Apart from Inside the clinic curing the ills created by the witch doctors, most of the patients came with snake bites, in particular eye injuries from the spitting cobra. The clinic before we moved in I remember helping bathe the victims’ eyes in milk. That was the only solution. If they were lucky they kept their sight. Any really ill patients went up to Bonda hospital – a journey of about three hours.
After we left Mandea the new hospital and new church were built Dad blessing the new Mandea hospital Mum with staff at the opening Patients queueing
The new church at Mandea One drawback of Mandea was that we had no phone. So, when I became very ill with measles, Dad had to drive 12 miles to the tea estate to ring the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Umtali to ask to take me there. Then it was back to the mission to collect Mum and me (Nat was staying so she looked after Michael). In the depth of night we travelled for 4 hours along dirt roads up to the hospital where I stayed for a week. After spending the night on camp beds at Umtali rectory, Mum and Dad dropped in before returning to St. Peter’s, Mandea. Shopping trips were organised in much the same way as we did at Bonda. It just took us longer to get there due to the poor state of the roads.
Whenever we went out we always had to be alert to snakes. There were puff adders, gaboon vipers, boomslangs, spitting cobras and mambas. As well as baboons there were numerous bush babies leaping about the forest at night screaming their heads off. Holidays were at similar venues as at Bonda. However we did go to the Victoria Baboon Falls and Hwange (Wankie) game at Victoria Falls reserve in September 1958 and also a trip to the Gorongosa reserve in Mozambique another year. Crossing the Pungwe River
The ‘safari lodge’ in Gorongosa and me watching crossing the Pungwe river Sadly, for me, after only two years we moved away from this haven to go to St. Faith’s Mission, Rusape in 1960. I adored living at Mandea.
Rusape and Borrowdale – 1960-1967 St. Faith’s Mission in Rusape was established in 1907 and ran a boarding school for primary school children. Not long after we left in 1961, the school was disbanded and the mission closed down. The bishop moved Dad on to St. Bartholomew’s in Rusape, a small town (alt.4,610ft.) on the main road between Salisbury and Umtali at the junction with the road from Inyanga, serving the local farming community. This was an urban parish, similar to English ones, with a Caucasian congregation. Administering to this congregation was totally different from working with the indigenous population as they were influenced much more by the outside world, having access to modern trends. I suppose, as kids in boarding school, we weren’t aware of the changing world as it was just part of everyday life. Thinking back it must have been a real shock to Mum and Dad who were far less exposed to modern trends of the 1960s.
The Mason household was a convenient stopping off point for anyone travelling long distances between Salisbury, Umtali or Inyanga. Mum had the reputation of serving the best cup of percolated coffee in the diocese! Michael with Socks in the rectory garden Whilst here, Dad was appointed Archdeacon which meant he had to oversee the running of other parishes in the Manicaland district. Noel and Rosemary Jones and family became very close friends. He was the head master of the primary school. As it turned out, Noel actually lived in the same village, called Diddlebury in Shropshire, when they were both children, but a few years apart. Noel became Dad’s churchwarden at Rusape. We kept in touch with them when they moved to Salisbury In 1962 Mum and Dad flew to England for a 3 month sabbatical. They spent that time catching up with family, as well as Dad preaching at various venues. Despite being in an urban environment, we still had to look out for snakes in the enormous garden, in particular the boomslangs. The birds used to go mad when they were around.
As at St. Faith’s, we had electricity and mains drainage, so life wasn’t nearly as uncertain as at Bonda or Mandea. The roads were tarred and shops close by. I was still attending boarding school at Queen Elizabeth, while Michael had finished school and was at Salisbury Polytechnic. He went on to work at Stewart and Lloyds, an engineering firm. The house had an enormous verandah where we kept a table tennis kit. We used to spend hours playing table tennis and sometimes had mini-tournaments between Dad, Michael and me. It was always very close between Dad and Michael. Then, in 1965 we moved to Christchurch, Borrowdale, a suburb in the north-east of Salisbury (alt.4,865ft.). The Rectory in 2006 – much the same as in 1967
Borrowdale Church taken in 2006 Dad was no longer archdeacon. He found work here very challenging as the outside world was moving on fast, with all its influences. Administering to the population in the bush was totally different and years behind the urban population.
The Masons at Borrowdale in 1967 I became a day scholar at Queen Elizabeth School and then moved on to the Rhodesian College of Music, where I studied until 1968. Mum and Dad returned to England in August 1967 to take up posts in parishes in Gloucestershire. Michael stayed in Salisbury while I remained to finish my music course, spending time with the Jones and Churchman families.
I flew to England a year later to complete my studies at the Royal College of Music. A few years later I became an Elleray. Michael and me with the Churchmans in 1967 I hope I’ve managed to describe just a little bit what it was like during that period in Southern Rhodesia. Dad and Mum must have found life very challenging at times, while Michael and I enjoyed a carefree childhood. Mum never really liked living out there as she found it too hot and the altitude didn’t help her asthma. She talked often of returning to England. Dad, however, did adapt to the lifestyle and enjoyed the scenery as well as the wildlife. Perhaps a tiny part of him stayed behind in Africa. Who knows ? Africa will always be a part of me !
MISSIONARY PROGRESS IN INYANGA AREA IS RECALLED from the Rhodesian Diocese of Mashonaland ‘The Link’ newsletter September 1967 When Canon C.P.V. Mason first went to Bonda Mission in 1943 Anglican mission work in the Inyanga area consisted of one mission station and eight out-stations. Today it has grown to five missions and over forty out-stations. In the greater part of this development work Canon Mason was directly concerned. This, in the briefest outline, is an indication of the extent of the contribution he made to the Church’s progress in this area which he reviewed in an interview with The Link shortly before his departure in the middle of last month to settle in England. In 1943 the Eastern Districts were still very undeveloped, Canon Mason said. Very few people lived in the Inyanga area and communications “were not all that good”. They were not so bad up to Inyanga itself but the going was very bad beyond Inyanga. Most of the rivers run north and south and also the valleys so that east-west roads did not exist. This was the reason why the development consisted of Bonda and half a dozen out-stations with schools and two or three where there were no schools. The first area of expansion was to the north because of the communications problem. Nine schools were opened which underlined the necessity of establishing a mission north of Inyanga.
MOVED OUT This was necessary because a lot of the people were being moved out of the Bonda area because of the Land Apportionment Act. This led to the establishment of St. Mary Magdalene Mission where Elijah Chitsike did wonderful work. This was over fifty miles from Bonda and twenty from Inyanga. From St. Mary Magdalene’s more out-stations were opened till the Nyamaropa Reserve area was opened up. Three out-stations were established there of which two have since had to be moved again having been declared forestry areas. Canon Mason explained some of the special problems created by the removal of people to new areas. Usually it was not possible to move a whole community to the same place but it had to be split up to go to pockets of good country. FIVE YEAR BAN All these developments were taking place during a five year ban on the opening of new schools because of the shortage of trained teachers. As a result some places had to wait ten years or more for schools. After the northward expansion got under way eastward expansion began. About 1947, a couple of Africans asked Canon Mason to visit them at Samtete which he had not heard of before. He had to go on foot for four hours from near the Pungwe Gorge. He found the place was an old out-station established by Canon Christelow. This led to the reopening of a number of other old out-stations including Zinde, Mandea, Chikombe and Shavanga.
UNDEVELOPED Later it was possible to develop the work further when a road was built to the newly established tea estates. Till then this was undeveloped country and even in the early 1950s people would run away from a car. Many of them had not seen one before. Mandea was started as an out-station but it proved impossible to run it as an out-station from Bonda and in 1958 it was established as a central mission. Canon Mason remained there in charge until 1960 when he moved to St. Faith’s, Rusape on his appointment as Archdeacon of Umtali. Mrs. Mason started the medical work at Mandea by holding a clinic in her kitchen. This has now grown into a fully equipped hospital. When the tea estates started in the Inyanga area Africans moved in from the Bonda and St. Augustine’s mission areas. In the work of starting new out-stations, often among lapsed Christians, Canon Mason found that the name of Baba Maguta (the man who built centres), the African name for Canon Christelow, was still revered among the older men and was a sort of password for the people. Canon Mason also paid tribute to the work of African priests in these developments, mentioning particularly the late Canon Chitsike, the late Father Nyabako, Canon Mhlanga and Father Musengezi, now at the Holy Name Mission, Matsika.
PARTNERSHIP Giving some general impression of mission work Canon Mason said that he felt the Government had not “played ball” with the mission on the community development proposals. They should have been brought in “on the ground floor” and he did not think the Government had done this. He believed there should be partnership between the mission and the local communities in regard to schools. It was wrong for church functions to be tampered with. In each region the local inspectorate should have taken the missions into its confidence and sort their co-operation. He did not object to local councils taking over the schools provided that the missions’ influence is not reduced. Mission work tended to be regarded as the Cinderella but he regarded it as the more important of the two sides of the Church’s work. Head teachers used to be catechists as well but no they regarded themselves as Government servants and they had less time to give to church work. AFRICAN PRIESTS As the years went by the Africans would become the main strength of the church in this country and it would be necessary to have sufficient well trained African priests. The church had been well served in this respect in the past.
On a more personal note Canon Mason recalled that in his early days in the Inyanga District much of the travelling had to be done on foot. He remembered one trek in particular in had to walk 20 miles a day for four days over the Inyanga Mountains, camping and sleeping where he could. When he and his wife went to Mandea, the house was only half finished and the ceilings, windows and doors were only put in after they moved in. “LOVABLE PEOPLE” Canon Mason’s heart was obviously in mission work but in recent years – at Borrowdale and as Rector of Makoni before that- he worked with European congregations and made good friends among the “good Christians and lovable people” he met there. He did not expect to hear of a new appointment in England until after his arrival but is hoping for a parish in the Diocese of Gloucestershire. His daughter Janet is staying in Salisbury to complete her course at the College of Music and his son Michael, who is an engineer with a Salisbury firm, intends to stay permanently.
Helpfully printed in the UK by the Bonacia family of businesses
Is it time to go home now, Daddy? These are my childhood family memories growing up in Rhodesia; Without electricity, piped water, mobile ’phones and yes, even before the Internet !
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