the Indian stores that sold all the basics from rice to gin. They were simple structures, with a musty dry smell that made me feel they hadn’t changed much since Livingstone passed through on his way to the lake. Nearby, a series of big rondavels – round, thatched roof structures that mimicked the design of African tribal huts – housed the Mpanda Hotel. This was where one went for dinner to have a change from the club. That, in essence, was our community. There was one telephone on the mine and one plane a week.
We spent that first Sunday afternoon writing letters home. We knew that some of what we described would shock our friends but, on the other hand, my parents would be delighted to learn of our colonial luxury. As we gradually grew to know our new friends, we realised that it would not be sensible to discuss politics. Already Andy, a mining engineer, had teased me about ‘your’ dreadful socialist government, and I had to point out to him that the government was, in fact, Conservative. That Conservative policies struck them as being socialist only confirmed most of the engineers in their resolve to stay away from the UK and end their days in South Africa!
On Monday morning, Henry Gardiner turned up promptly at 7.30 a.m. to take us to our first day in the office. We worked 8 a.m.–12 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. Apart from the business of the mine, we were also a branch of East African Airways, and had to issue tickets and deal with cargo. It made sense, as all the passengers were mine staff, apart from one or two hopeful geologists.
Later that morning we had our first meeting with our boss, William Richards, the mine manager. We talked about Penzance, and then Mr Richards said, ‘You must be weighed. We’ll check your weight every few months – can’t have you getting ill.’
Neither of us was particularly thrilled about this, especially when we were taken to a big shed where several miners were weighing ore. Here we were lifted on to huge scales before a respectful audience, and Henry Gardiner entered our weight in a register.
‘I feel like the Aga Khan,’ said Mary after the weighing, ‘but no rubies.’