Exchanging Africa for America.
I’ve always been a city boy, born in Southern Rhodesia, in 1959, I lived in a very beautiful city, Bulawayo, a colonial city with broad streets, clean, the 2nd largest in the country. Under populated by the white settlers of mostly British descent, and surrounded by suburbs and townships of of local blacks, mostly Ndebele tribe, but also other smaller tribes from the whole country and surrounding countries like South Africa, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, Botswana, SouthWest Africa.They would commute into the business district in busses, called chicken busses, overloaded with passengers and livestock like chickens, pigs, goats, hence the name. And also East Indians who moved up from South Africa and Uganda when they were forced to leave because of the persecution of Idi Amin. The city had very few stop lights, in the local vernacular robots. On other major intersections there would be a smartly uniformed traffic constable with a whistle, white gloves, and performing crisp hand signals to control traffic flow. Then I lived in Durban, KwaZuluNatal, South Africa, a very big city, sprawling, noisy, teeming with people, when my father divorced my mother and basically kidnapped me.Not because he wanted me, but to piss off my mother. For a while I moved around to small beachside towns and villages down the South Coast from Durban, where I haunted the beaches surfing and volunteering as a life guard., during my high school years. It was the 1970s, during the apartheid era. Blacks had their own schools, lived in their own towns, there was no intermingling of races. Where I lived was in Zululand, and south of there were the Xhosa tribe. East of there was the Ndebele. So I grew up around all these tribes, and I didn’t know how wonderful and amazing they were until I was gone from there.But then my life changed once I graduated, I joined the merchant marines, sailing in big container ships docking at harbor cities all around Around South Africa, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, until it was discovered by my recruiter that I was an illegal resident of South Africa. My father never registered me to live in South Africa.Then back to Rhodesia, to fight in the civil war, defending my country of birth from the nationalist terrorists who wanted independence from the British settlers. I spent 3 1/2 years in the bush, fighting and seeing parts of Africa I had never seen before. Binga, probably the most isolated territory of Rhodesia, bordering Zambia to the west, separated by the Zambezi River and Lake Kariba. The biggest man made dam at that time. It was where the war first started, with terrorists infiltrated the country after being trained in camps in Zambia by Russian military personal and equipped by the Soviets. Mostly Ndebele men, but at the same time the Shona tribe was being enflamed by nationalism and stoked by the communist Chinese to rise up. They left Rhodesia for training in Russia, but were equipped by the Chinese. When in 1975 Mozambique became independent from from Portugal, the border to the east of Rhodesia became easy crossing point for terrorists. We lost the war, and Rhodesia was gone forever, it became Zimbabwe. I emigrated to America, settled in San Francisco Bay Area, living in and working in small and large cities for 25 years, then moved up to the Sierra Nevada mountains where I live now, rural, wild, isolated, the nearest shopping town Marysville 1 hour away. It is the gateway to the historic gold fields of California, and still a part of the Wild West. There are abandoned gold mines scattered around, some are open for tourists to tour, some are just fenced off. None are working mines. The ravages of hydraulic mining 100 hundred years ago can still be seen on hillsides, erosion in the riverbanks, made impassible for paddle boats that used to ply their way from the gold fields of Nevada City, Grass Valley to Marysville. Indians (Native Americans) still live here, on reservations, and in private houses, still participate in gatherings and ceremonies like pow wow events. my wife and I participate in those events, selling beads and jewelry components that the dancers wear on their clothing. Pow Wows attract tribes (called nations) from all over North America (USA, Canada, Mexico, and sometimes a rare appearance by Central American tribes) I love it here, it is so like Africa but different. Nothing is like Africa. Now, instead of African tribes, there are Native American tribes like the Maidu who live all around the county, fish for salmon in the Yuba River, and now mostly live in the reservation in Oroville. Or Miwok tribe, who are scattered all over Northern California, from Yosemite to Mount Shasta. Instead of elephant, giraffe, lion and kudu, we have bear, mountain lion and wolves. Coyote and deer. It is just as wild as Rhodesia was, but with an American touch. Big cities are close by, within driving distance, like Reno, Nevada, Sacramento , San Francisco, and 6 hours away, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles. I couldn’t have picked a better place to live.
