Moving Moments
Chapter 11
Hatched, Matched and Despatched
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| Modern day Kilindini is now a student residence at UCT |
By January of 1975 I was ensconced in Rosebank in Cape
Town in a little residential hotel called Kilindini. It was very close to the
University of Cape Town (UCT) and not far from the apartment where Cheryl was
living with a couple of friends. Kilindini was also nearby to the railway line
into Cape Town city for my work. It was also alongside Rosebank Methodist
Church in which Cheryl had committed her life to the Lord 18 months earlier. I
had found a job with Wesbank, a small bank, in their head office Accounts
Department in downtown Cape Town. Apart from the not insignificant matter of my
failed Accounting 3 and incomplete degree, things were going according to plan
and life was good.
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| The crowd at Kilindini. Rob top left. Don't you love my checked jacket. Part of my daily work outfit for work |
Kilindini was a rather modest residential hotel –
did I say rat hole? The rent was reasonable, my salary not big and I was saving
for an engagement ring and getting married. It provided three meals a day so my
basic living needs were met. The residents were a motley bunch of mainly
younger folks who, like me, were just getting started in life. Over time we got
to know one another and it was quite a congenial atmosphere in the dining room
over our evening meals. My room was not exactly massive. When I stood with my
arms apart I could touch the walls on either side of me. My neighbor next to me
was Mrs. Cook. She was close to eighty I’m guessing and had the most awful
emphysema. She would cough and hack endlessly, especially in the mornings. It
was hard to listen to her struggling. I would walk past her room on my way out
work and cheerfully call out to her, “Morning Mrs. Cook. How are you today?” to
which she would inevitably reply “Not too bad – you can’t kill vermin you know”.
My optimism, her indomitable spirit – what a team!
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| Cheryl in her physio uniform in front of Forest Hill |
Cheryl was living in a much nicer set of apartments
a few blocks down the road called Forest Hill. Her flat mates were Lindsay
Armstrong, a friend from Kitwe, and Sue Harries
who was in the same physio class as Cheryl. Fortunately I had my job to get to
every day, so I wasn’t able to be too much of a distraction to Cher during the
days. In the evenings it was a different story though, as I was free but she
had to keep her eye on her books. Fortunately Cheryl was very bright and didn’t
seem to have to study long and hard the way I had always had to.
My job with Wesbank was a bit of a learning curve
for me. All of the accounting for the branches was done centrally and I was
responsible for producing the monthly accounts for two branches. This was
before the days of desktop computers, so everything was done manually, which
meant the numbers were subject to human, or more specifically, my errors. Every
month end was a panic to produce the numbers balanced and accurate. It takes
practice not to make errors and I had had not much of that. Eventually one
learns that it’s better to do it slowly and carefully and get it right than
fast and run the risk of making errors. About half way through the year Wesbank
was taken over by one of the larger banks and the accounting system was changed
to be done at the branch level. I was shipped out to one of the branches as the
accountant for that branch. At one point the new bank sent out their efficiency
experts to observe us at work for a week. Every five minutes they had to go to
each staff member and ask them what they were working on. Telling them you were
just daydreaming, chatting your neighbor or on the way to the washroom or to
get a coffee weren’t options on their forms. This meant that we all worked
really hard that week and I’m sure the efficiency experts didn’t learn much of
any real value as they certainly didn’t get an accurate read on how we really
spent most of our days.
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| Rob - it began to dawn on me that my B. Comm, had not taught me much of practical use. |
For me the real value of my first full year’s work
experience was that it dawned on me that my B. Comm. studies hadn’t actually
taught me how to do anything. I was functionally illiterate in the business and
accounting world. Knowing that I was on the way to getting married along with
the fact that I had to return to University of Durban to repeat Accounting 3
brought me to the conclusion that I had to do my articles and study towards
being a Chartered Accountant. If after that I still hadn’t learnt how to do
accounting, then I was a lost cause I reasoned.
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| Some of the YMCA crowd. Rob and Cher in the middle |
Before my arriving in Cape Town, Cheryl had been
attending Christ Church Kenilworth, an Anglican Church and was also involved on
campus with the Student YMCA. I was secretly horrified. I had been attending
Anglican churches all of my life one way and another and had never heard the
gospel explained once. With my newfound wisdom as a brand new Christian I “knew”
that there was no such thing as an Anglican Christian. Also everyone knew that
the YMCA was pretty wishy washy and had lost their Christian edge a hundred
years earlier. As a result of this, I was pretty cautious and tentative about
what Cher was being taught at her church and on campus. As it turned out my
misgivings could not have been more misplaced. Christ Church was part of a group of five
Anglican churches which were evangelical and bible based. Their minister was
David Prior, an Englishman with a gift of teaching to die for. When he spoke
the heavens lit up and the stars would dance in unison. The Student YMCA was
run by Mick and Chris Milligan. They ran one of the most effective evangelical campus
ministries I have ever come across. They attracted a large group of students
and ran a very creative and powerful outreach program. In Cheryl’s first year
as a Christian they had invited her onto the committee organizing a campus wide
outreach. They spotted Cheryl’s need for deeper involvement and gave her
responsibility straightaway. She never looked back. Cher and I spent a very
happy year involved at both the YMCA and Christ Church.
Cheryl was going to graduate on December 12th
that year and we planned to get married a week later. Although we had both
already known for a year and half that we were going to marry we had never formally
got engaged knowing that we had agreed not to do so until Cheryl had finished
her studies. Around about April we decided it was time to make our intentions
formal. I needed to get an engagement ring, but hadn’t managed to save much
money. Somewhere along the line, Nev had passed his little old yellow Anglia on
to me. It was pretty old and decrepit, but beat walking and I had found it
useful in finding my way around Cape Town. I decided it’s time had come and so
I sold it for the princely sum of two hundred rand. I now had money to buy a
ring for Cher. We ordered a ring to be made for us with the stones sufficiently
large that they were visible without a magnifying glass and our lives were
complete. I did have to do a lot more walking than I was used to for a while.
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| With Angola (top left) and Mozambique toppling, "white ruled" Africa had shrunk considerably |
The history of Southern Africa took a major turn in
1975. In Portugal the right wing regime was toppled and replaced by a socialist
one. The new left leaning Portuguese government had no interest in maintaining
their expensive unpopular wars in far flung colonies around the world. They
announced that they were surrendering their presence in Angola and Mozambique. The
freedom fighters in both countries would be free to run the countries as they
saw fit. Within three months Portuguese troops pulled out and both countries
were abandoned by people who had been born there and who knew no other life. Virtually
overnight, the Portuguese colonials had to flee for their lives. Suddenly for
South Africa and Rhodesia, “black Africa” and wars of independence had come
very much closer. There was intense competition at the time between the USSR
and USA for influence in Africa. The prize was the massive mineral wealth of
the continent.
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| South African Defence Force. One of Africa's most effective fighting forces at the time. |
Soon thereafter I noticed in my office that the men
disappeared over the course of a couple of weeks without comment or
explanation. It turns out that the South African military had a massive secret call
up of their reservists for an unexplained exercise. I was not part of that
because being a Zambian resident I had never registered with the military and
was not required to. Now that I was living in South Africa full time, I had
never registered and had no intention of doing so. It took six weeks before the
South African public heard any news of what was going on in the background. The
CIA and the South African Defense force were working together along with UNITA,
one of the freedom fighter groups in Angola, to invade the country. The goal
was to take control and install a west leaning government before one of the
socialist freedom fighter groups took control. The South Africans made it all
the way to within 20 kilometres of Luanda the capital when the Russians started
flying in Cuban soldiers by the planeload to defend the capital. Around that
time some political machinations in the USA changed things and the CIA had to
relinquish their support for the South Africans. The South Africans were forced
to retreat back to their own borders. What astounded me was that the censorship
over our news was so effective that the South African public only heard about this
story once it was all over. In today’s totally connected world it is almost
unthinkable, but in those days it was still possible to keep a public in the
dark.
While in Cape Town I reconnected with Butch
Attersoll, a friend from our Chingola days. He was doing a hotel management
course and was working at a downtown hotel getting on the job experience. Part
of his job was to go down the docks every morning and buy fish for the day for
the hotel from the local fishermen who would come in with their early morning
catch. He asked me if I’d like to go out one morning with the fisherman and see
how it was done and maybe they would give me a shot at pulling in some fish. I
groaned a bit because I had been on numerous fishing expeditions over the years
and to that date had never caught a single fish. I figured if I was ever going
to catch a fish this would be my chance. And so one morning around 4am Butch
and I sortied out on a real fishing trawler with a bunch of Coloured (mixed
race) fisherman who only spoke Afrikaans. Butch and I spoke none. Apparently
that day we would be catching snoek. I was issued with a heavy duty pair of
plastic overalls and thick gloves. Once we got out into Table Bay the game was
on. The way one catches snoek is pretty basic – grab a thick line with a large
hook on it and attach a pilchard to it. Drop the line over the side and wait.
Eventually there will be a slight tug on the line. At that point pull the line
out of the water with a snoek on the end who seemed passive and inert. They
just surrendered with no struggle. Even I could that. What I hadn’t allowed for
was that once out of the water, the snoek turned mean and nasty. They had very
long sharp spines along their backs and large sharp teeth. I discovered why I
had the gloves and overalls. The technique was to grab the snoek firmly between
one’s knees, spines pointing outward and then grab him by the throat and break
his neck with a crunch. And so it was that I came home the conquering hero
having bagged three snoek. Cheryl cooked one of them. I have never been a great
fish eater and the snoek was extremely boney, so not really my cup of tea. And
in all of my years that has been my only successful attempt at catching fish.
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| A typical Africa Grey parrot were common as pets in Central and Southern Africa |
Butch’s parents Win and Vic, who we used to know
well in Chingola were living in a large office block as caretakers and we
visited them a couple of times. Vic was retired from the Zambian copper mines
and was keeping a bit of income coming in this way. They introduced us to their
African Grey parrot. These birds come from the Congo and are well known for
being good talkers. They had trained the parrot, that when Butch came in the
door he would say, “Butch bugger off”. I thought this was hilarious. Parrots
live a long time and poor Butch was destined to be greeted like this every time
he visited his parents.
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| Cheryl enjoying a lighter moment |
Our wedding date was approaching quickly. The
details began to build up and pour in. Fortunately Cher and I both handle that
stuff quite well, so it was all in hand. We had been advised to arrange a
prenuptial agreement. We were referred to an elderly Christian lawyer, Robin
Slater Wood who could give us good advice. At that time South Africa’s legal
system was based on Roman Dutch law. One of the defaults of a marriage contract
was that the husband had the “marital power”. This meant that Cheryl would not
be able to sign or enter into a contract without my agreement and approval,
unless we excluded the marital power from our agreement. We got some good old
fashioned advice from our elderly lawyer, which in retrospect makes for
entertaining reading. He suggested the following:
- · Cheryl must have household furniture, crockery, cutlery and wedding gifts worth at least four thousand Rand - about $400 in today’s terms.
- · I must provide my wife with a three bedroom home, worth at least fifteen thousand rand. The current equivalent would be $1500 which would barely pay for our back yard shed at today’s prices.
- · I was advised not to exclude the marital power. The lawyer’s reasoning was that “women can be easily swayed and taken advantage of, and this provides an extra layer of protection for her”. I had seen my Mom and Cher’s Mom buying houses in South Africa of their own accord, so even at this time, this reasoning seemed archaic. However having said that, we had paid him for his advice, so decided to take it. Fortunately for Cheryl and I the prenuptial contract doesn’t extend beyond South Africa, so I am currently free of my obligations to provide a house, and all of its contents, and she no longer has to ask my advice before agreeing to make big decisions, although I still recommend it - for her own protection of course. That elderly lawyer knew his stuff.
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| Cheryl looking gorgeous |
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| Our first married joint activity. Aaah! |
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| L. to R: Roy Tibbit, Lynne Paterson, Rob, Janine Cornish, Cheryl, Ian Paterson, Lindsay Armstrong, Alan Cornish |
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| Finally - signed and sealed. |
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| L. to R.: Doug Cornish, Daphne Tobin, Rob Cheryl, Toby Tobin, Daphne Cornish |
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| Getting the dreaded deed done |
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| The whole wedding party - what a lovely bunch and what happy memories. |
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| Rob, Mom and Dad Cornish |
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| The happy couple - united at last |
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| Leaving the reception looking a bit anxious. "What have they done with our car?" |
We left the reception in typical fashion, dragging a bunch of tin
cans down the road. After a short stop to clean up our car, we stopped in at
the Lord Nelson motel for a slap up dinner before heading for Stellenbosch for
our first night together as man and wife. Our plans had been hatching for a few
years, now we were officially matched and we were in process of being dispatched
to Durban for the next chapter of our lives.
I had soon grown tired of having to walk everywhere
in Cape Town so had bought my first and only brand new vehicle. It was a
turquoise Datsun 1200 pickup truck, commonly known as a bakkie. We bought a
canopy to go over the back and that gave us our first “camper” option. We were
to have our honeymoon en route to Durban where we needed to be next so that I
could commence with restarting my accounting studies. We left Cape Town with
all of our worldly possessions, which wasn’t much, loaded up in the back of the
bakkie. The plan was to spend a week or ten days travelling along South Africa’s
gorgeous Garden Route doing the trip to Durban but with a stop at the
Wilderness hotel for a few days over Christmas. We checked in at the Wilderness
and it didn’t take too long before we began to get a bit lonely and dare I say,
it bored. We were having Christmas and none of our family was around. We knew
honeymoon’s are couple only affairs but something was missing. We drove to
nearby George and bought ourselves a small Christmas tree about 18 inches high
to put in our hotel room to brighten things up a bit. It helped but not that
much.
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| Cheryl in front of our Cape Dutch hotel in Stellenbosch |
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| Rob in grounds of our first hotel |
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| Cheryl in front of Wilderness Hotel - our first and loneliest Christmas together |
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| Cher in our bakkie - the back made a perfect camper |
We arrived in Durban and had arranged to stay in Sid
and Marion Webbers house for a few days while we looked for an apartment to
live in. They were away on vacation. It didn’t take us long and we found just what
we were looking for . It was an apartment on the 14th floor of John
Ross House, a tall new building in downtown Durban, on the Esplanade,
overlooking the boats and yachts in the harbor and only a few minutes’ walk or
drive from both of our jobs. I had been accepted by Delloites to do my articles
towards my Chartered Accountant designation and Cher had been accepted at
Addington Hospital for her first job as a physiotherapist. We had a view of the
Indian Ocean and got see the sun rise every morning. We were about to embark on
the adventure of our lives. We had no idea what God had in store for us, but we
were sure that it would be good and that doing it together was going to make it
even better.
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