Tales from Mikes Stamp Collection (Part 2)

Tales from my Stamp Collection. – Part2

Hi Fellow Rotarians. Haven’t heard a peep or complaint so I will continue with my perambulations about my Passport Stamp collection.

You will recall that I had arrived in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in May 1956 and very quickly settled into the colonial way of life with guaranteed daily sunshine although it could get cold at night living at nearly five thousand feet above sea level. 

Most importantly I met Hilda and we got married in Salisbury. We had no relatives present. No worries about separating feuding  aunts and family members just our friends came to the Church and to the Reception at the Gin Distillery where I had been the Excise Officer. Not long after our marriage I was transferred to Nyasaland (now Malawi) as an Office Clerk and over the next two years the stamps in my passport reveal trips to South Africa for a holiday and through Mozambique for business. We even made a trip to the UK and purchased a new Ford Consul which we shipped to Cape Town in South Africa and then drove it back to Blantyre in Malawi via Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa with stamps from places like Beit Bridge, Nyampanda, Zobue, Changara and Mwanza.

Those of you who travel will have noticed that if you ever return to the United Kingdom there is never a stamp in your passport. If you have one it must be like a Penny Black in a real Stamp Collection.

In 1962 I was issued with a new passport having been transferred again. This time it was to Kitwe a mining town on the Copperbelt in what was then Northern Rhodesia and is now Zambia.

At the time Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland formed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland but a bit like the United Kingdom today the various countries wanted to break up and obtain independence. Below the surface rebellion was forming and there were many riots and troubles all around as the various groups argued with each other and with the British Government. Eventually independence was granted and Nyasaland became Malawi, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia and Southern Rhodesia became Rhodesia and ultimately Zimbabwe.

All very confusing!

This second passport is filled with many stamps as we travelled to and forth from each country to business meetings or by road for holidays in Malawi and South Africa.

Historically over many years most of the organisations in Northern Rhodesia had developed out of Southern Africa and the line of management was through Southern Rhodesia to South Africa for most companies. Obviously such an arrangement was anathema to the new Zambian Government who having got independence did not want to be controlled by white management in South Africa,

Thus, life changed for me. At this time as the Mobil Oil Corporation for whom I worked in Zambia as a local employee decided to appoint an American General Manager and my contract of employment was transferred from Cape Town to their organisation in Paris.

Life from then changed considerably. I became an Expatriate!  My salary was increased with foreign service premiums, myself and the family had our annual holiday fares paid back to London, the boys went to Boarding School in the UK at Company expense. To put it simply I had hit the jackpot whilst

One day 14^th October 1970 I had just got home from work, Hilda was pregnant and the other children were playing up when the telephone rang and my new American Manager Don Wood called me and told me he wanted me to go to New York. Obviously I asked when and he replied, ‘ Tomorrow’. I said I didn’t have a visa and the next day was a Saturday and the US Embassy on the Copperbelt was closed. No problem he said. Just drive down here to Lusaka tomorrow morning and I have arranged for you to get your visa and you will fly overnight to London and on to New York just in time to attend an International Sales Course starting on Monday. Somehow, I persuaded Hilda to let me go, made arrangements with friends to look after the children if Hilda went into Hospital as she had already had one false alarm.

I left the next morning early for Lusaka, got my visa and flew to New York. I was put into the Lexington Hotel on 42^nd Street with a room on the 8^th floor. The next morning I found my way along 42^nd Street to Mobil Oil’s building and booked into the Sales Seminar which lasted two weeks and included a trip to Detroit. Attending the course was my former Sales Manager from Cape Town who looked totally shocked when I walked in and took my place.  During the Seminar Caroline was born in Kitwe and Hilda held the fort whilst I enjoyed the good life in New York. What it was to have an understanding wife!

Returning from New York things were getting quite serious between Zambia and Rhodesia and the next stamp in my passport of any note is dated 11 November 1965. This was the day Ian Smith the Premier of Rhodesia declared Independence and set the whole of Southern Africa alight. I had travelled down to Salisbury (now Harare) on business and was driving back to Lusaka in Zambia and was listening to the Radio as I drove along when Ian Smith’s read out his Declaration and shortly after arrived at the border posts between Rhodesia and Zambia at the Kariba Dam. On the Rhodesian side I happened to meet a Customs Officer that I knew and was invited to have a drink with the boys before I crossed the Dam into Zambia.

I believe I was the first person to cross over the Dam wall after the Declaration and at the time a couple of Meteor jets of the Rhodesian Airforce flew overhead. Having seen the jets when I entered  the Zambian Customs post I was asked what was happening and asked whether the Rhodesians were going to attack. They were quite relieved when I told them that they were just drinking celebrating their Independence.

Not long after that I was transferred to Paris on what my American bosses called ‘a developmental assignment’ and had the opportunity to visit many countries in Europe at my employer’s expense. I made trips to Holland, Greece, Denmark, Turkey, Lebanon and  Canary Islands while living in a villa outskirts of Paris at La Celle de St Cloud travelling daily to the Office in Paris.