Still a moving

Off to Bulawayo now, day school, yeah, new school, new friends, new surroundings, nice place Bulawayo, it was a really modern city, but can't remember anything significant about that time apart from running away from home, me and my next door neighbour, school mate decided we were gonna run away from home as life s**ked. so we packed our bags, walked about ten miles out to the local drive-in, watched a movie then huddled up to the burger shack for warmth. next day we started hitching on the pretence that we were raising money for a charity, two fourteen year old's hitching through war torn Rhodesia wanting to get to the coast so we could get a job on a boat in South Africa, one thing in the way, Beit Bridge on the border, we acutely got there, had some scares on the way, car broke down in the bush so had to take cover in the bush till repaired. when we got to the border we were being splashed all over the news so the police were waiting for us, i think walking down to the crock infested river and getting chased by the army was a dead give away. did we get it! was quite famous too, quite cool in a weird way.

Traveling Time

Father got itchy feet so left Jo'Burg and headed south, ended up in Port Elizabeth for a spell, not long enough to go to school, didn't complain, then back in car to the Natal, Durban, still out of school and enjoying life living in hotels, then due to the humid climate astma paid me a visit, nearly died and we were told to head for warmer climates so back in the car, all the way to Rhodesia as it was then called, Salisbury first then we started the mining rounds, that ment boarding shool for me, what a shocker, a controled invioment where we did what were told or punishment was quick to follow, getting up to weed the cricket pitch was not my idea of a good time but at least the climate was better for my health. I would look forward to the summer breaks so that we were driven the hundreds of k's to where my father was working where the sun was very much enjoyed.

Stepping off the plane

In 1974 I stepped off the plane into an oven. with waves of heat coming off the tarmac it was stifling, on leaving the UK we (my sisters and I) thought we would be living in mud huts but were surprised to find a very modern city, in not time at all we came across our first wild life in the guise of a cockroach measuring about two inches we were surprised to say the least.
On moving into the suburbs of Johannesburg it was disturbing to see metal bars on all the windows and a small house at the bottom of the garden apparently for the house cleaner and garden boy, servants? of cause my mother being a Brit, straight off the plane, wasn't having no strange woman in her house.
For me school was different too as apart from the fact it was all white the kids seemed to have a code, me being disabled and used to getting picked on by the British schooling system found that no one said a bad word to me, finding out later that if anyone was to pick on someone disabled then they would have been quietly taken aside and shown the error of they're ways, to say the least it was refreshing.

White in Africa

My Name Is Steve,
I'm a student in Livingston, Scotland doing a course on computing and I'd like to share a little about my growing up days.
In 1974 the family moved to South Africa, it was a very different place than it is now. Power was given to the minority and the majority were subjected to keep the minority in power. it was said that they we not ready for power. For a 12 year old boy, having been brought up in Britain i didn't understand the concept that you were not to talk to African's as equals. Over the next ten years we travelled all over South Africa, going to school and still was told that the African was a sub-species. (I know, moronic)
Ended up in Rhodesia and still at school learning the Rhodesian point of view and as a child, excepting it, who was i to argue with adults, in time i grew up, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and at last I was under the impression that the African would now be our equal, but generations of breading to think your better that others are hard to ignore and resentment for being kept down by the barrel of a gun for so many generations is a bitten pill to swallow.
When I finally left, I came back to Brittan a very confused adult, i felt an outsider in Britain, and I wasn't South African, Rhodesian or Zimbabwean.
I have lived in Scotland now for 24 years and funny enough i am not accepted by women as English, they would much prefer to let others think I’m African.
Where do i belong, who knows?