Zambia World Wide

All right, so the title is a touch on the flash side, but, to those who have suffered the pain of reading the previous three episodes, there already will be an awareness that words, indeed, etymology and a smart mouth attitude all round, are irresistibly tempting to me.

I could blame Mr. Finlay, a 50's primary school teacher at Hutchesons' Boys Grammar School in Glasgow….or was it Nuremberg in the 40's….? for my condition. By this I definitely do not mean that his inspirational teaching methods instilled in me a love of language. No, rather it was his appalling propensity for withering sarcasm, advanced sadism and hatred of all things he deemed 'flowery'. Just writing that spirits up his ugly, fleshy, puce features from the recesses of my subconscious and recollection of the cruelly inventive putdowns he applied to any attempt at innocent essay writing. Since he's been long time worm food and probably un-mourned, except, possibly, by Heinrich Himmler, I'll try to avoid exposing the unsublimated hatred which stubbornly resides within my soul some five decades later. It definitely would be small-minded and, however true that accusation might be, I try to avoid it.

Oh…. sod it. Why not? WHY NOT?? I thirst for the catharsis, even whilst currently occupying the tremulous threshold to my own dotage. Truth is, even after more than half a century of experiencing sarcastic wit at the highest levels (including mein own), when it comes to Finlay, I'm not small minded, I'm positively atom minded. By the way, for those who have struggled to see some vague association with Zambia in what I've written in the preceding paragraphs, please cease the effort. There is none. There's more in the succeeding paragraphs that seek to recall some of my distant youth, but, as a prequel, suddenly I've been consumed with a desire to expose and trample on my formative education. Dear Reader: please indulge me. The throbbing in your head will pass, I promise.

For the tenacious, fatally curious or simply masochistic, what I'm doing is, firstly to conjure up memories of Finlay-type teachers from the 5000-odd days of learning that the average adult undergoes, as a sort of entry fee for membership of Society; and secondly, the parenting endeavour that takes innocent five-year-olds and sends them off to be trained as rounded members of the aforementioned Society, following twelve to fifteen years incarceration within the school system. And I'm absolutely certain that Finlay was not a brutal one-off, nor that learning by hectoring was confined to his class, Hutchesons' or the Scottish education system in general: just refined there, to an exquisitely honed degree.

Finlay was a big, bluff bully of a man, seized with his own singular determination to mould real men from quivering blocks of 10-year-old clay. No harm in that, if an acceptance that there may be several types of the finished product within the category was acknowledged by the moulder. No such assurance was ever given and, consequently, I found myself at war with Finlay. The actual declaration of hostilities was one-sided, of course, and, being a bit thick, perhaps, it took me a month or two to understand that I had become Belgium to Finlay's ruthless blitzkrieg, but, for a full twelvemonth, that's what it felt like.

It wouldn't have been so bad, had there been an opportunity to escape the battlefield occasionally, but these were primary school days and, from 09:00 until 15:30, there was no alternative to our RSM's barking tuition, other than the too-short lunch break. Even then, he patrolled the silent tables, lest something unScottish or gay, for example, a salad, had infiltrated into his emphatically strongman world. And so, at a juncture of our young lives when our minds cried out for imaginative teaching and new forms of expression, we bowed our heads and learned by rote and unbreakable, unchallengeable rule, both strictly enforced by hurled dusters, wielded with unerring accuracy denied to most discus Olympians and lashings from inch-thick Lochgelly tawses, that I am certain were fashioned from dinosaur hides.

Both of these devices hurt cruelly, but stung nothing like as much as the withering putdowns that the odd deviation from instruction attracted. Asked once to give a reason why a train from Glasgow Central might have been delayed on its journey to Saltcoats, I offered the view that a gang of mail thieves might have boarded at the departure point, worked their way along the carriages en route and persuaded the driver and fireman to exit the locomotive at a suitable, rural halt, whereupon the thieves would relieve the Royal Mail staff of their bags and make their getaway. I can yet see him looking down on me as he snarlingly proffered the view that my almost immediate future involved early incarceration in one of Glasgow's many prisons, followed surely by a short trip to the room with the noose. Looking elsewhere for an alternative, he accepted 'Sir, the train jumped the tracks' as a superior explanation from a smirking sycophant named Russell and rewarded my protest at the dullness of it with yet another cracking blow to my well-calloused skull, using the pointy stick he habitually carried. Now I do not recall any Cockney gangsters in my class at the time, yet, not 7 years later, that's exactly the crime that Mr. Biggs and Co visited on a certain Glasgow to London mail train. More than mere coincidence, say I.

It wasn't just within the classroom that Finlay instilled rigidity in our thinking. The sports field enabled him to bring the phrase 'suffer unto little children' to life, as he instilled a lifelong hatred of rugby into our crushed wee bodies, by tackling three or four of us simultaneously, gathering us up in his giant, Neanderthal arms and hurling us into the deepest mud pit he could find, before stamping all over our recumbent corpses, as part of the master plan to create 'real men'. Cricket, ditto: no love of that game, which I since have seen played with grace and style, could possibly be engendered by standing nervously at the crease holding an oversized bat, whilst Finlay hurled one of his nose-splitting googlies from the bowling end, then laughing cynically as the small boy recipient limped off with a bloodied face and more than the odd tear. I guess he was just a big, latent poof, exorcising his own suppressed proclivities and being paid for it too. I hated him, I still do and, talking to other former pupils from his era, I'm not alone. At least I outlived the bastard, benefited greatly later on from more enlightened educators and still retained an imagination, if not a complete sense of proportion.

I win.

Notwithstanding that inelegant outburst, let's attempt a return to Central Africa and this Scots Lad's continuing journey to the South, although Finlay and his wicked attempts to stifle any early signs of emerging personal style usually come back to me on train trips.

Entrained I certainly was and on the early train to Livingstone from Lusaka at that. Not that there was a late train, except for when this one wasn't on time, which was often (but much MUCH worse now, I believe) because there were only three services a week and they all set off at an ungodly hour in the am. Nevertheless, it was a relief to bid goodbye to that brusque robber, Bryson and seek out my compartment within the cream and wine sleeper carriages, all marked RR. My only recognition of these initials being associated with superior motor cars, I began to think that, perhaps, Cecil Rhodes had persuaded the august vehicle provider to the nobility to invest in rolling stock for his eponymous country's railway. Not so. The RR stood, of course, for Rhodesia Railways although their comfort levels were closer to that of a Robin Reliant, than any Roller I've experienced. Of course, even when not being attacked by Ronnie Biggs, BR carriages weren't exactly famed for luxury, even at the highest levels, so my working class expectations weren't offended by the thought of spending the next 24 hours aboard this African equivalent of 2^nd class, especially as I was still in adventure mode. But my priority was that I needed to eat….and fast.

On further inspection of the gloomy compartment, I discerned that I had company, a weaselly-looking young bloke who greeted me in what sounded like a foreign tongue. Actually, it WAS a foreign tongue, being that peculiar, heavily accented English of the white southern African (not that my guttural Glaswegian staccato would have convinced him that he was sharing his travel with a member of the Royal Family). Nonetheless, his one word paragraphs were nothing like anything I'd ever heard before and I had mixed with Geordies. 'Chhhout, erryerakay, buoy, aiy wes tinkin aiy wes goan tee by oan may oan' said the weasel, without any menace, from which I deduced that it was a form of greeting. Without any idea of what was being said, I smiled enigmatically and carefully positioned myself with a clear route to the corridor and safety. 'Err yow eskaipin de blerry keffirs toi' he continued, with the degree of quizzicality in his voice, giving me the idea that I had just been asked a question. 'Aye', I replied, thinking that a positive, yet monosyllabic, response might close down the conversation, until I could gather some wits sufficient to allow me somehow to communicate with this garrulous foreigner. Never having been closer than halfway on the journey to Wit City, I was struggling in this situation, until relief came in the form of an elegantly uniformed African who enquired, in mellifluous, understandable English, if we wished to avail ourselves of breakfast in the restaurant car. Despite some desperation to leave my charmless fellow-passenger behind, I was aware that my personal funds were running low, so I demurred on the basis that I would find something in the buffet car. Not for the last time, I was looked at pityingly by a complete stranger, as he asked to see my ticket: 'Sah' he said, 'there is no buffet car and your fare entitles you to restaurant car meals on the journey '. Needing no further encouragement, I bolted in the indicated direction of the dining carriage and settled down at a table.

I could have consumed the proverbial equine, had sufficient HP sauce been on tap, but decided to be guided by the waiting staff. 'Is the Bwana having brekkers?', enquired my server. Answering in the affirmative, I seemed to have irritated him somehow, as he challenged me to boil my arse. There then followed an eyeball standoff for several seconds, whilst my mind churned over the possibility that posterior immersion in very hot water might be a normal precursor to railcar dining in Central Africa; possibly his was considering the very real possibility that he was going to have to draw a picture of a cooked breakfast, to bring the conversation to a close at all. Eventually, a strangulated 'wot?' emanated from my shocked head. 'Would the Bwana like some BoilYerArse with his eggs?' he yelled. Now the answer to that is simple: no-one in their right mind wants to eat fried eggs whilst having their backside simultaneously poached. Yet I was two days into a new job in a new country. Would it be politic to ask if I could perhaps just have a warm cloth rubbed gently over my nethers for now and leave the full immersion experience for a subsequent meal? I decided to go with the flow, so to speak, so answered in the affirmative, which allowed the server to leave with real relief on his face. Minutes later he was back with a plate of two fried eggs, accompanied by two lumpy, strange-coloured, penis-shaped appendages that looked like I was being served up the wedding equipment of a duo of long-expired hippopotamuses. Although relieved not to be suffering third degree burns on my rear end, I still was nonplussed about what I was being expected to consume and made the enquiry. 'Boil Yer Arse' was the answer, all expressed as one word. 'Oh Jeez' I thought, 'my arse is not yet clear of the bubbling dixie', but determined that at least I would eat something before the inevitable scalding, I asked again, this time several hundred decibels louder, the origin and content of the appallingly distended items on my plate. 'BOILYERARSE Sah', 'dey R sauskisses'. Comprehension, mixed evenly with anal relief, washed over me. They clearly weren't sausages of any sort known to normal humans, but at least I would be able to sit down for the rest of my contract, so I decided to settle for that and enquire no further, sullenly confining myself to consuming the proffered toast, toying with what looked like half an orange, fried (it was squash) and attempting to make a decent meal from a pair of over-cooked eggs. The boerewors, for that is what they were called, I discovered later, I wisely left for any vultures en route to Livingstone to enjoy, since they didn't look like any digestible comestible known to mankind. Slightly less hungry, I rejoined Charmless in our carriage. Only 90 minutes had passed and I already was missing Bryson. How sad was that?

Weasel-features sprang into life on my return. 'Dedrekeffirsfidyerokay?' he enquired. Again, I answered in a fashion designed to cut short any chance of further conversation, delving deeply into the volume about Zambia, with which I had been issued, part of which featured an item on a local loony called Edward Makuka Nkoloso, who was heading up Zambia's effort to beat the Yanks to colonising the moon, by despatching a chubby young girl and her cat into space in an aluminium dustbin. If she had to live on boerewors on the journey, she'd never make it past the first cloud (& she didn't!).

And so we settled down, my unintelligible companion and I, to a slow and sultry journey through the bush. It was slightly disappointing not to see herds of bobbing giraffe sweeping through the hinterland, nor observe large feline carnivores despatching their hapless victims before our transported eyes, but it was all new to a Lanarkshire lad and, by that virtue alone, exciting. I even began to understand the strangulated English of my Afrikaaner carriage-mate, although I had to put on my best Terry-Thomas impersonation, to be able to respond to him. He was callow, but impossibly warped in his view of emerging political trends. I had come to Zambia for adventure, maturing experiences and the chance, perhaps, to offer a helping hand: he was fleeing Zambia because the 'blerry Keffirs' were going to destroy everything that was good about life in Africa (for the white minority) in short order. He could not tell me, however, why that was inevitable or how destabilising the painfully-established colonial infrastructure by decamping southwards represented any sort of personal or political progress. Mainly, though, he didn't understand the question, because he was a thick git and filled with a gut hatred of change. If he has survived military service in the Rhodesia to which he then was gratefully inbound or travelled on later to white supremacist South Africa, once Mugabe had wreaked his poisonous, destructive policies on Zimbabwe, he's no doubt sitting in a Pretoria bar, nursing a Castle lager and talking the same racist bollocks, his whole life ruined by having to fairly share a country with the people from whom we took it in the first place. I met lots of unhappy people like him, in the three years to come, but also many pragmatists, in Zambian industry, commerce and politics, who managed to re-shape their attitudes and ended up benefiting from so doing, albeit not for a lifetime.

We mutually decided that we preferred silence to discourse and settled down to staring out of the dusty window or reading. Eventually sleep overcame my weary mind and I dozed. Whilst I did so, he nicked the remaining ten pounds from my wallet, although I didn't discover this until I detrained at Livingstone. So much for escaping from the abhorrent thieving 'keffirs' of independent Zambia. Southern, temporarily minority ruled, Africa was welcome to him, the light-fingered Jaapie tea leaf.

Re-reading my memories of the journey, two things struck me: how high-minded I sound and my failure to register much of the actual scenery en route. I can only comment that I've never been accused of the former, then or since. I guess that I must have been fortunate never to have mixed with peers who harboured such bitterness towards anything, as much as did that escapee on the train from independent Africa. The 60's were a blessed time of discovery for me and my mates, even if heavily leavened with poverty and much sexual frustration, and we thoroughly anticipated a bountiful future that would massively exceed, in joy, reward and colour, the sepia lives our parents had been forced to endure. In my case and most important of all, I had the added thrill of abandoning my (s)mother. Admittedly, my hatred of Finlay remained white hot, but, in my defence, so would have Mother Theresa's. As for omitting the no doubt scintillating detail of the laborious route we must have followed through the bush, the Zambezi escarpment and numerous trackside villages, I can only plead fatigue and a fragile imagination crushed by early schooldays spent with you-know-who.

But now we were drawing into Livingstone, to a setting that made Lusaka look like Manhattan. Roll on the REAL start of the adventure. The Scots Lad was more than ready for it, but blerry skint.

COPYRIGHT:GERRY HODES 2011

Episode #5: The Scots Lad, North of the South Border