It is now the established and unquestioned belief amongst the British public and
intellectuals of all varieties and nations that not only were wicked colonialists
conscienceless oppressors of the poor but also that they lived in the lap of luxury that
they, as really mere lower-middle class arrivistes, could not otherwise have
contemplated in their most technicolour dreams. This belief is not entirely new, for in
1949 we First Devonshire course neophytes, peacefully pursuing our studies at LSE and
SOAS in London, were often greeted with the derisive hail of "White Masters" from the
more radical of the students there. I still remember the horrified incredulity with which a
group of these gentry greeted the arrival of John Pepys-Cockerell, immaculately clad as
if for the city.
Arriving in Nyasaland in January 1950 I spent my early months in a one-roomed
Tobacco Buyers' office (with no facilities) on Famine Relief before going to my first
district station. This was Port Herald, whose sonorous and historical name has now been
replaced by the more Malawian one of Nsanje. This will not have changed the climatic
conditions - it was extremely hot, humid and cursed with a remarkable variety of insect
pests, all distinguished by size, persistence and ferocity. It was no more than 150 feet
above sea-level and 150 miles or so from the sea, with a vast swamp on the other side of
the Shire river, on whose right bank it stood. I can only hope that the housing conditions
have changed for the better, for in my time these were simplicity itself. Even though as
Assistant District Commissioner - a grandiose title for a brand new probationer chicken
just out of the egg - I was allotted a large and imposing two-storied house; it had just
four rooms plus an outside toilet. I shared it with the Assistant Superintendent of Police,
the Rhodesia Native Labour (Mtadizi) recruiter, and at night, the Customs Officer. This
unusual arrangement came about because the last-named was awaiting his decree
absolute, and to avoid putting it in jeopardy, since he had his lady love living in his own
house, came over after dinner and slept in our joint living room. I cannot remember if the
country sported a King's Proctor, but if we did, this simple system foiled him, for it was
a legal dogma that adultery could only take place at night.
Thus I had just the one room to myself and here I kept my state - a bed with skin
thongs and a lumpy kapok mattress, a Roorkee (collapsible - and it was) chair, a canvas covered
camp table, and a side-board-bookcase-drinks cabinet cum-whatnot made by
piling empty petrol boxes on their sides. The boxes had previously contained two four gallon
flimsy cans for petrol but were now a major element in our living; there were
stacked boxes in my room for clothes, books and other valuables. I had lids put on
several and these contained all my gear from pots and pans to food, clothes, grog, for
ulendo (safari). Another had side doors and folding legs and held paperbacks and my one
great luxury, the famous "saucepan" radio. Central African veterans will remember these
hardy and useful wirelesses, conceived as a cheap means of receiving news and music
for villagers, and sold in vast numbers; they were indeed built inside "saucepan" shaped
containers and made one's lonely tent or ulendo seem in touch with the world - even if it
was only Radio Lusaka.
Modern political correctness will undoubtedly contrast my lordly state most
unfavourably with the miserable and abject poverty of my oppressed subjects in their mud huts, but in fact these buildings were little, if at all, inferior, to my single bare room
and sparse furniture. A "mud" hut is a more sophisticated and solid construction than the
title indicates, for it is not mud, but wattle and daub, and is similar to those buildings that
housed my Anglo/Saxon-Celtic-Welsh peasant ancestors for centuries, and where they
bred, lived, brought up their families (and often the livestock) and died in conditions that
they probably considered to provide a reasonable and cosy familiarity.
There were other snags with home-making. Not long after my arrival in Port Herald
we were blessed with a brand new experiment, in the form of an Agricultural Supervisor;
this was a large and innocent young man named Mike, even newer to Africa than me.
Before leaving England he had been assured that he would be provided with a house, but
on arrival what he actually received was a sum of money and instructions to build
himself one. In order to have somewhere to put his Government refrigerator (kerosene),
bed, table and chair as well as himself, he started off with the kitchen, which was a small
separate building from the house. For the time being his cook had to make do with a
thatched shelter and a fire amid some stones. Mike also had to arrange the making and
burning of the bricks, and to this end he had a large clay pit excavated. Whilst doing this
he heard a commotion among his workmen and went to investigate. They were all highly
agitated and pointed to a large snake they had unearthed. In his virginal innocence Mike
promptly picked it up and turned to his men for its identification. Finding himself
suddenly alone, he walked over to his kitchen to ask his cook. That worthy took one
horrified look and not being able to get past Mike, crashed out through the wall. Putting
the creature in a sack, Mike sent it to the camp of a Game Department man, a keen
herpetologist, who sent a note of thanks, adding that he hoped Mike had not tried to
handle it. Apparently a burrowing viper (for such it was) possessed the ability, unique
among snakes, of being able to strike backwards over its own head - and even skilled
and devoted snake lovers were reluctant to handle it.
My next palace was the District Commissioner's house in Chikwawa; the proper
incumbent had gone sick, and for a glorious few weeks I was elevated into the position
- at no extra pay, of course. The house, however, had lost its former good size and
status, for it had been perched on the cliff edge above the Shire river, and as the river
had progressively undermined the cliff, it had had to be demolished. My house
was built from the salvaged materials - and consisted of two long high thatched
buildings, with a verandah for sleeping on, for Chikwawa was as hot and sticky as Port
Herald.
I moved from Chikwawa to the sub-district of Mwanza, where once again any
incipient delusions of being of a superior clay to the local population were soon
dissipated. This time I had a "bush-house", and any officer who served in Nyasaland at
this time will remember these misbegotten constructions. Allegedly designed by a
qualified architect, who allegedly never had to live in one, these creations boasted two
modestly sized rooms - living room and bedroom, joined at one side by a miniature
dining room, and on the other by the bathroom and loo. For some highly technical reason
the room farthest from the (outside) kitchen was the dining room, so that to avoid
continually falling over the Bwana and his guests (if any), food had to be brought
through the bathroom and bedroom to reach it, while the loo access from the living room
was through the dining room and bedroom. Being then a bachelor, I was comfortable
enough, but in Zomba and other metropolises families were expected to occupy these
huts - and huts they were, being often thatched.
On my first leave I married and brought my bride to our first house, down in the Shire
Valley below Zomba at the lonely Land Settlement station of Chigale - hot, malarial and
on the wrong side of a deep (in the rains) stream. The two "officer" type houses had been
built in the usual confident if unskilled manner by a previous Land Settlement Officer
(we were jack of all trades - with the inevitable corollary), and were the essence of
simplicity - living room, dining room and bedroom all in a straight line and with
bathroom attached to the bedroom. This latter had been built over a not properly filled-in
well, and its bricks sagged dangerously outwards; this was no problem and was easily
solved by a brick buttress suitable for a modest sized cathedral. The kitchen was some
distance away, on the far side of the road leading to the next door house - again no
problem as no-one lived there. The house chimney was also simple - it just went straight
up so that at midday there was a bright patch of sunlight at the bottom; this too did not
matter, as I never had occasion to indulge in a fire. There was a store-room attached to
the house, which had been the abode of a spitting cobra until Tony Smith, my
predecessor, had been temporarily blinded by it.
Not long afterwards we found ourselves, via a thatched house on a prison farm and a
nicer one-and-a-half bedroom one in Zomba, once again on our own, at the sub-district
station of Kasupe, where the house (formerly in part the post office) had a beautiful site
on a col between two mountains. It was therefore on the main route of wild animals in
their travels, and there were plenty of them, even though we were no more than thirty
miles from Zomba, the then capital. We were often regaled by the grunts and roars of
itinerant lions - romantic Africa at its best, if one's security had been better than the
mosquito wire-gauze doors that our bedroom sported in hot weather. Water was a
problem, only solved by my messengers catching enough tax defaulters to supply a work
force to hump an old 44 gallon container (cut in half) up the hill from the well in the
dambo (marshy area). This house had another "first", for its septic tank had been recently
installed, but as the house was built on solid rock, the tank had to be above ground, and
one's first sight of the house was of this fine and impressive concrete construction,
standing several feet in the air and all but alongside the front path and steps to the house.
Luxury was lacking, but all the same we spent three very happy years at Kasupe.
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