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We lived in Tanga, a coral harbor in Tanganyika Territory, as it
was then called. During the school vacation periods, this was as
close to paradise as any child could imagine.
At home, I could read and make models.
On foot, I could brave robber crabs and buy tasty parrot fish as
they were landed from dugout canoes.
After sunset, I could kick the water into phosphorescence.
By bicycle, I could visit friends' houses, or go right through town
to the Swimming Club or the Sailing Club.
At the age of eight, I learned to swim. Doing my breast-stroke,
touching down between strokes, I followed the front of the low cliff
between the two clubs on a rising tide. I had put my foot down twice
before I realised that it wasn't touching anything any more.
The climate was considered unhealthy during the really hot and humid
periods. In any case, at a hundred and ten in the shade and around
eighty percent humidity, most kids would have had a hard time
forgetting that the beach was five minutes away.
We all went up-country to boarding schools, some of us starting at
the age of six-and-a-half. One or two kids used to get homesick
occasionally, but their peers always comforted them. The rest of us
enjoyed every minute of it, and would have found day school very
boring.
From Tanga, I went to Lushoto, in the Usambara highlands. This was a
short trip, accomplished in a single day. Some kids had steamer
trips, overnight train trips, or even stopovers in hotels, as part
of their journey to school. If an adult went with them it was purely
by chance. One or two teenage students making even longer journeys
were all we usually had in the way of a guide or supervisor.
The normal procedure for me was to board a train soon after
daylight, and get off around mid-day at Mombo. From there I would
catch a school bus (an ex-army truck, really) for the long haul up
the escarpment to Lushoto.
The train was fun. Drawn by a wood-fired steam loco, it had open
verandahs at the ends of the carriages, just like the ones in the
Westerns. I didn't really like the bus journey very much. It usually
made me feel sick.
This time, I had been ill and was returning to school late. The
rains had started and several sections of rail had been washed away.
The road (not metaled in those days) wasn't in too good a state
either.
No problem. I was going to fly for the first time in my life.
I'm not sure if many US citizens would recognise it, but my plane
was known and loved by all British aircraft buffs - a de Haviland
Dragon Rapide, called a Dominie in its military form. This was a
twin-engined biplane with beautiful slim, elliptical-plan wings and
(if I remember correctly) Gypsy Queen engines. The fuselage was
slab-sided, like a refined version of the much larger planes used in
the early days of Imperial Airways.
I don't remember how many passengers the Rapide carried - I think it
was about nine, and I was sitting in one of the pair of seats behind
the pilot.
We flew low. I could see herds of antelope and other wildlife on the
plains below us. I could also feel my stomach churning as we bumped
around in the powerful thermals, and it was very hot and stuffy.
One of the passengers asked the pilot if he could do anything to
increase the ventilation. He opened a window. HE OPENED A WINDOW. It
didn't make much difference.
Mombo airfield's only building was a corrugated iron shed. Outside,
the plane had faded into the shimmering haze. Inside, we wilted.
Someone served Pepsis at blood temperature.
I was met by a woman I did not know, who said she was giving me a
lift up to Lushoto. She was driving one of the most popular vehicles
of the time - a Ford V8 Pilot 'Box Body' esate car. Real wood, they
used in those days.
She gave me a huge, red apple.
She was a chatty woman, who looked at you while she spoke. This was
our undoing, because we were driving the hairpins up the scarp of
the Usambara Mountains when she looked up and realised she was
heading over the precipice.
She swerved back violently, and hit the cliff on the inside of the
bend.
Clouds of steam issued from under the hood, and she stopped talking.
Luckily, it was only a few minutes before a bus appeared, and the
driver soon mended the split radiator hose with a strip of inner
tube.
We set off again, with eyes more carefully on the road, after no
more than fifteen minutes.
Nothing else happened.
By the time we reached school, I was getting bored.
Note: Take a look at Simon Kirwan's e-cards of the
Usambaras on TravelHog.
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