We left Salisbury and drove 150 miles or so to Umtali (now called Mutare), a small town in the lovely mountainous region of the Eastern Highlands of Southern Rhodesia. There we stayed overnight, either in a small hotel or with friends. It was much cooler there than in Salisbury.
The following morning, we were up again at the crack of dawn, this time to cross the border and get a head start on the line-ups at Immigration and Customs. These were in a shack at or near Maputo (I can’t remember the exact place) just inside Mozambique. If one didn’t arrive early, the line-ups were horrendous, and the service slow. We were always anxious to get through the formalities because we knew that it was important to get to Beira before sunset. Even before any hint of a guerrilla war was on the horizon, it was not always safe in the 1960s to travel at night. Cars could be ambushed, passengers robbed or even kidnapped.
Once through Immigration and Customs, we were now in a foreign land, originally colonized by the Portuguese and called Portuguese East Africa, but now named Mozambique. We children were fascinated. It was so strange to be in a place with a different currency, a strange language, and European customs.
We could not afford to linger anywhere. Beira was still a day’s travel away. The journey with five of us packed into our small car was not pleasant. We were hot and dusty, with nothing but long grass and occasional trees to see out of the car windows. I remember thinking to myself that we couldn’t even play one of our usual car games, such as “I Spy” because there was nothing to spy of any interest. Just the trees, the long brown grass, and the blue sky. It was boring and we children sometimes became fractious. I felt hard done by because, although I was older and taller than my brothers, I had to sit in the middle of the back seat to keep the two boys from antagonising each other. I felt squished in there, with my legs stuck to one of theirs. I had my feet up on the raised area of the car’s transmission tunnel and my head not far from the roof of the car. The driver’s rear-view mirror must have been useless because I was the only image reflected in it. I was also further away for the draft coming in from the windows. I hated it because it was uncomfortable.
We drove on, determined to reach our destination, Beira, where the sea was blue, and the golden sand stretched for miles! We could hardly wait to get into that salty water! That was all that counted in our books. To us, it was a different world, so far removed from our daily life in our small flat in Salisbury.
