The summer of 1969 I met a delicious Portuguese professor on a Spanish beach. He worked in Lourenço Marques. In December 1969 when the British Volunteer Programme offered me a teaching position in Botswana, after a quick check of the map to locate Botswana (near enough to Lourenço Marques), I packed my bags.
I missed the flight from London to Johannesburg. The flight to Francistown was re-scheduled and on the final leg, in a 4-seater borrowed from the President, I sat exhausted and retching, in front of a handsome, bearded Motswana who inquired softly where I was going. This was the Honourable Lemme Makhekgenene, Tonota MP and bottle-store owner. No-one met me. The airstrip staff packed up, switched off the lights and drove away leaving me parked on a bench, wondering what to do. Then, along the perimeter I watched a cloud of dust behind a rattling Land Rover. I knew this was it, driven by the inimitable Charles Gott. His passenger was Georgina Murray. Friends for life. As we drove to Tonota from Francistown, rattling and shuddering along the corrugations, through the sand and thorn scrub, past droopy thatch-peaked rondavels, I knew I had found a piece of heaven. It was January 24th,1970, my 23rd birthday. Dazed by the journey from England and the gut-churning flight from Johannesburg, the heat, the time zone, and the assault on my senses, that night is the more remarkable for two riveting events. First there was John Nixon delicately manoeuvring and out-staring a spitting cobra — the only snake I ever saw up close in Botswana — and the sound of Alison Lawrence’s piercing screams on her first encounter with a monster-size praying mantis. The next morning, still edgy, I met more formally with Robert Oakeshott, the Principal. He was brief and welcoming and seemed relieved to have another English teacher, grace of the British Volunteer Programme. 40 years later I learned the truth. He doubted a one-handed woman could do voluntary work – wash river stones, mix concrete, paint rondavel walls. I never wondered for an instant and knew nothing of his anxiety. Apparently he considered sending me back, rejecting the free offering. He didn’t, and I don’t know why, except perhaps for gift-horses and mouths. So I stayed – mixed concrete, washed stones, laid bricks, painted walls - inexpertly. But I also taught English and spent three of the most wonderful and important years of my life at Shashe. Memories abound:
Returning in 2009, I found Tonota village disorienting. The school had a smart dining-room with coloured windows – a far cry from beans and samp at the old outdoor kitchen. But the main entrance to Shashe School was via a new road that turned geography on its head. We found the old entrance and wandered through the village looking for remaining landmarks. Pillar‘s General Store was still there - and amazingly, the rondavel Janis and I had shared. To welcome the new age there was a ‘phone shop,’ but we never found the bottle-store.’
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April 2021
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