P018 19370227
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Please note these are transcribed by software,so there WILL be mistakes.
Please tell us which page of which Portmanteua.
[Written on the barge going up the Zambezi from Sesheke to Mongu. Betty was a month short of her 20th birthday and had been married for five months. She was five months pregnant.]
PORTMANTEAU 018
[8 pages] Sesheke,
N. Rhodesia.
27th February, 1937.
Darling everybody,
I'm going to try and do this portmanteau in bits, when we are on land, as doing it in the barge is rather difficult. It's now Saturday, and we have been going since Monday evening, and we have just about a fortnight more to go, before we get to Mungo. We haven't had a mail since we left, as we have got just a weeks start on it, but they say we might get one roundabout Tuesday or Wednesday, and we probably get down-one tomorrow or the next day. So I haven't anything to answer in your letters.
I told you a bit about Merry, didn't I, but I don't think I said very much. He is a smooth-had Fox-terrier, which might interest you, Daddy, when we send you photos of him later, I think he has a pedigree, but of course he isn't anything to write to crafts about but he's not at all a bad little dog and of course he is SO adorable that that doesn't matter. He's got a black face and head, with a neat V-neck parting right in the middle, and a round black smudge on his neck just below one side of the V. He has 10 eyebrows and cheeks, and a white gin. He has a pitch black little tale, and otherwise he is quite white, except that since writing to you last he has developed some faint black spots all down his back, and he has a beautiful speckled tum.
He is three months old, and is such a brave little feller, dashing about by himself in long thick grass, and digging little holes all over the place, and chasing big fat Beatles etc.; he just loves a rough-house, and never minds however brutal we are to him, and he's just like Ready the way you can pick him up by any part of him without his making them sound, even when we hold him upside down by all four feet together in one hand!
But withal he is so good in the barge, after the first excitement of getting in and starting, and a small rough-'s house to start off with, he goes and lies under our chairs and we don't hear another sound till it's time for another game. His greatest delight is a fly-switch, and he has the most marvellous games with it, being swung into the air by his teeth, and swished up and down and rolled over and over, and he's always ready for more.
He is quite marvellous at night to, sleeping in his box by the head of my bed, and never squeaks all scrabbles; we have to keep the door of his box shut, and Casey wanders out and gets snapped up by a hyena, but we don't really need to as last night when we were looking for him to put him to
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bed, we at last found him fast asleep in bed already. He has already learnt his name, and comes rushing to it, and to a whistle, and he also knows "NO", which I'm afraid still has to be used rather a lot. But he is very intelligent, and I think he will soon learn everything we want teaching. Now all we want is half a dozen more like him, and if they are all as "us-ish" as Mary is, we WILL be the happiest family in the world – plus Robin to crown everything! ["Robin" turned out to be Gill]
We followed the parent-birds example in having the same birthday, and meeting on board ship, so we don't see why we shouldn't follow both lots of parents excellent example of conjugal bliss, and we think we are doing it very well indeed – much better than anybody has ever done anything before!
Well, you probably want to know something about the journey so far. On Monday Peter and I packed the blue suitcase (with all its African-tour labels, and "B.C." cheekily sitting in the middle of all those remnants of spinster hood) with boiled shirt fronts and black ties and coats and weskits, and Ladies' Natty Frockings of a new and beautiful description and Silk Stockings and two of the eight handbags and Silver Shoes and Curling Pins (sez you) and other symbols of civilisation. Meanwhile G. got everything done in the office, and got everything beautifully cleared up.
In the afternoon the paddlers arrived to take the things down to the barges, and they were very late, but G. said that he wasn't going to have this business of "trying it on" and we would Going to Start That Evening, even if they had to paddle till midnight to get us to the camp. They weren't expecting that, as they thought if they arrived too late to start they could "get away with it" and have a rest till the next day, so mutually there realised he meant business they got down to it and of course took half the time to pack the barges that they said they would, and off we went.
(It is now 6.30 and beginning to get dark, so I won't be able to go on much longer tonight. The big fire has just been lit outside the tent, and I am sitting in a deck chair outside with the trite write-up on my knee, and between me and the tripe writer are two people – Robin and Merry! He asked to come up, and though it is rather uncomfortable typing without any elbow support, I just couldn't resist those vast saucer-eyes, and he's lying very quietly, with his chin resting and bouncing up and down on my right arm! Typing under rather awkward conditions! G. is out shooting, but as he was going a long way in the bushes very thick we decided that it would be better for Mary and me to stay behind; he has gone after buck, as the villagers say there are Impala and Puku here. We have just heard about six shots, and Musonda says they'll have to walk all night to follow it up!) Good night, too dark now.
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Tuesday, 2nd March, 1937
a mail-barge came down yesterday morning at crack of dawn, just as we were thinking of getting up, and I'm sorry to say I didn't have time to write to you, and as I had only just written these last two pages of this portmanteau I didn't think it was worth sending it off like that, so didn't write at all. I hope you didn't mind missing one week like that, and didn't get married or anything, and that you realised it was rather difficult to know when the barge was coming. We got your wire saying you'd got the nurse and arranged for her to come out, and you will have got our reply by now; you didn't say if it was the Griffin one or not, so I can't start asking people to look after her in Cape Town until I know what her name is!
Well, as I was saying, on wet Monday evening we went off at about 3.30. It is quite amazing how the river has come up since we went to the Machili, just in those 10 days it had come right up to the bank, when before it was about 10 feet below the top of it, and has spread over the plane full about hundred and 50 yards or so of running water and marshy ground. The path we used to walk down to the bank by is raised above the surrounding ground, so it was like a causeway running down to within about 50 yards of the original river-bank – but we couldn't get to the gum trees standing at the end of the path on arise, as the was a strip of water in between which we couldn't cross.
As we passed the mission, the Montes, Lily Hippo and Miss Lanz were all standing on the bank to wave to us and wish us Bong Voyage, which was rather sweet of them. We did quite a short journey to the first camp – only about an hour – and camped at a simply gorgeous place calledSoka (in other words, the camp size was about a quarter of a mile from the village called Soka, and the inhabitants of Soka had cleared it and built the leaf-huts and shelters and fences already.)
It was high up from the river and directly above it, with the most marvellous view between the surviving branches of a huge tree, right across the broad stretch of river the clumps of little islands the far side. Behind it are the local Mili-fields, but behind those again are nice big trees, leafy and green and shady and so much nicer than ours at Sesheke. The whole place was so much lovelier, and would make such a heavenly place for a Boma, that we Wondered round looking at it from every seat angle with a view to putting the Boma there if it is moved during our tour there. We planned the position of the house and everything, but the only fly in the ointment is the fact that if we go to Manco we won't be here to do so. They are pondering whether to move Sesheke Boma or not, but they say that if they do they will put it at Katima Molilo, which we reached on the third day, but that is so far away from the Imwiko's and the Mokwai's villages, at Sesheke itself, so it wouldn't be half so convenient as Soka,
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which is only four or 5 miles from the Khotlas. Katima Molilo would also be three days further up from Sesheke, so it would take longer for things from Livingstone to get up there – mail, etc.
The next day, Tuesday 23rd, we started off at about six, and had quite a long day, getting into camp at about four, with an hours halt for lunch. We left the mainstream of the river, and spent nearly the whole day winding our way through the still water of the floods, and cutting off great chunky corners; we pushed our way through the reeds in the most remorseless way, and once it was so shallow that the boat sat down on the bottom and refused to move, so they all had to get out and push. And although it seemed very slow work, pushing our way through the reeds and finding the best tracks, we undoubtedly saved a lot of time, both by the fact that we cut off so many corners and by avoiding the strong current of the river.
Being in marshy country, we put up a lot of duck, and G. got eight altogether – for white-faced and for yellow-billed. As I told you in the last letter, Merry was awfully thrilled with them, and as each one arrived he attacked it with savage ferocity.
We spent most of the day reading and playing battle of Jutland, for which we have many variations. We have now got to such an original version of it that nobody would recognise it as being the battle of Jutland, as we have buffaloes, cheaters, duiker and stained book instead of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, and we have so many different methods of arranging the animals that we have now got to a version in which you don't put the animals in the squares at the beginning, but put them in as you go along, so they might be absolutely anywhere, which is great fun and awfully difficult – but not so impossible as it sounds! It is very difficult for the defender, so to speak, as well, as you have to be jolly careful not to get yourself left with all the squares filled up and no room left for the animals, which you have still to add in! It's a marvellous game, and passes the time splendidly.
The second day, Wednesday 24th, was just like the first except that G. shot one knobnose and three yellow-billed duck. We discovered that we have now been married exactly 5 months, and we don't know whether it's seems more or less, because it's gone so frightfully quickly and yet the wedding seems such years ago and we feel as though we've always been married and have known each other all our lives – yet a year ago we hadn't even met yet! We've gone such a long way in those five months – we thought we were silly enough about each other then, but it was absolutely nothing to what we are now – we are quite absurd!
Good night again, no time for more now.
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the third day, Thursday 25th, we got into the main river again, as we had come to the end of the swamps. Once we went over a young rapid, and all the paddlers had to get out into the water and push the boat over the rocks, which was rather exciting. I tried to get a film of it, but could not get a good one so didn't, and anyhow we aren't coming to lots more and much bigger ones, so it wouldn't really have been worth taking.
There are 12 paddlers in the other barge, which carries all their goods and chattels and huge banks of their mealie meal and we have 14 in ours – six in front and eight behind and us in the middle. One of the front ones has a beautiful hat, green and blue and gold straw hat, which must have been really a very fine hat once, when it protects the head of some illustrious lady; it once had a blue ribbon round it, but most of that has come off now; large chunk of the brim has come adrift from the hat and hangs over his face in a tickly and squint-making manner. It fell in the water the other day, but was luckily picked up by the other barge coming along behind, and seemed none the worse for its little jaunt.
We passed Katima Molilo in the morning, and saw the Martin's fine big patched shelter, where they lived when J.D. was surveying the forests in this neighbourhood in December. Opposite his shelter is another big house which belongs to a very rich South African gent called Blake, and he brings big shooting parties up here and keeps this house is a sort of shooting lodge. He is the only person who has been refused a game license in Sesheke District (it might be the whole of N.R. but I'm not quite sure, and G.'s asleep so I can't ask him.) Because once he went out after lion and got one in a trap, and when he took a lorry-load of natives to bring it in it got loose; Lake and most of the natives made a dash for the lorry, but instead of waiting to see that they were all safely just jumped in and stepped on the gas and one boy was left behind and got killed by the line. Anyway he still keeps his shooting lodge and brings all his friends to shoot, and we suppose he doesn't shoot himself!
His house is in the Capri V is it fell, you know that long strip of country which runs along the south bank of the river and which we took from the Germans and gave to South West Africa to look after; it is looked after by one man, called Britz, and the natives of Sesheke are not allowed across their to fish except in one or two places and there are tremendous restrictions put on them, which is infuriating for them as they conquered the Capri V in the olden days and also helped us to take it during the war.
Well, at Katima Molilo is the border of the Capri V, and from there onwards up the river Sesheke District is on both sides the river, as far up as Senanga District.
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(at the moment it is 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday3rd, and we are sitting under a tree near the river waiting for an ox wagon to come and carry the barge overland for some way to avoid very swift current of the narrow Sioma Gorge and the Sioma Falls at the end of it. Somebody went to fetch the wagon when we arrived here about an hour ago, but nothing has happened yet. G. is lying on the ground beside me fast asleep, and Merry is lying on the ground beside me the other side, fast asleep, so I consider I am most virtuous staying awake, typing in the depths of the African bush.)
Well, all that rot about Capri V zip fasteners and things being now over, we will go on to Friday 26th of February, 1937 the river is now very broad and swift, lined with thick bush and big trees right down to the waters edge and very lovely. We came to one or two fierce places, and had to dive into the shallower, bushy part of the edge to avoid getting swept down by the current.
That morning we came to the Ngambwe Rapids, and we had to get out and walk about a mile along the bank while the boat was pulled over the rocks empty. The rapids were a fine site from the rise above the river – right across the river they stretched, a line of foam and black water rushing over in visible rocks. It was terribly exciting watching them get the barge up to, and we took a lot of film of it; some people stayed in the boat and poled toward off the rocks as they came to them; some were struggling over their waists in the water, pulling and pushing from the outside; most of them were on the bank falling on the end of a huge rope.
They got it up in the end of course, but it was a tough job, and they were really marvellous, forcing their way over the sharp rocks in their bare feet, with the whole strength of the river pushing them back.
We had lunch at the other end, where we got into the barge again – the usual lunch of cold duck (fingers were made before forks!) Heinz baked and fried potatoes and stewed apple and chocolate anderry eight are bones for us. We stayed long enough for G. to see the village people, which she does at every place we stop; he has a book with him all the tax-paying men, and he calls the role to see who has died and who has gone away and who hasn't paid their tax last year and so on.
We managed to get one or two letters done in the barge, and we try and do at least one every day, as I have a terrific piles still of "congratulations on your engagement – or marriage" ones to answer, from dim people in dim places like Australia etc. I have now got the heat down to 3, and I'm going to try and do those today and then I'll have a completely clear conscience and will be able to do nothing quite legitimately and happily. We wrote to Hugh and David about being godfathers that day too.
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the fourth day, Saturday 27th, we had quite a lot of excitement. We were steaming along fullscreen ahead on the right-hand side of the road, when they suddenly saw a hippo in the middle of the river, so we stopped at the edge of the reeds and got the rifle out and G. had several poops at it but failed to get it. We thought there were two or three there, not only one, but by the time we'd finished we came to the conclusion that there were at least half a dozen. We floated ourselves across the river to a small island that was quite near them, and when we appeared on the other side there they were, all bouncing merrily up and down, blowing through their beaks every now and then, so G. had several more shots. We rather wanted to get one as their fat makes excellent cooking fat and one hippo would last us about two years! Marvellously economic, never having to buy any fat.
Then at last he got one. They are terribly difficult to shoot, as they only stay up for a few seconds at a time, just their faces, every two minutes or so. Everybody said he had hit him in the neck, so the chances were he was either hit in the jugular or the spine, in either case of fatal shot, the chances also were that the shot had either gone below the jugular, above the spine, or in between the two, as there is quite a lot of neck about a hippo.
He went down in a shower of spray, and as we hoped we had got him and we are only allowed one on the licence, we didn't try any more, and went on, leaving the transport barge to wait for three or four hours to get him when he came up dead, as he wouldn't come up for some time. The barge turned up eventually in the evening – withNO hippo hanging on behind! They said all the hippos had gone away as soon as we left, and they suppose that ours went away to, harmlessly wounded through the fleshy part of his flat great neck. A great pity, as it would have been G.'s first hippo, and we've neither of us seen a Whole Whippo out of the water, neat, just like that and it would have been rather fun, and we would have made at least £10 out of the Haida loan by selling it, and the natives would have loved the meat and we could have done with the fat.
(The ox wagon has just arrived – 10 couple of them – so I had better stop now, and I think I'm coming to the end of the page too. We are going to have lunch first, then walked the 4 miles to the place where we get into the barge again. At least They will walk. I will ride in a Machila, specially constructed on the spur of the moment for my express benefit.)
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Friday, 5th March.
They say we get to Senanga tomorrow morning, and so does the up-river mail and the down-river mail, so I must finish this tonight, and as it is now 6 o'clock and beginning to get dark I would just write this page and then stop and leave the rest for next week, which will probably come from Mongu as they say we get there on Tuesday – much earlier than we expected.
On Saturday 27th, after the hippo episode, we went on and camped at Kaseta, and when G. had done his office work the villagers said that a herd of impala came down to feed every evening quite close to the village, if he was interested. If he was interested in deed! So soon after tea off he went, and as I told you some pages back Merry and I stayed at home because it was very heavy walking and they were going quite a long way and would want to go fast.
They walked miles and miles, and eventually bumped right into a herd of about 50 impala, who of course ran off at once. G. got a fairly close shot – a young male and got him bang, and though they followed the others up a little way they didn't get a chance for another shot.
They carried him in (the impala, not G.) slung by his legs with his head between his front knees and his tail hanging down at the back very small and his tummy hanging down in the middle very big. Merry was a wee bit nervous of him at first, as it was dark and he looked rather big and frightening for a small dog, but when he saw that he was quite dead he got awfully fierce, and stood on the body while he chewed and pulled at the hide all round the wound in its side, and tried to pull it away to bury it!
It was G.'s first impala, but it hadn't got a big enough head to be worth keeping so I don't think they are, but they left the skin atKaseta for the villagers to look after and drive till we come back, and we will probably keep that the dogs to sleep on! I hope we will, after all it is his first impala, and it's such an attractive chestnut skin. White dog would look very nice on it, I think, like Shawgm on his black rug!
(He's out after guinea-file at the moment – I hope he gets one as they are simply delicious – we have heard about six shots so far, and it's nearly too dark to see so I'm not very hopeful.)
To be continued in our next. Gallons of love, everybody, and don't get anxious if you don't hear from us regularly in the next week or two – you will know where not dead and no news is good news, and will probably be awfully busy at Mongu.
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