Tanganyika and the Groundnut Scheme

My next school was some thousands of miles from the first one. The British Government decided to develop the very rural bushland in Tanganyika, into farmland. They decided that groundnuts were the answer, and in order to proceed with the scheme, they had to not only send equipment there from overseas, but also to enlist farmers who knew how to farm, to show the local Tanganyikans what to do.

My father, a farmer in Southern Rhodesia, applied for and secured a job on the scheme. I don’t remember the trip from Southern Rhodesia to Northern Rhodesia, but my mother’s parents lived in Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia, and we spent time with them, preparing for the long journey ahead. We had a green Vauxhall sedan, a lot of luggage, and a very long trip ahead of us. 

One of my memories of the trip was a task our father gave us. We each had to shout when we saw the wild tree he allocated to us. My sister had the brachystegia, my brother had something more difficult, and I had the baobab. I still have an inner prompting to say something about any baobabs I see!

Another thing we were each given was a noisy instrument... one was a whistle, another was a triangle, and the third a drum. I daresay there was a time limit allowed for those!

Eventually we settled into our house in the bush near Kongwa. The British Government had built houses as part of the scheme.

The school we went to was a long way away. A driver took us in a Land Rover and we urged him to go faster and faster along the dirt road! I remember the bottle of cool-drink my mother gave us each day. We had to share it during our break time. We marked the bottle and each took our turn to drink only the amount within our marks. I don’t remember anything about lessons, but the teacher gave me stilts to play with at break time.

Perhaps after a while my father realised that the Groundnut Scheme was bound to fail (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_groundnut_scheme ), and he decided to prepare our departure.