A is for Ashleigh and for Africa
August 8, 2007 at 10:27 AM
by Ashleigh
I'm joining in the Encyclopedia of Me Meme started by Bella Dia. It's meant to run for the month of August but I'm late (maybe that should be my L entry).
I loved what Ali has done with her a-z so I thought I'd join in.
Lucky for you (and me), my name starts with A!
Which saves you from all the other options I could have thought of - ambivalence, apathy, antipathy, aggravation ...
So, back to me and a little bit about my childhood ...
I was born as Ashleigh Jane Whitaker on January 11, 1974 in a very small town called Chinhoyi, formerly Sinoia, in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. That makes me 33 years old. Heading for 34.
When I was little I used to lie awake at night and think about how old I would be in the year 2000. 26 seemed completely unreachable. Now, when I look back at who I was when I was 26 I don't recognise myself. I don't recognise that little girl who used to lie, stifling under the mosquito net in the heat of an African October and think of who she would be at 26.
My family owned a farm called Bandira Farm which was very isolated. Our nearest neighbours were a 15 minute drive and the nearest town took 45 minutes to reach on a very windy, very bumpy dirt road. In the dry months clouds of dust would follow the car and in the wet months the car refused to stay on the road and spent a lot of time being stuck in the mud. No power steering meant mom had shoulders like a German arm-wrestler!
There were two rivers to cross on the way home before we reached the big bend around Bharamhanya Farm. In the rainy season they flash-flooded and we'd either have to chance the flood or wait for it to abate. Sometimes my mom would let us get out the car and stand in the flooding water on the bridge. I can remember the feeling of the water eddying around my ankles while I stood wondering at the fact that it was there, when just days before there had been a dry river bed.
Before I turned 6 our country was in the grip of a civil war, which meant my dad was away on call-up and my mom was alone with me on the farm.
I can remember one incident on the way home when my dad was with us when there was a suspicion of a landmine in the road. We stopped the car, my dad and the labourers all got out of the car and swept the road while me and my mom sat in the car.
Landmines terrified me. My parents would talk about people who had been blown up and I remember sitting there, quiet, listening to stories of amputated limbs and exploded faces.
I was 4 turning 5 when I started school. This was in 1979 and our country was in the process of change. In 1979 Bishop Muzorewa's govt took charge and the country's name changed to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. I can remember the fire and bomb drills at school. I was in kindergarten, or KG1.
I suppose these events must have shaped my life, even though at the time they just seemed normal. When I compare them to the lives of Westerners, or even South Africans, who although they had their own independence struggles, seemed in the majority largely untouched, I can't help but be slightly envious at the ease with which their lives progressed.
Life unshadowed by the fear of landmines. Or fear of being arrested.
In Zimbabwe we suffered through UDI with it's shortages of basic foodstuffs, struggled again in the early 90s and now they struggle again in the first decade of the new millennium.
So what does this have to do with Ashleigh?
Well, I wanted to write about me and my memories. Initially I thought 'Oh good, I can tell them about what makes me the person I am.'
Followed by, 'I can share some of the happy things that happened when I was a child, the big barbecues, the parties, the fun.'
Then I remembered the sense of quiet desperation underpinning it all.
After that I started to write, and this is what appeared.
I suppose my history makes me the person I am now, but for the real me, you'll have to wait a while.
I'm afraid I'm still finding out. Maybe when I get to entry 'R' I'll know.
Comments
Wow what a poignant and evocative piece that was! It reminded me very much of both 'Let's no go to the dogs tonight daddy' and 'wah wah'.
I don't think the SA state of emergency in the 80s, pass books etc etc had a patch on the Zim upbringing. Zimbos seem to have had both great privilege, with servants, large vistas and beautiful landscapes, and very great hardship mixed inseparably.
I'd love to read more about your early life. More memoirs please :)
How evocative Ash :) I have a really soft spot in my heart for Zimbabwe and I love the photo - I can feel the atmosphere. What year did you leave? I was there in 1990 and it was certainly a different place to how it must have been and how it is now.
I simply love that you decided to share this. It is so wonderfully written too! I would recommend writing a memoir, even a short one. Your children and their children will certainly appreciate it too!
It's a big world isn't it - really enjoyed your first letter.
You could, and should, write much more about your life. It's just so far removed from what most of us have experienced. One of my best friends when I was in Germany was a Chilean woman who lived through the fears of secret arrests, burying the family library to prevent it being burnt by the government, and many other things I'm sure she never told me about. It just seemed impossible that someone I knew and spent so much time with had lived through these things.
I'm looking forward to "R", and all the letters in between!
August 8, 2007 4:04 PM