Moving Moments Chapter 12 - Durban, Feeling our way, Flopping and Moving Forward

Moving Moments

Chapter 12

Durban – Feeling our way, Flopping and Moving Forward

John Ross House - note the revolving restaurant.
Definitely a trendy downtown address. 

We both got settled into our jobs in Durban as a priority. We needed to get some income coming in. I was signed up with Deloittes to do my articles towards my Chartered Accounting designation (CA). My office was a few blocks away from John Ross House, where we were living. Cheryl was working at Addington Hospital, which was down towards the Durban beach front. It was also very close to John Ross House, so commuting was the least of our worries. I was earning the magnificent salary of three hundred rand a month and Cher was earning two hundred and ninety five rand monthly. We were flush and I was able to satisfy my male ego by knowing that I was the primary breadwinner.

I was registered again at University of Natal Durban campus (UND) to re-do Accounting 3 to complete my B. Comm degree and then start gaining credits towards my Diploma in Accounting, a prerequisite for my CA designation. I had to do two years of part time studying which needed to be accompanied by three years of articles.

My work with Deloittes was quite different to the bank I had been working at in Cape Town. A team of us would visit a client and we would proceed to dig through their records to ascertain that they were doing and reporting all the right things. One interesting aspect of our auditing was that a new system of verification was being tried. It involved picking a statistically sufficient random sample of records to review and if we found no problems we could extrapolate the results to conclude that all of their records were fair and accurate. At the beginning of every audit we would have to pound our way through their general ledger with an adding machine looking for every nth dollar/rand which we would then investigate in detail. It was all a bit of a riddle to me initially, but as I got a few audits under my belt it began to make sense. I found that “doing” accounting, at the same time as studying it, was the way to go as for the first time accounting began to be understandable by me. I have been a strong proponent of co-op learning ever since and am delighted to see that it is now being used in most universities that I know about.

Addington Hospital - site of Cheryl's first job
and Elaine's birth

Cher was working normal hours, so was able to come home at a reasonable time to get a meal ready and begin to practice being a housewife, a role at which she has always excelled. My routine was pretty deadly. I would knock off work at 4pm and then make my way over to the university for two hours of lectures from 5 – 7pm on Mondays to Thursdays. I would then come home, eat supper and study for a couple of hours.

We started to attend Christ Church Addington, an Anglican church, very close to Addington Hospital where Cher worked. My year of being at Christ Church Kenilworth, in Cape Town, had helped me to get over my aversion to Anglican churches and this church had come to us well recommended. We weren’t disappointed. The minister at the time was Nigel Walker, an Englishman, and his assistant was Graham Fenton along with his wife Jill. The program was solidly evangelical and we very quickly connected with a number of young folks and couples, some of whom we are still in contact with today - folks such as Brenda Strom, Cheryl Emslie, Rob Lewis and Sally Hodges. There was always a good supply of trainee nurses from Addington Hospital who were part of the group. We all joined a house church under the leadership of Graham and Jill Fenton and our fellowship was rich and sweet. This kind of group performed the valuable role in those days of helping young singles meet and check each other out. Beats the modern method of internet dating I reckon.

Our young people's house church on
a retreat up the North Coast.
Roy Poole in right foreground. 

Nigel Walker moved back to UK a year or so after we arrived and Graham and Jill left around the same time. Nigel was replaced by Peter Lee and his wife Jill who hailed from UK as well. They were in their late twenties, early thirties. Nigel had been a solid preacher, always with a good message. Peter Lee was a gifted teacher of the Word. When he preached it was like having raindrops from heaven fall on us. It was sweet to listen to. Not long after Peter and Jill’s arrival, Rod Ellis arrived to replace Graham Fenton as assistant minister, accompanied by his wife Lynne. We are still in touch with Rod and Lynne, who now live on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Peter Lee has recently retired from being a Bishop in the Johannesburg area.

One of the features of the Anglican Church in the early 1970s and on was that they were experiencing a wave of the Holy Spirit washing over them, described as the charismatic renewal. The Anglican Church in South Africa had been a formal, traditional and liturgically based denomination. By and large, being excited by the gospel and church was considered a bit “off” or “over the top”. Religion was there to be adhered to and practiced but it was not necessary to take things too far or be over enthusiastic. This all changed when Archbishop Bill Burnett, who headed up the denomination in South Africa, was touched dramatically by the Holy Spirit. He was in his study after church one day, enjoying an after lunch sherry reflecting on the morning’s service, when he was visited by the Holy Spirit who laid him out flat on the floor. He had no idea what had happened to him. A Pentecostal pastor who he knew explained what had happened. Bill Burnett was a changed man and he began to introduce the rest of the Anglican Church to a new way of doing church, one in which the Holy Spirit was alive and active in every part of our lives and during every service. We were part of this renewal that was taking place. It was exciting as people were experimenting with worship, raising their hands, praying in their own words and speaking and singing in tongues. This was all most “un-Anglican”. As it turns out this charismatic wave of the Holy Spirit was being experienced in many other parts of the world around the same time. It was a very exciting time to be a new Christian as exciting things were happening and there was a heightened sense of expectation and God’s presence in our lives.

Cheryl and Mandy on a Sunday
School outing to Umdloti

Cher and I very quickly got involved in teaching Sunday School and I eventually ended up being the Superintendent. I made a few mistakes along the way, but this was a valuable training ground for what was to come later. I was also a Sidesman, which is just another name for Greeter and Usher. It was a pretty straightforward and low stress job. Mom was visiting at one point and was with us in the service. I had been on Sidesman duty, along with Keith de Villiers, another one of our young people’s group. I was finished my duty and sitting down next to Mom and Cher and the service was in progress. When Peter Lee got up to preach, a woman started to shout at him and make a loud fuss. Peter, a bit taken aback, asked her to stop and come and see him afterwards if she had issues to discuss. The woman persisted in her noisiness, every time Peter started to preach. Eventually Peter, stopped preaching, looked her in the eye and warned her that he would have her removed from the service if she didn’t desist. She persisted, at which point Peter said “Sidesman, please remove that woman from the sanctuary”. Mom, who was a staunch Anglican in those days, was shocked – she was not used to these kinds of goings on in a respectable church. She said to me, “Robin, don’t you dare touch that woman”. I was stuck in the middle of a no win situation with Mom on one hand and Peter Lee on the other expecting me to do my bouncer boy duty. Keith and I got up and stood on either side of the lady’s pew and I guess we looked sufficiently threatening because she quietened down and the sermon was allowed to proceed, much to my relief. I had not relished the idea of Keith and I having to wrestle this lady out of her pew and out of the door. After the service Peter and Rod met with the lady and it turned out she had a demon. They prayed for her, the demon left and she was released. Praise God.

Frank Ackley with Janet. An American, Frank worked for SU.
He joinedRob Lewis, Roy Poole and myself on our boys trip to
the Drakensberg. Considered by Roy Poole to be "normal"

Life brings along interesting personalities from time to time. One of my auditing group at Deloittes was Roy Poole. He was a character. I later discovered he was a heavy drinker and possibly an alcoholic. He was an old hand and was into his fifth attempt at passing the CA board exam and showing no enthusiasm for what would be his final attempt before being permanently disqualified. Not long after starting with Deloittes, on finding out that I was newly married, he pulled me aside and gave me some sage advice. “Rob”, he says, “let me give you a tip. You must offer to help out in the kitchen with Cheryl, especially with the washing up. All you need to do is break one or two of your new wedding gift cups or saucers and you’ll never be invited into the kitchen again”. I solemnly thanked him for his kindly advice and promised to consider it. I was determined to witness to Roy and share the gospel with him. Once I invited him on a boys only three or four day hike to the Drakensberg mountains with Rob Lewis from our small group and Frank Ackley, the Scripture Union worker at the time, both of whom were Christians. Roy came along willingly enough. He was a very gregarious guy. We had a ball as we climbed a tough path to the top, suffered together and survived the rigors of the trip. By the end of four days, boys being boys, we were all beginning to revert back to our baser instincts. Washing of utensils and plates was dispensed with, butter was being spread on bread with our fingers, gas was being passed liberally, “effluviated” in Roy’s words, and basic hygiene was out the window. Life was sweet. Roy confided in me later that he had been quite nervous about going with the three Christian guys and was worried that we would be all weird, but was relieved to discover that actually we were quite normal – high praise indeed.

L. to R. Jock, Cher, Rob, Flora and Mom

Another couple of characters in our lives at that time were Uncle Jock and Auntie Flora Haliburton. Jock was an elderly cousin of Dad’s. They lived in Kloof, a fairly upmarket area about 30 kilometers inland towards Pietermaritsburg. We would visit them occasionally. Flora was a short fussy little lady who would giggle regularly and in between would scold Jock for a variety of things, particularly if he fed the dog while we were having a meal. The dog, a fox terrier, would sit at Jock’s feet, under the dinner table and out of sight, while Jock would surreptitiously slip bits of food to him. Flora would pretend not to notice but then every now and then catch him in the act. Jock always had a twinkle in his eye and was “knowledgeable” on a wide variety of fronts. He and Flora had once been on a bus tour for a couple of weeks in Europe. One of his fellow travelers had told him that “he was a mine of unreliable information”. He had once explained to me how Indians performed their toilet habits, not using toilet paper, but a Coke bottle with water in it. I carefully stored this valuable snippet in my memory bank, as I was sure it would come in handy at some point. Jock and Flora had a son, Derek, who ran an engineering firm in Durban, who Al ended up working for.

Our family was by this time beginning to settle down into the roles they would fill in the future. Mom and Dad had bitten the bullet and moved from Zambia at the end of 1974 into a house at 15 Maple Avenue, in Plantation in Boksburg, where they would stay until Dad’s passing in 1990. Mom and Dad had both been born in Boksburg so they were returning to their roots. Dad continued to work for a few years at EL Bateman, who he had worked for in Zambia, as they had their head office in Boksburg. Nev was doing well. In 1972 he had started his own civil engineering business in Elandsfontein, not far from Boksburg. He and Ian Knight became partners in 1974 and very quickly the company grew, eventually employing over 800 people. They got into a cash crunch in 1977, and had to reorganize and downsize to a staff of about 50 which then became a very profitable company. Rose and Roy, after a number of years of preparation, training and language learning had settled in the Phillipines with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Roy was a “Mr Fixit” and could pretty much build or fix anything. He and Rose fulfilled that role on a large base in Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya to which translators and various other personnel would come for a variety of services. They would also visit other remote areas across the Phillipines where Roy would build houses for incoming translators. Al and Rose had married in November of 1976 and settled down in Durban. Al was working for Derek Haliburton’s engineering company with an unspellable and unpronounceable name. At one point Al went to work on a big project in Scottburgh, down the South Coast where they lived for a while. Cher’s Mom and Dad had left Zambia on June 16th 1976 and touched down at the airport in Johannesburg on the day that the Soweto riots broke out. They had also settled on the east side of Johannesburg not too far from my Mom and Dad. Dad Tobin continued to work with Anglo American who he had worked for in Zambia until his official retirement a few years later.

Rob and Cher camping use our versatile bakkie.
Note our bedroom in the back

Roy, Cher and Rob
Camping in Northern Natal

Rob and Cher - in our carefree early days

Roy and Rose in front of a typical
Filipino house, such as Roy was
building for translators in remote areas

A rare occasion in which the whole family was in one
country. A great opportunity for a family vacation. 

Maureen and Rob

Family vacation - Rob, Rose and Roy keeping Nev and Mau's kids
entertained - Janine, Lindy and Doug

Cher and I only stayed in John Ross House for about a year or so before we decided to move into the suburbs. We found a very nice apartment at 16 Ardarroch in Berea, at the top of a hill. It was close to the university which helped me a bit with my lecture and studying schedule. We were very happy at this address. The first entry in our Visitor’s Book was John and Wendy Roberts. John had been at Falcon with us and was one of our group of Zambian friends. He had since gone to UK to study and had married Wendy. It turned out that he was a Christian which I had never known before, so we had lots to talk about.  

During our stay at Ardarroch, Cher and I got involved with Scripture Union again. We became Camp Leaders at SU Mini Camps at Anerley down the South Coast. These camps were fun but hard work and run in primitive conditions by today’s standards. Accommodation for the 120 or kids and twenty or so leaders was all in old army tents. There was a brick hall where we had our meetings and meals, but that was our only shelter from the elements. The programs were full and energetic and after settling the kids down for the night the team would all collapse into our sleeping bags on the ground in our tents, only to awake around 5.30am the next morning for an early morning team meeting before the program got going again.

Fat clothes competition. Each team had to pool all of their
clothes and see how many items they could dress their
smallest team member with. 

Conditions at these camps were primitive. Wash up after meal times was a case in point. Three large buckets would be filled with hot water and detergent and kids would bring their crockery and utensils to rinse them in the hot water and then dry them off with their dish cloths. One can imagine the state of the water by the end of 140 people rinsing their dishes. There was no need to make soup for the next meal. These days a camp leader would be run out of town for such neglect of basic safety. We were just blissfully ignorant. This was how things were done in those days. We had no parent complaints. In a non-litigious society they too were blissfully unaware it seems. Amazingly all of the kids survived without any major outbreaks of pestilence and disease. Another time we were expecting rain overnight. Whilst the kids all started the night inside their tents, eventually they would often spread themselves and their belongings to the outer edges of the tents and some even spilled outside of the tents with their heads exposed to the elements beyond the tent perimeter. We went around each tent making sure that all of the bodies and bags were comfortably covered by their tents and moved all of the campers towards the center of the tents to ensure they stayed dry. The kids were all sleeping. I was amazed at how they stayed asleep while we dragged them inwards over bumpy ground. We had done a good job of delivering them into a state of utter exhaustion it seems. I was a bit perturbed when we pulled the one little guy’s head off of his pillow only to find a snake resting comfortably underneath it. That left me with the shivers.

One of our teams of teenage SU Camp leaders

Our tent leaders would always be teenagers aged 16 and up. They did a wonderful job. I developed a lot of respect for what young people can do when suitably motivated. These camps were very powerful in communicating the gospel as we built relationships with the kids and they grew to trust what we were telling them. We were direct in telling the Good News and kids were very responsive. We watched these kids over the years grow firm and solid in their faith. Living side by side for five days gave ample opportunity for teachable moments. A couple of our teenage leaders, Jeff and Lindsay were an “item” and all the campers knew it, much as we, the camp leaders, did our best to suppress that kind of activity. At the beach we used to swim in a large rock pool about three feet deep, which had a sandy floor and was about fifty feet across. On the one outing Jeff lost the neck chain which Lindsay had given him as a token of their love in the rock pool. He was heartbroken and all the kids knew about it and were commiserating as we walked back to camp to have lunch. Finding the chain was an impossible task and we all knew it. The water in the pool was murky, the pool was large and the floor of it was sandy and had had 120 kids playing in it for an hour or so. I decided to see if God would help us find the chain. I took some volunteer leaders with me, while the kids had their rest time and we went back to the pool to look. We prayed for success and then went around the beach borrowing goggles and snorkels from strangers. We looked and looked with no success. Eventually we needed to get back and I called off the search. The one leader said “give me one more turn” and he went down to look. The next thing he emerged triumphant with the neck chain in his hand. We praised God, right there on the beach in front of all the strangers. When we got back to camp and told the kids, it was very impactful. They knew how hard it would have been to find that chain and began to practically gain understanding of a personal God who loves and cares for us, even in the small things. Thank you Lord for revealing yourself to us in ways that we can understand and are meaningful.

I vividly remember once, packing up at the end of a camp in the midst of a torrential downpour. It required a lot of co-ordination as we were the outgoing camp of 120 kids together with our entire luggage. We waited in the hall with all of our luggage and 140 bodies. The buses bringing the next 120 kids and leaders and their luggage had to arrive while we waited in the hall. We then had to unload the incoming kids and their luggage into the same hall, and then pack the outgoing kids into the buses and depart, all in the pouring rain. I remember driving out of the campsite, sopping wet, being very thankful that I wasn’t starting the next camp with 120 sopping wet kids, moving into wet tents with water sodden ground to lay down sleeping bags.

Cher and I had recruited Sid and Marion Webber to join us at these camps as “Camp Parents”. Jean and Linda came along as campers. This was a great way to deepen our friendship as we worked together.  I remember some of the fun we had at our concerts as the leaders made fools of themselves for the fun of the campers. With all of the fun and friendships we developed with the kids, we “earned to right to speak the gospel to them”. This model of ministry was very authentic, fun to do and was very effective. Our SU camping experience at Anerley was to form the foundation of much of our future work with children over the next few decades.

In December 1976 I graduated with my B. Comm and had gained a few other credits towards my Diploma in Accounting, later to become a Bachelor of Accounting degree. In December 1977 I completed my Dip.Acc and was ready to write the Board exam for my CA designation in March of 1978. This was a once a year opportunity to write the exam. I was sick and tired of part time studying by this stage and applied myself earnestly to preparing for the Board exam. The exam was much feared by my colleagues and fellow articled clerks. It had an awesome reputation. Only about 50% of people who wrote it passed each year. The great day came and I wrote the exam. I did not come out of it feeling strong or confident. I knew it was going to be a close thing. We had to wait a couple of months for the results.

Our good friend Phil Hodgson had fallen hard
for Fiona from Kitwe and been married in UK. 

Life was moving on, my studies were beginning to draw to a close and we began to feel the time was right to start thinking about kids. Cher fell pregnant in May 1978, while I awaited my Board exam results. We were in a state of high anticipation. Attaining a CA designation opened up a multitude of opportunities. We were about to begin to have a family. The great day came to get the Board exam results came and to my consternation I had failed. I had never worked so hard for an exam before. It’s not often I get despondent, but this result filled me with despair. I had worked so long and hard. If I could not pass it with that much work, how was I ever going to do it?

Our apartment at Ardarroch only had one bedroom so we went in search of larger accommodation to make room for the upcoming addition to the family. We found it in the shape of a ground floor apartment in a double story house owned by Ruth and Mike Calais. They were members at Bulwer Road Baptist church where I had become a Christian. Mike’s occupation was as a handyman. They were delighted that we were bringing a baby into their home. Mike started to disappear into his workshop for hours on end in the evenings and eventually after some weeks he emerged with a baby compactum on wheels for changing diapers, with drawers underneath for storing all of the necessary. It was perfect. We were delighted at this practical display of love and care.

Rob Lewis and I were firm friends. We fellowshipped
at Christchurch Addington, camped and studied together

Once I had recovered from the initial shock of failing my Board exam I began to assess my options. There was a guy called Charles Hattingh who was promoting himself as a coach to help people get through the Board exam. He claimed to have passed the Board exam himself with the highest ever marks in the country. He was expensive, but I remember thinking “I have to do whatever it takes to get through this exam”. I signed up. Charles was a hard taskmaster. He would set prodigious amounts of homework every week and then he would make us write a mock four hour Board exam every Saturday morning. He was a masterful communicator and had somehow managed to boil down the exam into a handful of types of questions which, once mastered, together with technique, would supposedly dazzle the markers. We had to extract the marks from them point by point as we communicated how much we knew. I returned to my routine of working during the day and studying at night. Before the exam, our accounting companies gave us a few weeks of study leave for the Board exam. the year before I had joined with Rob Lewis, Bobby Stodel, Doug Gammidge and one other guy to form a study group  and help each other resolve problems. This year it was just me, mock exams  and Charles Hattingh. When the day of the first exam came I was a basket case. If I didn’t get through this time, I was sunk. I wrote the first exam. What I noticed immediately was that I could identify what each kind of question was that I was dealing with and I knew what kind of answer they were looking for. All of my practice with Charles Hattingh’s practice exams was paying off. By the time I got to the second exam I wasn’t confident, but I was no longer a gibbering wreck. When the great day came a few months later in mid July of 1979, I had passed. At that point, if he’d been around, I would have kissed Charles Hattingh.

Cher, in full bloom. December 1978 with Mom and Dad

Cheryl looking expectant in our nursery

On 13th January of 1979, Elaine Daphne Cornish was born at Addington hospital. Choice of her middle name was easy as that was the name of both of our Mom’s. In those days the idea of husbands being present at the birth was emerging in trendy circles but had not yet gained traction with me. I wasn’t sure I could stand all the blood and gore I imagined would be involved. In stereotypical fashion I sat outside in the waiting room awaiting the results, like a dinosaur beyond its best before date – a sad picture really. I regret not having braced myself and been there like a real man would have. Despite my “no show” for the main event, all went well and she was born, a delightful little girl, too small to imagine even touching let alone handling. When Cher and I drove home with Elaine a few days later, we commented to each other that “our lives would never be the same again”. We were bidding farewell to our carefree early days of marriage, but also expecting that our lives would be immeasurably enriched with the arrival of our minute little treasure.

Elaine - the apple of our eyes. What a treasure!

We soon discovered that our minute little treasure came along with a large pair of lungs. The wisdom of those who know such things ie our Mom’s, indicated that she seemed to suffer from a lot of colic and of course lots of gripe water was prescribed to not much effect. After a couple of sleepless months we decided it was time to bite the bullet and let her sleep in her own room and we would let her cry herself to sleep. We had fallen in with those who said that babies must learn from the beginning that they don’t belong in the parent’s bedroom. Elaine’s room was on the other side of the house from our bedroom and we would lie at night and listen to her cry and of course needed to jump up regularly to soothe her. Eventually we decided to go cold turkey and just let her cry until she realized we weren’t coming to bail her out. It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. She eventually gave up of course, but the next night was a repeat. By the third night she had begun to settle down, realizing that we had abandoned her and all hope was lost. Shame, she was probably just lonely and we were denying her our company. To this day we regret having let her cry like that. Such is the way that parents navigate their way through the learning curve of bringing up their children “in the way they should go”. Head scratching and heartache rule. 

Mom and Dad celebrating their 40th
Anniversary at their house in Plantation

Singing around the piano with Dad, always a family favorite
L. to R. Dougie Cornish, Don Wallace, Nev and Dad

On his return to SA, Dad was able to join his old
regiment, the Transvaal Scottish, as a piper.
Dad on right hand side.

Mom and Dad were always ready for a party

By mid 1979 I had passed my Board exam. My third year of articles was done. I was now the proud owner of a CA designation and a brand new baby. I was ready to conquer the world. We decided that the big opportunities for advancement lay in Johannesburg and, added to that, both our sets of parents now lived in that area along with Nev and Mau, Lynne and Glenn and Al and Rose who had recently moved there. We were all alone in Durban. Clearly it was time to move in the direction of the family and get on with the next chapter of our lives. We thought we could see where we were headed, but of course in God’s economy it’s not always as we expect and plan.