Zambia World Wide

Many years ago there was an article in our local newspaper the “ Nchanga Weekly “ dated 29th July 1966.

My father Gabriel Chandler Spence known as Gaby was featured and it makes fascinating reading …….

It all started in March 1939 when he came to Nchanga as the mines first sampler. Before that he had worked in the sampling office at West Springs in South Africa. His first job was a far cry from the mining world - he was a script clerk with the Johannesburg Stock exchange and he continued to be fascinated with stocks and shares all his life.

When he first arrived at Nchanga it was little more than a mining camp and there were only 3 single girls , one being my mother Ethne Jean Sutton. She had just come to the Copperbelt to stay with her mother and step father Herby Wilson ( he had first come to the Copperbelt in the “Twenties “ )

Ethne decided to stay and worked as a typist on the mine and Gaby soon had his eye on her and used to send romantic notes hidden in the book which he used to write the measurements of the blasting done the previous day !!

The system worked well until the book was intercepted by an American mining consultant who made unmerciful capital of his romantic find.

In 1966 when the article was written, the other 2 single girls who had also married were still living in Chingola, they were Mrs Molly Miller and Mrs Anne Olivier !!

My mum recalled that the 3 girls had had tremendous fun, they were even included in the men’s hockey team because of the shortage of male players.

Trips to the Congo ( now Zaire ) were a regular jaunt for Chingola residents in the early days and they took advantage of the rock bottom prices there.

Ethne remembered one mixed hockey team returning from a match twice their normal size, for the players had draped themselves in material, wool, clothing and a variety of purchases hidden under their togs to evade the eagle eye of the customs officer.

They made their own entertainment and when Gaby and Ethne were courting they used to go to the Hippo Pool on the river Kafue, a few miles outside Chingola. There they would hire a dugout with 3 paddlers, then in “ Sanders of the River “ style they would be paddled up the Kafue in search of a picnic spot. The hollowed out tree trunks made excellent boats providing one didn’t stand up !!!!

In December 1939 they were married at the Nchanga Court House - a thatched hut with a tattered calico ceiling

In October 1940 the twins , a boy and a girl were born and Gaby acquired his nickname in Bemba; Simpundu meaning breeder of twins . There was great excitement in the camp at their arrival and they were born during a total eclipse !! In those days the hospital consisted of a makeshift building in Second street, which was staffed by a doctor,a matron, two sisters and part time nurses.

Christmas at Chingola was a group celebration that included the whole camp. Christmas Day was heralded at dawn by local singers who went from door to door, chanting their tribal songs in a highly original and entertaining variation on the pavement warbling of traditional English carollers.

Gaby also loved fishing and he had a ‘shack‘ on the Kafue about 50 miles north of Chingola and he spent many happy weekends there.

He was also a keen golfer and in the early days he used to stand in the garden of our home in Sixth street and practise his iron shots into the bush, we used to go and retrieve them and once I got hit in the face by one.

There were not many jobs that he had not been in charge of at some stage. As shaft mine captain, he turned the first spade full for the D shaft sink in the ‘Forties’ In the torrential rains of 1952 he found himself heading an unusual work team- the men were sent post haste to the Hippo Pool to prevent the bridge being washed away. !!

He continued to work at Nchanga Mine until his retirement in 1976, when he and my mother moved to East London in South Africa, where he sadly died in 2001.

Happy days !!!!