FOUR AND A HALF DAYS ON THE R.R.M AND THE S.A.R
Steve Clarke, UJS, Chancellor, UBHS – 1948-1956 sent in this delightful story of a train trip back in 1957.
It all began with three young men standing on Rusapi Station in the morning sunshine. It actually marked the beginning of a great adventure for two of them and the third one, just by being there, saved the other two from feelings of intense home-sickness and fear of the unknown. (Photo 1 shows Steve Clarke (L) and Tikki Hyward (R) before embarking on the adventure.
Steve Clarke and Tikki Hywood were on the first day of a four-and-a-half day journey to enter the South African Nautical College ‘General Botha’ at Gordon’s Bay, outside Cape Town. They were leaving home and they felt that they were completely on their own. At this stage in their journey, they were not at all sure if they had taken the right decision. It was the presence of the third member of the travel party, as far as Salisbury, that enabled the other two to calm their fears. He helped them to forget that they were stepping off into a journey that would transform their lives. The third member of the party was Ronnie Uglietti, who was on the train purely by chance. All three had been at UBHS together through the first three years of the new High School [1954-56], and at UJS before that.
They had all been on a ‘party circuit’ of teenagers that were exploring the beginnings of the Rock and Roll era and at least two of them were wondering whether their social network would evaporate whilst they were away. Ronnie’s presence provided enough diversion and nerve-calming for Steve and Tikki to push their fears to the background.
In 1957, the rail journey to Cape Town took four-and-a-half days. The trip from Umtali to Salisbury took 12 hours, then overnight to Bulawayo, 24 hours in all. Then it was off into the wilds of Bechuanaland Protectorate [now Botswana] for the next three days - and who knows what after that. Tikki and Steve were 15 years old. They were following in the footsteps of Tikki’s brother ‘Rusty’ [Peter] who had completed two years at ‘Bothie’ and who was now at sea as an apprentice navigator [UJS, UBHS 1948-53]. Tikki was hard-wired to follow his brother, but Steve succumbed to the allure of the Naval uniform on the Umtali Railway Station platform when Rusty had gone off to sea nine months earlier. The Rhodesian Navy was gaining new recruits!
What do you do when you are 15 years old and cooped up on a long distance train ride? Firstly, you pretend you are 18 and slope off to the Dining Car and chat up the Stewards. These hardened folk are not fooled, but they go along with the deception. Vodka and orange was the tipple of the day – for 4 days! Not satisfied with just providing a spectacle of under-age tipsiness’, our duo pushed on to test their gullibility and naivety to the full. The Stewards sat back and roped them into a well-rehearsed ambush. The youngsters were willing victims. They became a soft target for a gentle gambling scam – the game of ‘matches’ [where you bet against the number of concealed matches that might be held in the other players’ hands]. The two boys were so fuelled with nervousness and pumped up with bravado that they fell into every trap that was set for them. The Stewards accepted their money with both hands, but these young men were having the time of their lives and thought that they were being so very grown up!
The trip down was not all booze and gambling. At about five in the morning on the second day, the train pulled into Mahalapy, in Bechuanaland, to take on water and coal. On the trackside, the Mahalape Town Orchestra was in full swing under a lean-to roof in what passed for a Station. Despite the cold morning air, the irresistible rhythms drew most of the passengers out of their bunk beds, off the train and into an appreciative circle around the band. They were playing what it was later discovered to be a variant on ‘Township Jive’, chimurenga, or Jit, combined with indigenous rhythms. The ‘orchestra’ was a group of scruffy urchins and their instruments were a three-stringed broken guitar, a tom-tom, a couple of thumb pianos and a multiple of bottle-top shakers. WOW! It was dance time for all the passengers. Our heroes, shrugging off their vodka-induced hangovers, were fortified by a few years of tobacco-barn dances by the banks of the Odzi River. Having a firm grasp of jive, they danced in the dust until the train summoned them back on board for two more days in the Kalahari. Hamba kahle abafana!!!
When the train finally got to Cape Town, the Dining Car Steward took the boys aside and presented them with a handful of cash! The Stewards had cheated at ‘matches’ every night and they had also been selling the boys totally watered-down vodka. So they generously returned most of their money – with a stern warning against under-age drinking, gambling, corrupt Catering Staff on the Railways, and told them not to pose at being worldly!! Humbled, they were now beginning to grow up a bit. Most importantly, however, they had managed to mask their nervousness at what lay ahead of them in Cape Town, even if it was only for just four days. (Photo two shows what we both looked like two days later!)
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