Building a house

It is about two  months since my last blog. No excuses, except to say we have been very busy.  Our BookCrafters publishing business has been hectic but very rewarding and we have made progress in planning our South Africa tour which begins on July 13, 2012.  

Working on some old photographs, I came across a few that recall the purchase of our 1-1/3rd acre lot in the northern suburbs of Salisbury (now Harare, of course) and subsequently the construction of our modest home.  Joan and I were married in February 1969 and immediately flew off to spend several months in Paarl, in the expansive, and very beautiful, fruit-growing region of the Western Cape Province of South Africa. I had left my job as an entomologist and had joined the Rhodesian Food Corporation.  My new employer sent me off to spend four months on a training course, working at one of the largest canning plants, at the time, in the world - H. Jones & Company. 

I flew home for the wedding and then Joan and I returned to Paarl where I was working.  H.Jones & Co.  generously offered my new bride a temporary job in their accounting offices, where she was able to make friends and earn a modest stipend until she returned to Harare in late April.  We rented an apartment in downtown Paarl and though I worked long hours during the week, I was able to take Saturdays and Sundays off and we would explore the area all the way to Cape Town and down the Cape Peninsula.

Finally, I drove home in late May and took up my new position as Quality Controller at United Canners, a small canning plant in the little town of Rusape (now Lesapi) - about 80 miles southeast of Harare on the road to Umtali (now Mutare). We lived apart until the end of that year.  I drove home to our apartment each weekend while Joan had resumed her position as an entomologist with the Dept. of Research and Specialist Services in the Ministry of Agriculture. It wasn't an ideal beginning to married life, but our plans all along were to settle in the Harare area, when my jobs would permit it. 

It was during the June to December, 1969 time-frame that we looked around for a bit of land to purchase.  We found what we were looking for in the northern suburb of Vainona.  Those familiar with the area will better picture this suburb as the one directly west of Borrowdale. 

Planting our first tree in 1969.

The lot was, as I mentioned, 1-1/3rd acres.  It cost us just over (Rhod)$1,000.  I am not sure how that equated with the U.S. dollar at the time but it was probably about par. We put down $200 of our savings and paid $150 per month until we owned it free and clear about eight months later. My monthly salary in those days was about $550 per month - in case readers might assume that we were oozing wealth.  The land had no trees on it; it was triangular in shape with a narrow front boundary (about 80 ft) and a wide back fence line. It sloped very gently toward the front boundary which was to the north. We had a pretty clear idea from the first day about  where our house would eventually be located and we even sketched out plans of where the trees and shrubs would be planted. The property was on old farm land and the soil was a deep, rich, red loam.  We were to learn later that plants would grow like crazy.

During the whole year of 1970 we moved away and lived in Rusape.  I had rented a very nice, garden apartment (or "flat" as it was called) and we enjoyed out time in the small, but friendly town. The center of my life was the canning factory.  We came to know many of the rural farming community from whom we would purchase fruits and vegetables through the various growing seasons. Rusape was the gateway to the northeastern highlands of Rhodesia where there was an abundance of deciduous fruits grown, including pears, peaches, apples, apricots and so on. Through the late spring and winter months we would process peas, beans, tomatoes and many other varieties of vegetable products, soups and juices. But I digress. 

Joan was expecting our first son later that year and by January 1971, I had resigned from The Rhodesian Food Corporation and taken a position with The Metal Box Company of Central Africa, a very large British-based manufacturer of food cans and other metal packaging. We returned to live in Harare and began to turn our attention to building the house we had thought about and planned for for two years.

June,1971 - the foundation is in and our brick house is under construction.

Our son Alan arrived right on schedule in April and we hired a reputable home builder to begin work on our 3BR, 2 BA house with Living and dining area and kitchen. We decided to wait before building a garage.  As was customary we built "servant's quarters" on the property as well, wiring it for electricity, hot water, indoor toilet and other basic essentials. 

Almost to roof level in July.

The months of May through September in Zimbabwe are perfect for home construction projects. It is winter and it never rains.  Cold nights and dry, sunny, days kept the project right on schedule and the final coat of paint had been applied in August.

Near completion. Note the solar panels on the roof.

The weather in this part of Central Africa was, in fact, ideally suited for solar heating, and we had a solar water heater panel installed on the roof above the bedroom section of the house.  This saved us a great deal on monthly electricity bills for the next eight years!

To pay for our house we applied for a 20 year loan from the Central Africa Building Society.  The house cost us about $10,000 in 1971.  Several years later we would add a double garage, doubled the size of the servants house, and added on a larger bedroom at the end of the house.  We also added a small (25ft) swimming pool. We used the pool for seven months of the year.  The additions cost about $7,000 in 1976.

The house in 1973 with lawn established - no garage.

1975 - the bougainvillea grew prolifically

Our house at 4 Wye Turn, from the street, looking south.  The new bedroom on the far left was added in early 1976.

We built a pool in 1976 and this photo was taken from the roof of our house with our three kids enjoying a December swim. 

Owning a home is the dream of most young couples.  We were able to realize our dream and have a beautiful home that we designed and built and added to over the years while we lived in Rhodesia. 

In 1980, after the new government of Robert Mugabe came to power, we made the decision to leave Zimbabwe and find a new life in the United States.  American born, I had retained my US citizenship and that option to immigrate was open to us.  We couldn't see a clear, secure future for our children.  They were 9, 7 and 6 years old at the time.  To see them through college ten years down-the-road in that changing environment was, as we decided, too much of a risk to take. 

In June, 1980 we left Africa and moved to Littleton, Colorado. Strict foreign exchange restrictions allowed us to take only US$1,500 in cash each (for the two adults).  We rented a house and I took a position with a company in Littleton.  The kids started school and now 32 years later we can look back with few regrets.

Rhodesia - the consequence of political correctness

I moved to Rhodesia in 1967 and, for 13 years, lived, worked, married and started a family there. It is difficult for me to write about the beauty of that country and its people due to the great injustice that was committed, in 1980, when the government was handed over to Robert Mugabe’s thugs by people who knew the risks but were willing to sacrifice the population for political expediency.

Last November a letter was published in the American Spectator which is truthful and factual – and worth repeating here. Thank you H.W.  Crocker III. I am hoping that many will read this and get an idea why I find the situation in present-day Zimbabwe so tragic.  For most readers, Rhodesia is just a footnote in history.  For me it was a very personal and powerful influence in my life and the lives of my children.

The American Spectator on Rhodesia - finally the truth written by an American without all the PC garbage.

Ian Smith lived to see all his worst predictions come true.

On 11 November 1965, Ian Smith, prime minister of the British colony of Rhodesia, signed his country's unilateral declaration of independence, giving birth to a new nation that would, rather heroically, seek to maintain its way of life for the next fifteen years. That way of life was not -- as critics will be quick to allege -- based on racism, but on freedom, the freedom that was vouchsafed Rhodesia by the British Empire. It was the freedom that was lost by Rhodesia's transformation into Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It's a transformation from which even we, as American, have something to learn.

The Rhodesians, in fact, based their declaration of independence on our own, though they charmingly reaffirmed their allegiance to the queen. Thinking themselves "more British than the British," they announced their independence on Remembrance Day, marking the end of World War I (what we mark as Veterans' Day), to remind Britain that when she fought at great cost to defend freedom, the rule of law, and the rights of small nations, Rhodesia had been at her side. In the Second World War, indeed, Ian Smith himself had flown Hawker Hurricanes and Spitfires for the RAF. A flight accident had smashed up his face (which required extensive plastic surgery) and left him with numerous serious injuries that took months to heal. He returned to duty, was shot down over Italy, and eventually made his escape back to Allied lines.

More than that, though, the Rhodesians had done what is the measure of a man -- they had gone into the wilderness and been able to re-create their civilization. While they had a reputation as outdoorsy, beer-swilling hearties, the great Rhodesian writer (and liberal) Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock estimated in their classic study of Rhodesia, 'Rhodesians Never Die,' "that probably no other transplanted English-speakers had done more -- with similar resources -- to reproduce and practice the parent culture."

It is a question worth asking ourselves: how many of us could hack our way into the jungle and re-create the United States? The more culturally pessimistic, or multiculturally inclined, might even wonder whether that would be a good thing anyway.

The Rhodesians had no doubts -- or few. They were so confident in their civilization that they were willing to endure international ostracism. They were so certain they were on the right side of history, and certain of their martial valor, that they volunteered to send troops to Vietnam (an offer that the embarrassed Lyndon Johnson administration declined to accept). They were so certain that they stood athwart tyranny, that they sacrificed their sons and fortified their farms in an African bush war that thrilled the armchair adventurers among the readers of Soldier of Fortune magazine, which sold "Be A Man Among Men, Rhodesian Army" t-shirts, based on a Rhodesian recruiting poster.

Smith believed that one-man, one-vote in Africa meant free elections once.

He was loath to submit his country to the chaos, socialism, violence, and dictatorship that he was certain would follow elections based on a universal franchise (which, as he pointed out, had difficulties that Western critics were not likely to consider: for instance, how to accurately register voters when most rural-born black Africans had no birth certificates). Smith was careful to gain the support of the country's tribal chiefs, he stated that his goal was evolution not revolution on the way to expanding the franchise (which was tied to income and property qualifications), and he affirmed that he would not risk Rhodesia's multi-party elections, free press, independent judiciary, and free economy with a mass electorate that might be inclined to do away with them.

In the end, of course, the British brokered a deal. Lord Carrington and almost all the other delegates to the so-called Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 were convinced that Robert Mugabe, regarded as the most radical of the Communist-backed insurgents, would be defeated in the elections arranged for 1980. Ian Smith thought otherwise. He was certain Mugabe would win because he belonged to the Shona tribe, which represented eighty percent of Rhodesia's population, and because Mugabe would be the most effective at voter intimidation. Smith was proved right, as he usually was -- though he got no credit for it.

Smith lived to see all his worst predictions come true; had he been able to read his obituaries he would have seen that liberal opinion blamed him for it. Smith's solace in his declining years was the popularity he had among black Zimbabweans who saw him as a symbol of unbreakable resistance to Mugabe. If you want to see the Rhodesia Smith defended, you can watch a video or two on YouTube and see black soldiers (most of the Rhodesian army was black) marching on parade past mostly white civilians, including an official dressed like an 18th-century town crier; you can see the sons of productive farmers and businessmen, who made Rhodesia an economic success, shouldering rifles to defend their homes and their liberties.

And if you want to see the tribute that vice pays to virtue -- or that Zimbabwe pays to Rhodesia and the British Empire -- just note how Zimbabwe's judges still wear white wigs, how Mugabe's henchmen make a show of owning farms (taken from white farmers who once produced plenty, and whose fields now lie barren while Zimbabweans starve), and how Mugabe still goes through the formality of having elections (as long as his goons ensure that he wins). Zimbabweans think of British institutions as having legitimacy, even if they are deployed as part of Robert Mugabe's charades.

So what can America learn from gallant Rhodesia? For one thing, we can learn to judge nations by the values they uphold, not the electoral processes they observe. We can see why Western "colonialism" was oftentimes better than the alternative. And most of all, perhaps, we might learn not to take our own liberties for granted. In every generation, they are only a demagogue away from being taken from us.

Letter to the Editor from H.W. Crocker III, a best selling author. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire.

My wife, Joan, with our two young sons at Victoria Falls - August 1975

 

 

In 1971 we built a small house, where we would live for ten years.