Chirundu Tales - Part 14

CHIRUNDU TALES  (Part 14)

We finally vacated the station at the end of November 1967.  As a quasi-government organisation we were required to pass on the bulk of our assets to other locally funded Research Council projects which had not been affected by UDI as well as government institutions such as the Tsetse Control and  Game Departments. 

As part of our daily routines throughout the life of the scheme we had a stores control system based on the value of each item.  When we were finally informed of the shut down, our American sponsors decreed that any item classified as Schedule “B” be written off!   “B” schedule items were valued  under  £40.00.  This greatly simplified our disposal  process  as this represented the bulk of the stock.

Items such as picks and shovels etc. were given to our labourers who were mainly peasant farmers from across the river.  Our carpentry tools were given to our carpenter whose total assets were enough to set himself up in business.  Our mechanic went away with a couple of bulging tool boxes also enough to set himself up. Most of our home made furniture, which technically had no value, was distributed amongst our senior African staff.  Basil and I both owned LandRovers  so we picked up a set of tyres each plus a few items such as wheel bearings, half shafts, gasket sets, coils and fuel pumps etc. from existing stocks

Once our livestock had been disposed of, we dismantled the handling facility and recovered the wire used in the enclosure.  We also dismantled the steel wire fences and removed the steel fence posts from our six paddocks. This material was passed on to the Tsetse department.

It was decided that the entomologists’ house and our guest house would not be dismantled but given to the Game Department who wanted to station a ranger there.  This was a big plus for the Williamsons and ourselves as it gave us somewhere to live whilst we were in the final stage of vacating the station.

Our African workers were made redundant in phases.  I was given the thankless task of working back through our payroll records and working out the total amount earned by each individual.  We worked on a system of last in, first out in fairness to our longer serving employees.  They all received a redundancy payment amounting to 10% of their gross earnings which I felt was a very generous gesture on the part of the US sponsors.  For many of the longer serving workers, the payments received were fairly substantial.

About 75% of our workers were from Chief Chiawa’s village on the Zambian side of the river.  As none of them was a passport holder they were technically illegal in Rhodesia but this fact had long been overlooked by the authorities on both sides of the border.  Consequently we were able to make arrangements for them to be repatriated without any of the normal formalities.  As each group were released, we transported them with all their “goodies” and deposited them at the Zambian border crossing at the Chirundu bridge.  It should be noted that at that stage there was none of the animosity between the two sides that developed in subsequent months and years.

It was sad to have to demolish our house even though it was small and half prefabricated but we had no option. For security reasons the authorities decreed that any buildings that were to be vacated and not re-occupied immediately must be demolished. So Helen and I dutifully sent our furniture into storage in Salisbury and moved into our guest house where we spent a couple of weeks.

 At this time some of the senior personnel became more frequent visitors so we again moved , this time to share with the Williamsons for the duration.  As our final departure approached we naturally began to think about a farewell party.  Messages were sent to a fairly large number of ours and the Williamsons friends.  Our lack of accommodation was known to all the invited guests so when they arrived they were all self sufficient in terms of sleeping gear and settled in on the lawn under the shady Tamarind trees in front of our guest house.  As luck would have it we were experiencing a dry spell so the tarpaulins we had in reserve were not needed.

My luck was not so good as I went down with a bad bout of malaria at this time and spent a couple of days laid up whilst Pebbles Williamson was packing up their goods around me and Basil was sorting out a few outstanding tasks on my behalf

Our party was scheduled for a Saturday evening but our visitors started to arrive several days before so it turned out to be a rather protracted affair.  Naturally we were going to have a braai and we sacrificed the bulk of the delicious impala/warthog boerewors that had been made by the butcher who bought some of our livestock  (the one who couldn’t shoot!).  Sadly it was so popular we had to take the little bit we had put aside for our last few breakfasts and add it to the feast.

Having dispatched our furniture and household goodies we were left with a small battery powered record player and a couple of extended play records as our only source of music for the party.  No one seemed to mind in fact we thought that the majority didn’t even notice the repetition that went on until well into the night. The next morning the area looked like it had been hit by a cluster bomb!  There were bodies a strewn all over the lawn and a wide variety of bottles and cans littering the entire site.  Several (actually there were a lot) of the guests were not surprisingly suffering from hangovers so it was not long before some  "Hair   of the Dog" was being administered. This in turn led to a revival of the party spirit and in no time people were jumping and splashing around in the river and as all were having fun, we sent a vehicle to the bottle store at Chirundu for a top-up.  The party lasted three days but sadly we had to vacate the station not really knowing what the future had in store.  My final task was to burn down the few remaining grass huts in our compound.  The Williamsons and ourselves were treated to a night at the Makuti Motel following which we went our separate ways.

Helen and I did not, at that time, realise how the Chirundu experience would impact on our futures but that is another story!