Zambia World Wide

After leaving Botswana I went back for a holiday and stayed with Japie and Annetjie Straus on their farm. Japie had endless trouble with a Kudu that was eating his vegetables. He spent many a night trying to shoot the Kudu with no luck. He later erected a shack in the middle of the vegetables and gave his labourers the rifle. They too had no luck. I noticed one of his labourers had a set of bones. After throwing their bones I told Japie that before I leave we would shoot the Kudu. I won’t mention what he thought of my prediction but I will mention that he went into fits of laughter when I told him exactly what would transpire prior to the shooting of the Kudu and from whom we should take our advice. Everything went as predicted and Japie then agreed to have the head mounted for me. When I sold my house in Dana Bay in March 2002 I sold the head mount to a biltong shop in Mossel Bay.

A middle aged woman wanted to know if there was any future with her new boyfriend. She was not impressed when I informed her that the relationship would not last long as the boyfriend is a homosexual. Two weeks later she came and told me that the boyfriend had admitted he was gay after she presented him with some proof she had. He was going out with her to spite his ex-boyfriend.

Francistown recreational club

Francistown Club gave a cinema show once a week to its members. The film projectionist was Mike Ives. It was held outside but it at least had a six-foot enclosure. In winter we would arrive well prepared with blankets and warm cloths. In summer it was the mosquitoes and goggas. It might sound crazy but honestly I miss those times where we had to rough it and no one complained about it. We actually looked forward to our cinema show and we were highly upset if it rained.

When I joined the club I decided that the only recreation for me was golf. To familiarize myself with the golf course I decided to play a game during the week on my own before playing in the Saturday competition.

I was shown the change room but I came quicker out of the change room than I had entered it. I was baffled as on the door was the Gents sign but the change room was full of ladies nylon stockings. The barman assured me I was in the correct change room and when he explained the reason for the nylon stockings I was quite impressed by the innovation of the golfers. He explained that all the golfers wore the nylon stockings over their long socks. By the end of a game the nylon stockings were covered in black jacks. On removing the nylon stockings with all the black jacks it left their long socks free of black jacks.

Teeing up on the fairways was allowed. Getting the tee in the ground on the fairways and the tees was nigh impossible as the ground was rock hard. Putting on the sand greens was a nightmare. After the second hole I gave up.

Coming back in the club I went to the bar after the shower. Chatting with the barman he helped me right. He informed me that most of the golfers used a short length of hosepipe to which they tied a length of string with any object on the other end so that it can easily be found after teeing off. When putting you made use of a scraper. Before putting you were allowed to scrape the sand level from the hole to where your ball was. The barman loan me a spare he had until I got my own.

I soon adapted to the conditions but I must be honest there were many occasion when I thought of the lush greens of Nkana Golf Club and the Mashie Golf course of the Ravens Club belonging to the Power Corp.