Search for the African Chicken

In 2001 a.d. the Great Chicken Quest began.  It would never be compared with the legendary quests of human history; the search for the Ark of the Covenant or for the meaning of life; nor would it hold up against the remarkable achievements of those explorers searching for new worlds or circumventing the globe in those ridiculously tiny wooden craft with canvas sails.  In a personal way however, it was significant to me.

Why, you may wonder, would someone search for a chicken? It wasn’t just any chicken of course, so perhaps a more complete explanation will help readers understand.  The protagonist of my story was a student, you see, attending a school of higher learning whose educational standards were rigorous. His chosen course of study was the biological sciences, with majors in Zoology and Entomology.

The final-year Zoology curriculum included several practical laboratory assignments.  One of those assignments required students to submit, for grading by the end of term, a complete, mounted skeleton of a vertebrate.

By laying out this assignment the academic staff of the Department of Zoology was realizing two important objectives. On the one hand students would learn the basic skills of disassembling an animal and putting it back together again.  The second objective was to build up the collection of animal skeletons necessary to help teach vertebrate anatomy to future students.

It was from the department’s existing collection that our student sought inspiration.  What was needed? Most specimens in the collection were mammals; understandably, as mammals are numerous and tend to have strong bones that could be cleaned and assembled without too much difficulty.  Specimens of fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds were scarce.  All might pose difficulties, he thought. Fish and amphibian bones were tiny and delicate.  Reptiles would not be easy to catch and the thought of disassembling a snake and putting it together again was regulated to the “not” category pretty quickly.

So it was that our intrepid student went home for a ten-day holiday break and sat at the dinner table with his family.  A freshly roasted turkey was set before him to carve.  “You’re the zoologist son; you should know how to carve a turkey.”  And so he did.  The inspiration came to him almost instantly. Why not a turkey or a chicken?

The next day he drove to a rural poultry farm and asked for a whole chicken, complete with feathers, head, feet and entrails.  In fact, he asked for two chickens, as close in size as possible.  While thinking about the assignment he realized he may need spare parts. What would happen if he overcooked the first chicken or lost one of the tiny rib bones?  Yes, spare parts were definitely required. While the attendant withdrew two whole chickens from a freezer, our student paid his $1 each (this was 1964 after all!) and went home with his bird specimens in a cooler.

The next few days were busy.  His father’s barbeque grill was requisitioned and two large buckets of water were brought to a boil over the fire.  The chickens were plucked, and one was put into each bucket.  After  many hours, during which neighborhood dogs  seemed to bark more frequently and become more restless than usual, most of the skin, internal organs and musculature had softened and been removed from the murky brews.  Clean water was added, along with a small amount of caustic soda which would sterilize and bleach the bones.

Without providing the clinical details, the eventual results were two piles of bones; some almost too small to find.  All were removed from the soup and laid out in the sun to dry.  Over the next week, the painstaking task of getting all the pieces in order and drilling tiny holes in the bones, so they could be threaded with fine wire, absorbed every minute of his time.  The bones of birds are hollow.  This makes them delicate but also presents a way to thread the wire through each one.  Some pieces, like the tiny ribs and bones of the feet had disintegrated or broken, and the spare-part chicken proved its worth.

Finally the entire bird skeleton was mounted on the top of a wooden dowel standing vertically on a stained wooden base. Afresh egg was removed from the family refrigerator and the contents were blown out of a small hole at one end. The inside of the shell was cleaned with caustic soda..  The egg was placed under the chicken, and a neatly printed label giving the species (Gallinas gallina), date (1963), and the creator’s name was applied with suitable adhesive. The chicken project was complete.  In due course the student’s specimen was well received and placed into the Department of Zoology and Entomology collection at Rhodes University.

A word of caution; anyone considering putting together a chicken skeleton should understand it is not as easy as one would think. Do not try this at home.

Fast forward 37 years. I was returning to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa for the first time since leaving in 1967.  My wife and I were staying with old friends while on tour of South Africa for a few weeks.  A few former classmates from the 1960s joined us for dinner.  In the 1980s the old Department of Zoology and Entomology where I had studied in the 1960s, had been moved into a completely new building and had been expanded to include the Institute of Freshwater Studies, the Department of Microbiology, and other research departments.

During a wine-induced lull in the conversation at dinner I dared asked the question, “Does anyone know if my chicken is still being used, or if it still exists?”  One lady said she thought she had seen it, but added that much of the old Department’s collection had deteriorated or been damaged in the relocation 20 years earlier.  I vowed to begin a search, which quickly was referred to as the “Chicken Quest,” and decided I would not give up until the fate of the chicken skeleton was learned.  Was it still there, helping to educate the new generation of young biologists, or was it to be just a fond memory?

The following morning we walked across the campus of Rhodes University and entered the impressive, modern, three-story Biological Sciences Building.  Friends from the night before met us and we began to search the ceiling high glass cabinets in the museum.  After a few minutes it was obvious there no chickens in any of the displays.  Eventually we were shown to a large empty conference room with a long board-room style table.  At the far end of the room was a wall to wall array of wooden shelves and closed cupboards. We methodically opened each of the cabinet doors. It was here, we were told, that the most frequently used specimens were kept for easy access.

Running out of hope, I twisted the latch on a middle door and opened it.  Stepping back I must have made a strange sound because everyone turned toward me when I leaned forward and carefully withdrew my chicken from its dark sanctuary.  At last!  It was there, still in use. 

For a 37-year-old chick she was in pretty good shape.

Camping, eels, and heavy rain

Mountain View Farm, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa c.1964

The four of us, my brother and me, and Charles and David Hayes, had camped several times on Mountain View farm each year since I was thirteen.  When I was 17, we thought we would try something new and camp “up river” where the Elands River passed through a narrow valley in a series of pools before spilling out into a long rocky section.  It was still summer, so the freezing cold nights of our winter wouldn’t be on the agenda.  The possibility of rain was greater however.  Our new camp in Rocky Valley was a fairly long hike from the farm house, over a spur and along a narrow trail, so we packed only what was essential.  We took a fly-sheet this time and no tent.  We also took some of the fishing tackle we would need to catch eels.  There were six of us on this trip as friends Dougie Anderson and Mike Viljoen had joined us.

We had to cross the river in a very rugged rocky section, jumping across small cascades and pools.  We realized that if the river rose it would be difficult to return by the same route but how likely was that?  Crossing the river at this point was the remainder of an old pipeline which had been used to pipe water to the valley below. There were five or six concrete columns spanning the river and across the top, about 12 feet above the rocks, was a steel I-beam which looked to be about six inches wide that had supported a pipe. The pipe that must have been there at one time had long since been removed for use elsewhere.  Sections of a rusted and broken handrail ran alongside the steel beam.  We figured that, in an emergency, we would be able to cross the rocks on the 12 foot high “bridge” but didn’t ever think we would actually have to do that.

A hundred yards or so after the river crossing we set up a really nice camp in a shady space next to a deep dark pool in the river.  The valley was narrow here and steep hills rose up on either side of the river.  This camp would soon be named “Texas.”  A few of the group had brought “Texan” cigarettes with them, so we christened our new camp in honor of their choice of cigarettes.

Eel fishing was something new.  To catch eels we had to catch live frogs to use for bait. At the end of a long length of nylon cord we tied a swivel and then a 12 inch long piece of stainless steel tracer with another swivel at its end.  To this a large, very sharp, hook was attached.  After setting up camp we hiked downstream to fish for large-mouth bass. In some of the clear pools we could see them lurking in the deep shady areas.  A couple of good bass lures (a ‘jitterbug” and “hula popper” among them) soon landed us three or four pan-size fish for dinner.

Back at camp we collected wood and made a nice fire and soon we were ready to cook our fish.  We would generally fillet the fish in two halves, and put the two scaly sides together.  Then we wrapped the two sides of each fish in aluminium (aluminum) foil with a little butter on the fleshy sides.  These foiled-wrapped bass were then placed on the hot coals and covered with more hot coals.  After ten or fifteen minutes we took them from the fire, peeled away the foil, leaving the two scaly skins stuck together, removed the tender, juicy and flavourful meat.  These baked fish meals were something I will always remember with relish. 

As everyone knows, the best time to catch frogs is at night.  After a gourmet fish dinner we headed for the rock pools of the river with our torches (flashlights).  Frogs don’t move very well when blinded by the light of a torch and it didn’t take long to catch half a dozen of the slippery amphibians.  Back at camp, with our bucket of frogs we baited the eel lines by tying the frogs onto the hooks with nylon fishing line.  They were still kicking when we threw the lines into the dark pool, tied the cord lines to a tree or stump and went back to the fire. This is not the sort of fishing that requires a lot of concentration. We would check the lines in the morning.

The following day we pulled in the lines and found we had caught a few eels. I can’t actually recall why we were fishing for them.  They were incredibly strong and had twisted the stainless steel tracers into tight knots. They were also still very much alive and had swallowed the bait whole.  We had to chop their heads off to kill them and then we decided to try and cook them by wrapping them in foil and baking them as we had the bass.  That wasn’t a great success.  Eels are boney and not very tasty. The fact that I can’t remember how they tasted is probably a good indication that they tasted pretty bad.

Later that day we were visited by all of the Whitehead cousins from Mountain View and from Forest Glade, a few miles up the valley.  Jennifer Whitehead from Mountain View and her first cousins Elmarie, Yvonne and Marlene from Forest Glade, came hiking up the river to our camp on a hot sunny day.  They often brought us something special to eat.  One of my favorites was caramel, made by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk until it turned to caramel.  We always had a good time with the girls.  They were friendly, sociable and fun to visit with.  By the afternoon they had gone home.  The skies clouded over and towards evening we knew we were in for a pretty good thunderstorm.

It began to rain and we hunkered down by the fire, hoping it would blow over in an hour or so.  A few hours later it was still raining with increasing thunder and lightning and with the persistent rain we could see, and hear, the river beginning to rise.   By about 9:00 p.m. we were drenched and getting cold and we knew we would have to get out of camp and cross the river while we still were able.  After tucking a few essentials into our backpacks and covering the food and sleeping backs with a fly-sheet we left Texas – at least for the night – not entirely sure where we would go.  The first challenge would be crossing the river with the pools now too deep to jump across and the rocks made slippery from the rain.  It soon became obvious that we would have to cross by climbing up on the old steel beam, high above the rocks and crawl the 50 yards or so on our hands and knees.  It was, by now, raining really hard and the idea of being soaking wet, holding on to a metal beam, high above a rocky river, with lightning flashing above us wasn’t too appealing.

The soaked, cold, bedraggled six eventually made it across. The darkness made it easier because visibility was so bad we couldn’t see the rocks below us and when the lightning flashed I instinctively closed my eyes.  After what seemed an eternity the six of us were safely on the muddy trail leading down the valley. It didn’t take long to decide we would have to head for the farmhouse at Forest Glade. It was about a mile closer than Mountain View and in those conditions a mile less was significant. I don’t remember what time we arrived at the farmhouse but it was probably around midnight.  The house was in darkness when our totally drenched bunch of 16 and 17 year old campers knocked on the door.  

Soon Mrs. Whitehead, her older daughters and their cousin Jennifer, had us wrapped in towels and standing in front of a roaring fire.  Hot cups of tea lifted our spirits and our wet clothing was peeled away (down to the bare essentials anyway).  We were miraculously warm again after several hours of shivering in the cold.  Before too long we were all sleeping on the living room floor, wrapped in blankets and warm hospitality.

In the morning hot coffee was followed by a wonderful breakfast of sausages, eggs and scones, with farm produced honey.  The sun came out and another beautiful day lay ahead of us.  Our arrival at Forest Glade in the dead of night, in a heavy storm, and sleeping on the floor, was the topic of conversation for many years.  This

adventure from my youth happened 50 years ago and I recently received an e-mail from Jennifer Eldridge (nee Whitehead) who recalled the weekend when the Forest Glade farmhouse was filled to capacity with everyone sleeping on the floor.  Such are the enduring memories from one’s childhood and teenage years.

Preparing for school in South Africa

The Zambezi River near Imbabala Safari Camp - 2001

Imbabala Safari Camp

On Thursday, July 19, after two days at Elephant Camp, the schedule that Chris Worden of African Bush Camps has proposed calls for a late morning transfer to Imbabala Safari Camp.  So, after a morning elephant ride (ho-hum) we would have breakfast and be picked up by Wild Horizons at 11:00 a.m. for the one hour drive westward on the road from Victoria Falls town to the Kasane Border Post (Botswana).

Jan and I have been to Imbabala twice before and each visit provided wonderful experiences. Some photographs of our previous trips are shown here.

The thatched roofed chalets at Imbabala - 2001

Chris Worden's itinerary describes Imbabala as follows: 

Situated where Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia and Namibia converge, 80km west of Victoria Falls, Imbabala Camp has its own concession bordering the Chobe National park in Botswana, in which game drives are conducted and is directly on the banks of the Zambezi River, also offering pontoon cruises on the river to view the game and extensive bird life.

(This is the only place in the world where 4 countries meet)

The lodge offers every comfort for your sojourn in the wild. There are just 8 thatched chalets accommodating a maximum of 18 Guests, so individual attention and service is guaranteed.

Each chalet has a view over the Zambezi. Each has en-suite facilities and mains electricity.

Meals are taken Al fresco or in the main dining room, and are of a very high culinary standard.

The swimming pool offers cool relaxation during the heat of the day.

Activities at Imbabala include 4x4 game viewing safaris in the Lodge's own concession, walking safaris and river cruises  on the Zambezi River on Imbabala's own pontoon boat - enabling close viewing of the wildlife that comes down to the River to drink as well as the amazing variety of birds that are attracted by the papyrus reeds that border the Zambezi.

Opposite the camp is Nampini Island, the home of the only population of Sitatunga antelope in Zimbabwe and you will try and photograph these shy animals by pontoon.

3 nights at Imbabala Camp, in a twin bedded room, with en suite facilities, on a fully inclusive basis.

_________________________

There are not too many places in Africa where such a profusion of wildlife, especially elephants, can be viewed up close from a boat.  Several times we were able to float alongside herds of elephant as they swam across the wide Zambezi.

Watching elephant cross the Zambezi from a pontoon boat. Imbabala Camp is in the background.

Elephants are, without any doubt whatsoever, our favorite animal to observe in the wild. The activities of their disciplined family units constantly amaze us. They are exceptionally intelligent creatures and the tenderness and affection that adults openly display toward their young is remarkable.

A typical family unit along the Zambezi River.

Is it obvious that we want to return to this magical place?

Preparing for school in South Africa

The two-day voyage around the Cape of Good Hope from Cape Town had been under overcast skies and, as I recall, too cool and windy to spend much time on deck aboard the SS Enterprise.  At last the city lay before us as we turned to port and entered the harbor in Algoa Bay.

It was the middle of winter when we docked in Port Elizabeth (hereinafter referred to as “PE").  It was cloudy and overcast and a little windy as our floating home for the last two weeks was eased into the harbor and tied up at berth.  We were met and driven out of the harbor area past the 175 feet (53.5M) tall red brick Campanile (or clock tower) standing as a memorial to the arrival of 4,000 British settlers in the area in 1820.  PE actually became a city in 1820, 16 years after the town of Uitenhage, 15 miles to the north.  For many years I would always have a mental image of PE as a windy and dismal place, no doubt due to the weather conditions on the day I arrived.  But the place actually was then, as it certainly is today, a picturesque city overlooking a beautiful bay. It has always been called “The Windy City” however for good reason.  The city had been named for the late wife of the Governor of the Cape Province back in 1820, in case anyone might have thought it was named for Queen Elizabeth the 1^st.

The family would spend a week at the Marine Hotel, south of the city along Marine Drive.  As soon as we had settled in to the hotel my Dad would be taken to visit the tyre (South Africa spelling for “tire”) factory where he would work for the next three years.  The day after our arrival we were driven to Uitenhage, past the tyre plant and up the hill to our new neighborhood called Mosel.  The house we were to occupy was one of about ten homes that had been built since 1948 when the Goodyear plant was built.  It wasn’t ready to be occupied so we moved into a smaller house across the street, where we stayed for a few months.  These were not luxurious homes but they were certainly well built and comfortable. 

As it was still winter we were happy to find the days mild and sunny.  Houses here did not have air conditioning, either heat or cold.  Space heaters or, in many cases, fireplaces would be used to warm the rooms during those brief months when the weather would turn cold and drop down into the 40s.  The electrical supply was 220 volts, 15 amps, so the puny little two-pin American plugs wouldn’t work and the several dozen 110V light bulbs we had brought with us were useless as well.  It was in those first weeks of our stay in South Africa that I took pliers, screw driver and other tools in hand and fitted all of our lamps and smaller appliances with the large three-pin 15 amp plugs required and discovered that I really enjoyed fixing things. 

One of the changes we had to get used to was driving on the left side of the road.  Most cars had the steering wheel on the right but some of the Goodyear management people had American cars that had been imported without that modification.  Our green Nash Rambler would stand out for years to come because of its left side steering wheel and, of course, for its size.  It also had a six cylinder engine which made it a fairly potent machine.  Most local cars were smaller and there were an unusually high number of Volkwagen Beetles in the region.  The Volkwagen (hereinafter known as “VW”) and Goodyear plants were adjacent to one another in Uitenhage.  Much of the tyre production was passed on to the VW plant through a conveyor system.

The town of Uitenhage, known as “The Garden Town” with good reason, was built on a series of hills on the east side of the Swartkops River.  The fertile river valley itself had, since the 1820s, enabled local farmers to provide the growing sea traffic around the Cape with provisions – fresh vegetables and fruit, meat and dairy products.  It had also become a major center for the South African Railways with large maintenance and repair facilities after the first rail line from PE to Kimberly was built in 1878.  Following the discovery of the world’s richest diamond mine in Kimberly in 1871, the rail system took on strategic importance in the growth of the rich mining industries inland and gave both Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage notable roles to play in the history of this southernmost tip of the African continent.

The fact that we had settled, at least for the coming three years, in a small town, in an important industrial and agricultural hub would, I understand now with the benefit of hindsight, give my brothers and me an unusually richly textured environment to grow and develop in.  I guess it would be described today as a broad-based socio-economic environment; just as Littleton High School in Colorado, where my three children went to school, is described today.  The friends we were to make at school came from all walks of life.  My classmates and neighbors would be the sons and daughters of railway machinists, farmers, auto-workers, tyre builders and of course all of the other job categories that go along with an industrial and agricultural area; lawyers, bankers, doctors, merchants, and delicatessen owners.  Of course we would be attending an all-white school, but at the time that didn’t seem different to us, coming as we had from the American Deep South. 

The old Muir College Boys High School - photographed in 2001. The school has since moved to a new location with modern facilities. The building pictured here was built in 1875.

In the first few days of our move to Uitenhage we made a visit to see the Principal of Muir College Boys High School.  His name was Harold Skillicorn (hereinafter to be referred to as “Skilly.” What else?)  He wasn’t a tall man, probably about 5’8” in his polished black shoes.  He had very bushy eyebrows, a stern look in his eye and over his suit and tie he always wore a black academic gown, as did all of the teachers.  I remember his surprise when my brother and I replied to his questions with a “yes sir” or “no sir.”  Previous American students had not found those terms of respect easy to get used to.  But none of the previous American families who had transferred here were raised in the Deep South! 

I can still remember Skilly’s office.  The school building was old, with weathered wooden flooring and wood paneling half-way up the walls of offices and classrooms.  His office was just inside the double-door entrance to the main building, on the left.  On the right, across the hall, was the school assembly hall in which several hundred uniformly dressed boys would assemble each morning before class for a brief prayer and announcements.  The whole atmosphere of this building and this institution was one of a rich tradition and history.

Then we went to buy our school uniforms.  My twin brother and I were just at the age where we were growing weary of our mother’s desire to dress us alike.  Now we would be wearing uniforms that would be just like those being worn by hundreds of other boys. 

Questions about this blog can be directed here.

On the subject of travel

The challenge of planning a trip to Africa is in deciding what to leave out - not what to include. 

We are18 months away from fulfilling our desires to return to Africa and our initial hope was that we could include four nights in one of those very special camps in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. The good folks at Travel Beyond (http://travelbeyond.com) gave us an estimate which turned out to be $6,400 per person for four nights and that includes flights in and out (of Maun or Kasane), all meals, game drives etc.  That is way out of our budget. We have done 15- 17 day tours of other areas of southern Africa for that amount of money.  The worst thing is that, because we would have a child or children with us, under the age of 12, we would have to pay an extra $500 per day to reserve our own 4WD vehicle for game drives.

So - on to Plan B.  This morning we talked, via Skype) with Chris Worden of African Bush Camps.  (http://www.bushcamps.com/)  Chris lives and works from the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.  ABC's core business is safari marketing, consulting and sales. Quite simply they focus on planning and arranging tailor-made safaris in Africa for independent travellers and small groups. 

Quite frankly, when I saw that ABC has permanent staff in Victoria Falls, Kariba and other locations in nearby Zambia, as well as offices in the UK, I was anxious to talk with them.  My Sunday email was answered promptly by Monday morning. When I described our objectives to Chris, he immediately gave us some great ideas on how to plan a tour of the Victoria Falls area, staying at kid-friendly bush camps.  I have been to Victoria Falls many, many, times, so to talk to someone who could update me on current conditions and facilities was a relief.

Taking refreshments at Makalolo Plains Camp

 

 We asked about Elephant Camp and Imbabala Safari Camp on the Zambezi River. Chris confirmed that these camps had upgraded since we last visited and were still reasonably priced, high quality, camps.  He then suggested we consider Makalolo Plains or Little Makalolo Camps in the Hwange Game Reserve.  So we threw together a tentative passenger list and slightly more positive dates and emailed him.  By tomorrow we will have a budget cost for the first nine days of our Zimbabwe Tour. 

 

On the subject of travel - generally

A few final recollections from my pre-Africa youth concerns the whole subject of travel.  Few southerners in the first half of the 20^th century and before (1865 to 1950s) ventured far from home.  Heaven forbid it would be necessary to go north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The movement of new industry into the southern states slowly began to change the “bunker” mentality that had lingered since the defeat and surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. 

When my dad was 22 years old and had been a tire builder for four years he was sent to Sweden as part of a team of trainers to help start up a new Goodyear tire plant near Stockholm. So in 1938 he crossed the Atlantic and worked for a year in an instructor’s role.  He made friends with yankees and foreigners and saw quite a bit of Europe, getting around by train.  Before going back to the USA, he was in Berlin in 1939 when Americans in Europe were advised to leave in expectation of the conflict that was just months away. 

My dad (left) with friends in Copenhagen, 1939

  

He boarded the first available train and headed home, getting a berth on a steamer out of France.  So he had a taste of the outside world, unlike most of his contemporaries.  In the years after I was born in 1944 my dad would have two weeks of vacation every year.  My parents could only afford to go on vacation every other year, and we would load the car to drive to south Alabama or on to St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a two-day journey each way. Of course the Interstate Highway system had not been thought of at the time, though it was possible that President Eisenhower had plans for such a system all along.

I vividly remember the narrow paved roads from Gadsden into south Alabama along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Early on when I was about two or three, we stayed in a very “modest” (could also be described as run-down) cabin along a waterway in Gulf Shores. Of course there was an outhouse in the back. Meals were cooked on a two-burner, Coleman, portable gas stove. My dad had rented a small boat and outboard motor and would take his boys out fishing.  At a very early age I became familiar with baiting hooks and taking fish off the line.  Looking over the sand dunes we could see the tops of ships passing by along the Inland Waterway.

The roads through the rolling wooded hills were dotted with old farmhouses, and large barns with advertising on the roofs. Pecan orchards were common along the way and, of course the ubiquitous Burma Shave signs offered some humor.  We drove with the windows wide open because there was no air-conditioning. Tourist stops along the way would advertise two-headed snakes and five-legged alligators. Dad would let us tell him where to turn at road junctions, so we would learn to read the highway maps and watch for highway signs. If there was any uncertainty he would wait until we studied the map and then follow our recommendation on which way to go. My interest in and love of maps would continue throughout my life. 

For a couple of those vacations we stayed at the same motel on the shore of the Gulf in St. Petersburg. On our final trip, in 1954, we stayed in a two story home for several days.  It was a modern home with wood-paneling throughout and we could see the ocean from our upstairs bedroom.  The main feature was the hidden storage spaces behind the wall panels upstairs. Our young imaginations ran wild as we found new hiding places and explored their secrets.  Silver Springs, Florida, was a memorable stop over one year. We visited an alligator farm and saw Manatees in the clear springs for the first time.  It was the first time I was exposed to the animal kingdom in earnest, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Nine months after this vacation, in March 1955, we welcomed the arrival of my young brother David who was to accompany us on our journey to the Dark Continent at the tender age of one year.

Moving to Africa was easy

As a 12 year old I don’t remember having any concerns or insecurities about the move to South Africa at all.  My twin brother John and I were always close in those days and there was never a loss of something to do or someone to do things with.  Our days were filled with boyhood activities that were almost certainly typical of southern boys at the time.  We were boy scouts and enjoyed meetings and working for our merit badges.  Every week we would clean our bedroom and make our own beds and would earn a nickel (5 cents) each if we passed our dad’s inspection. 

For most of our young years we had lived in small rented houses in East Gadsden, Alabama.  These were the small whitewashed houses with front porches that one sees in old period films of the sharecropper south, only we weren’t sharecroppers or indentured laborers.  We were poor but didn’t realize it at the time as we never wanted for any essentials.  Our father had begun work right out of high school as a tire builder at the Goodyear tire plant in 1934.  Every two or three years we would move into a slightly better house in a slightly better location, eventually one which included a garage.  My parents were good parents.   They worked hard for everything and never spent a penny that could be set aside for something useful.  It was an important step forward when my father could afford to rent a brick house on a slightly larger lot, with a storage shed in the back corner of the yard.  Finally, when my twin and I were 7 or 8 years old, my family had more or less “arrived” and John and I had only about a 200 yard walk to elementary school.

Among the things I remember were the new motorized washing machine my mother used.  When the clothes have been washed in the old vertical, white, enameled washing machine, she would attach mechanical rollers to the top of the machine and feed them through the rollers to squeeze the soapy water out before putting them back in for a rinse cycle then going through the roller-squeeze operation again.  The thoroughly squeezed clothes were piled into a large galvanized tub and carried outside to the clothes line.  We would stand by and hand Mother the wooden clothes pegs as she hung the laundry in neat rows along the line.

Our first television came along when I was about seven.  It was a small appliance with a fuzzy black and white picture.  It seemed like my dad was always adjusting the “rabbit ears” antenna to maximize the picture quality.  We were only allowed to watch one program at night, after our homework was done.  The Thursday night 30 minute episode of Superman was a great incentive to get the homework done.  I always wondered how he always leaped out of the same window in every episode.  Special effects weren’t very good sixty years ago.  On Saturday morning we could watch an hour of TV.  Flash Gordon, with Buster Crabbe in the leading role, was a must see and The Lone Ranger was another essential.  “As the World Turns” and “The Guiding Light” were to become my mother’s two favorite daytime “soaps.”

A significant improvement in our quality of life came early one summer when my dad came home with a large electric fan from Sears, Roebuck and Company.  He set it into the lower half of one of our living room windows and turned it on to expel the warm air from the house, making sure to open all of the bedroom and kitchen windows just a few inches to get an effective through-draft.  The air, now moving through the house, gave some noticeable relief from the hot, humid, summer air and also made it more difficult for the mosquitoes to prey on us as effectively as before.  The wooden screen doors in the front and back of the house were important summer insect barriers.  I can still hear them slam shut behind when we ran in and out, and mother calling out, “Boys …don’t slam the door!”  Speaking of mosquitoes, I often wondered later in life, why mosquito nets were so common throughout Africa but were never used in the American south.

At about 9 or 10 years of age our father had been promoted at Goodyear and was superintendent of the Goodyear Tube plant, at that time the largest automobile tube producer in the world.  We moved out of the old part of town into a very nice home several miles south, along Rainbow Drive, past the putt-putt course, the drive-in movie and the golf course and into a wooded residential area.  We had a double garage, two bathrooms and a large lot, covered in trees.  John and I particularly enjoyed the bathroom and shower with a glass door that was just outside our bedroom door.  We shared a room and slept on bunk beds in our new home.  Our house even had a basement – a rarity in that part of the south.  It was in the basement that our electric train set would receive the attention it deserved.  It was an American Flyer set up on a 4 x 8 plywood table supported by two wooden trestles.

This was the first home that my parents had actually owned.   I remember my mother’s excitement when they were able to afford a car for her and the used Nash Metropolitan (a convertible no less) proudly took up space in our new garage.  Living some distance from town now and even further from our elementary school in East Gadsden required a second family car for getting to school and shopping.

Fairly often we would have to get ready for school early and our dad would drop us off at our grandparents’ house on South 3^rd Street that was on the way into town.  It was a small, two bedroom, wood house just a few blocks south of Mainstreet.  It stood on concrete blocks and you could kneel down and see all the way under the house from front to back.  When I was 18 years old I came back for a visit and found that a new Piggly Wiggly grocery store had been built right across the street from their house and the row of old houses that were there when I was a little boy had been torn down.  But I digress.

My paternal grandparents, Philo and Emma McDaniel in 1956

On those mornings we would be fed scrambled eggs and toast with “Mom’s” special homemade fig preserves, before “Pop” would back his car out of the garage to drive us the two miles, east on Broad Street and across the Coosa River Bridge, to school.  Pop was a really bad driver.  He had only learned to drive late in life and he drove painfully slowly.  John and I would stand on the floor in the back and prop ourselves over the front seat, looking back to watch the cars accumulating behind us.  It was always a relief to get to school when he would turn right, off of the main thoroughfare, and the long line of traffic could speed up and pass us.

Of course, in those days we weren’t accustomed to going to school with “negros” (the accepted term of the era).  The Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation, was still a long way in the future.  We were moving away in troubled times, although I had little awareness growing up of the racial tensions around me.  When I was nine years old, living on River Street in East Gadsden I vividly recall a lesson taught me by my father.  We had gone to a tree lot to buy a Christmas tree and one of the salesmen, an older black man, asked me a question.  I politely replied, as I had been taught, “Yes sir.”  As soon as we got in the car to go home my mother turned to me and said, “Don’t you ever say “sir” to a black man.”  I suspect she actually said “nigger” (oops – should I use “the N-word here?) but I don’t really remember that detail for sure.  My dad turned to her and in an angry voice said, “You always say “yes sir” or “no sir” to an older person whom you respect.  It doesn’t matter if he is black or white.”  It’s those little things that mean so much when you are growing up.

One advantage of being raised in the south was that we were taught to be polite and always say “yes sir” or “no sir” and “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” both to our parents and to all adults.  This would serve us in good stead when we would eventually be introduced to the South African school system.

On our way to Africa in 1956. L-R: John, Mother Marguerite, me and 1 year old David

One of my first life's adventures

The SS African Enterprise sailed from New York in July 1956

Today I talked with Pam Buttner at Travel Beyond, the travel group we will be asking to help us plan our 2012 trip and make our reservations for us.  It was a small beginning.  I have investigated the South African Schools vacation calendar and decided that any time after July 13, 2012 would work well for our trip.  Students would be back in school and vacation destinations would be in less demand for "the locals."

My first greatest adventure – (a blog posted to www.YourHub.com on11 November, 2007)

The defining adventure of my life was almost certainly boarding a ship in New York harbor at the age of 12 years and crossing the Atlantic Ocean to live in South Africa. Without this event much of the following five decades of my life might have been fairly boring.

That 17 day crossing from New York to Cape Town in July 1956, aboard the Farrell Lines - Steamship (SS) African Enterprise, was a pretty big deal for a skinny kid from Gadsden, Alabama. We sometimes read advice columns or hear radio talk show hosts answer questions from concerned mothers. The distraught parent laments that her husband is being transferred out of state and asks what she can do to ease the devastating effect this will have on her young children.   I am amused at these situations. Parents need to know that most kids are, if nothing else, adaptable. Any distress they experience is most often created by their panicked mothers who are worrying needlessly.

When we were 11 years old my twin brother, John, and I were asked by our parents, "How would you like to go live in South Africa for a few years?" It was a rhetorical question of course. The plans had already been made by the grown-ups.

We couldn't wait to tell our 6th Grade Class at C.A. Donehoo Elementary School. I was so excited that I got confused about our destination, telling my teacher we were going to South America.  Soon afterwards, realizing my mistake, I went to her and whispered sheepishly that it was South Africa, not South America that we were moving to. The world can be a confusing place for a 6th Grader.

 

My father risked being ostracized by his extended southern family to which an excursion above the Mason-Dixon Line was something almost inconceivable. "Those damn Yankees" was a phrase I recall hearing often from my early childhood days. But my dad was aware of the opportunity he was being given, a directorship in Goodyear Tire Company at their plant at the southern tip of Africa. He had been given his choice of three assignments; England, Sweden, or South Africa.

He declined England because of the weather, and decided against Sweden because of the weather and the language, and he had spent time there as a trainer before the outbreak of World War II. South Africa would give his twin sons a chance at schooling in English and he would have a chance to do some hunting.

The contract was to be for a 3 year term and we would only be able to come home for vacation after that time. This 3 year term was to be greatly extended.

After the decision was made and became known to family and friends, one of his uncles called and chastised my dad, saying "How could you think of taking your sweet little wife and three little kids to Africa, with all those natives?" His concerns included our one year old baby brother David. 

So after graduating from 6th Grade, I recall busy weeks loading furniture and my mother shopping for clothes and things she was sure we would be deprived of for the next three years. The house was being sold.  Mostly the grown ups handled that stuff while my twin brother and I played, went to Boy Scouts and enjoyed the usual bare footed summer time boy stuff. On an appointed day in mid-June, 1956, we loaded up the Nash Rambler and headed north through Tennessee, skirting the Great Smokey Mountains, and on to Akron, Ohio.

I can't recall how we all fitted in the car. It helped that we didn't have to have a car-seat for baby David. But among the pile of bodies was my 4ft 10inch, 63 year old maternal grandmother, Clara McGraw. 

Talk about an adventurous spirit? Clara McGraw had never owned a car or flown in a plane, preferring to go by train. She was traveling with us to New York and planned to fly back to her home in Birmingham when we boarded the ship for Africa. We spent a week in Akron, where Goodyear Headquarters was located, while Clara visited her son, my uncle Joe and his family, in nearby Youngstown, Ohio. 

Finally the Clampetts were on their way across Pennsylvania to the big city of New York. To a little boy, New York skyscrapers were pretty impressive. We spent about five days at the Taft Hotel. I recall the dark, thickly carpeted hallways and creaky elevators.

The view from our hotel room window was incredible, but I was thoroughly impressed by the door to our room. It opened from inside and out! We could put laundry or shoes to be shined in the door from the inside and during the night housekeeping staff would open it from the outside and return it before we woke up the next morning.  I wanted so badly to have a pair of shoes that needed polishing just so I could use that remarkable feature.

 

We went with my dad to the harbor where he left our car to be loaded aboard the African Enterprise. The ship looked very impressive from dockside and my brother and I watched the huge cranes swinging cargo aboard. We made several excursions on the underground rail, one day even going to Dodgers Stadium to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play the New York Yankees. I guess this was a right of passage for little boys but I don't remember who won or the names of any of the players.

I was getting more and more anxious to get aboard and set sail, but mostly to play in the ship's swimming pool. I figured I would be able to swim all day, every day for the next two weeks.

Detailed memories of those days are elusive. I do recall my mother's shock at store and restaurant prices in New York. Why, a bottle of Coca-cola in the Drug Store was over a dollar, and we couldn't afford a milkshake! The price of a hamburger was outrageous.

Mother couldn't understand how people in New York could afford to eat. Of course Yankees were rude and hard to understand. This was culture shock for my mother but for me it was the first exposure to different people and places. If my mother had concerns about New Yorkers, how would she adjust to the varied peoples, cultures and languages of South Africa? She never really did, but that's another story. 

Grandmother McGraw was due to fly home from Idlewild Airport (later to become John F. Kennedy Memorial) to Birmingham, Alabama. When my dad suggested she go by taxi from the hotel she said no, she would prefer to use the helicopter service!

For someone who had never flown, she decided to opt for a whole new experience. For the remaining 24 years of her life she talked about that helicopter ride. Some years later, at the age of 72 she visited South Africa and while touring an Ostrich farm she rode an ostrich, when few others in the crowd would volunteer. 

The African Enterprise was one of "Two Distinguished Sister Ships" operated by Farrell Lines, offering regular first-class passenger service between New York and South Africa "over the incomparable Fair Weather Route." The Enterprise certainly was no Titanic in size but it was, by 1956 standards, a reasonably large vessel.

Primarily built to haul cargo, it offered seven luxury suites on "A" Deck and 22 suites on "B" Deck: comfortable cabins for about 50 passengers. It was 492 feet long and 65 feet wide. I can't help but compare it with a Holland America Cruise ship we took last year that accommodated 1,848 passengers, 800 crew members, had eleven passenger decks, and was 951 feet long.

We boarded ship with lots of luggage, much of which was disposable diapers (the brand name Playtex rings a bell) for my 15 month old baby brother. My parents optimistically assumed our crates of furniture and our car were safely stowed in one of the ships holes.

These would be unloaded when we arrived in Port Elizabeth, South Africa 19 days later. Containers were not commonly used then and it was interesting to watch the stevedores load odd-sized crates and canvas draped pallets through small holes into the huge below-deck freight areas.

We waved goodbye to the distant Statue of Liberty as tugboats nudged us away into the river and on toward the open Atlantic. It was a hot, humid, late June day and I was disappointed that the swimming pool had not yet been filled. My brother and I explored the ship and played our first game of shuffleboard. I suppose it would be true to say that our adventure had finally begun - in earnest.  

A brochure extolled the ocean vacation experience we were about to have. "In less than two days from New York" it proclaimed, "you will learn first-hand how the "Fair Weather Route" came by its name. Day after day you are greeted with tropical blue skies, a calm sea, warm sunshine.

Day after day for relaxing in a deck chair . . taking an occasional turn at shuffleboard or deck tennis . . enjoying a dip in the outdoor pool," etc., etc. The entertainment highlight of the trip was to be, "your initiation into the "Trusty Order of Shellbacks" as you cross the Equator. It's an experience as unique and unforgettable as your entire vacation will prove to be." On our eight day at sea we would cross the Equator and go through an initiation ceremony.

The sailing wasn't rough, but it wasn't calm either. The swimming pool was pumped full of sea water but we found the slightest ocean swell started the water in the pool sloshing back and forth, breaking against the steep tiled sides and making it difficult for anyone to swim, much more so for a 12 year old with limited swimming skills.

Ships in those days didn't have automatic stabilizers. So much for spending my hoped for days playing in the pool. On one or two days in that first week we experience fairly strong winds and I enjoyed standing against the rail on the foredeck watching the bow of the ship dip into the ocean swells and create great sheets of salt spray across the deck. At times we would see dozens of flying fish shoot out of the water and disappear again. Timed passed too fast.

We crossed the equator on about the 7th July, 1956. A large canopy was stretched across one of the top decks and a throne set up to accommodate King Neptune. In deference to our youth my twin and I were initiated together. Side-by-side we were led, blindfolded, to the foot of the throne and told to get down on our knees. I was terrified.

At one point we had to put a finger into "Nelson's eye" and I felt something squishy and juicy. It turned out to be an overripe tomato. Some sort of gooey food, including soft spaghetti noodles was poured over our heads. After it was over I was relieved that we hadn't been water boarded or anything like that. My vivid boyhood imagination often ran away with me. Mostly it was a funny experience because my dad was dressed as a ridiculous looking pirate and was on the King Neptune team initiating the passengers who were crossing the equator for the first time. We never figured out why he escaped the ritual himself.

Five or six days later we approached the remote island of St. Helena. This volcanic island is one of the most isolated places in the world: the nearest landmass being the west coast of Africa 1,200 miles away. In the 51 years since visiting this tiny British territory I don't recall ever having met anyone else who has been there and I suspect 99.9% of Americans have never heard of it. It is best known as the place to which the self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

 

As there is no harbor at St. Helena our ship anchored some distance from the only town, Jamestown, and those passengers who chose to tour the island were taken ashore in lighters. This was an incredible fun experience for me and I have very vivid memories of the hours spent in this special, historic place. My dad hired a taxi and guide and we drove along the narrow roads into the interior of the island, visiting Longwood House where Napoleon lived and subsequently died (in 1821). We visited his gravesite although he wasn't actually there. Forty years after his death his body was disinterred and transported back to France. We saw a large tortoise in the grounds of Longwood House which, we were told, had been living 135 years earlier when Napoleon had resided there.

Overlooking Jamestown, in the valley 500 feet below us, we stood at the top of Jacobs Ladder, a shortcut up (or down) the mountainside comprised of 699 steps and 2 inch diameter piping handrails on each side of its concrete steps. Several young boys, probably 14 or 15 years old, offered to show us a fast way down for a little financial incentive.

My dad paid each one a quarter or two. They straddled the steps with their heels on one side and their backs over the other and began to slide down the mountain, picking up speed as they descended. The steps were 900 feet from the top to the main street of Jamestown below. I guess those boys made it to the bottom in less than two minutes. My brother and I took the 699 steps down. I remember my legs being sore for several days afterward. 

For another five days we sailed eastward toward the African continent. Late in the afternoon on day five we felt the engines slow as the sky became overcast. Just before dark I saw the outline of the sunlit Table Mountain through the clouds and later the lights of the city were twinkling ahead of us as we entered Table Bay. It didn't occur to my uneducated boyhood brain at the time but this historic natural harbor had sheltered ships for almost 500 years. 

The following day the family went ashore and took a taxi around the City of Cape Town or Kaapstad as it had been called by the Dutch. It was cloudy and raining so our tour was brief and we didn't attempt to see the main tourist attractions. Over the next 25 years I would return to this most beautiful Cape Peninsula many times. Thirteen years later my bride and I would fly into Cape Town and spend a short honeymoon there before beginning a new job in the area.

My 1956 adventure neared its conclusion as the African Enterprise left Table Bay and rounded the "Cape of Good Hope" heading east into the Indian Ocean. Two days later we ended our voyage in Algoa Bay (now Nelson Mandela Bay) and the city of Port Elizabeth.

Within two weeks we would move to a comfortable house in Uitenhage, 20 miles inland. Adventure number 2 would begin when my twin brother and I put on our school uniforms for the first time and walked a mile to the all boys High School that would educate us for the next 5-1/2 years.

We were two skinny American kids with strong southern accents. The other 500 boys in the school had foreign accents.