Aspects of Esther's life in Rhodesia in her own words
'...
but George was waiting at Bulawayo, that was a Wednesday... I
went and stayed in the Palace
Hotel and on the Thursday or the Friday I met my bridesmaid, the
man who was giving me away at my wedding and the best man. And
we were married
during Lent, on the 12th of March 1938. George had already joined
the choir of the church so the choir insisted on coming to the
service and
I remember, this is probably silly of me seeing it, but I can always
remember walking down that aisle. My feet had swollen and I was
hen-toed - walking
down the aisle. We went - and George had made some Scottish friends,
and they said they would lend their house for a reception, and
we had this little
reception ... then we took a taxi to the Matopos Dam Hotel which
was very very tiny, very. And coming from a large city to this
little place but
everything was beautiful ... no people around ... you didn't feel
lonely, you felt the place belonged to you, you know.'
Click
on the Play button below to listen to Esther talking
about her marriage to George and their honeymoon
in the Matopo Hills.
She mentions
George's hard work, particularly the extra hours teaching in order
to save money, so that, in time,
they were
able to build their own home near a good school. They had 2
girls, Olivia and Lindsay who both went to Baines Junior and then
Northlea
Senior Schools.
'I
finished up as treasurer of the school PTA, and when I think of
it now, I must
have had lots of energy, we were always on
the scrounge because
the Government only supplied so much, and we had to supply
the rest, and I remember - Rhodesians go in a lot for sports
and you must
have sports
fields; well if you have sports fields you need water and
there was no water. We paid for our water and we had to pay ...
a diviner
to find us
boreholes and he never found them. Eventually after spending
money that the PTA had to collect from here, there and everywhere,
wherever they
could scrounge, they got water. But the schools, I'll say
this, the schools that I had anything to do with in Bulawayo were
excellent
.' She added
that 'Rhodesian children were mannerly. If you came across
a little boy, a schoolboy, he lifted his hat to you'.
'To
start with ... I was afraid
to be in the house with them [male African house servants] ...
but I got used to them. ... some were good, and some not
so good, some were very
honest and others were not.' She regretted she never learned
Sindebele apart from a few phrases ' .... and I think
that was where the European
made a mistake, they should have tried to learn the African
languages'. She missed Herbert's help (her last employee) when
she returned
to England.
What
else did you miss about Rhodesia when you came back here?'The
weather ... oh, the weather '. She also missed her garden, the
fruit trees and the flowers. She grew flowers for the church
'arum lilies, agapanthus,
red-hot pokers ... and roses'. Her fruit trees in Bulawayo
included 'grapefruit, pomegranate, lemon, fig, mulberry,
paw paw, orange (a
waste of time),
avocado pear'. In Salisbury she grew 'bananas, guavas,
loquats,
peaches, granadillas and mangoes'.
