William Henry McKenzie 1920 - 1981

HARRY MCKENZIE

Harry was born on 10.8.1920 in Bulawayo.
My father was a pumper on the Railways and we lived in remote places in Railway houses along the line, where there were no neighbours. My father had charge of (what was to us) a huge pumping station on the river from where he had to keep the water tanks next to the railway line filled for the steam engines which passed through. There was also a very large deposit of river sand next to these water tanks, which the train crews needed for their engines, and it was on one of these sand dumps that Harry was spotted in the powerful engine lights, playing happily, having sleep walked from the house in the middle of the night. The engine driver restored him safely to the house where he hadn't even been missed. He was just a toddler then. Our houses were wooden ones raised off the ground, (affording a wonderful playing place for us) and cladded on the outside with corrugated iron. No indoor conveniences so the lavatory (or piccanini khia) was a small structure containing a bench seat over a pit, at the bottom of the yard, so at night, potties were the norm. Harry had one of these vessels dumped on him when he stupidly jumped out to boo my mother on her morning rounds of emptying the slops. One often encountered a variety of wildlife in these P.K.s ranging from spiders to lizards and even snakes. (Wasn't it Tori (as a baby who experienced this type of outdoor P.K. at the dam on the farm in which she had spotted a lizard and implored her mother not to go there as there was a crocodile in it?)
We were living in Kalomo when Harry reached school age, and he was enrolled as a boarder in the Government School at Mazabuka, so having made arrangements for him to be met on his arrival by one of the personnel, he was put on the train to make the journey on his own, but when he got there he got off on the wrong side of the track and was assumed not to have arrived, so this abandoned little boy with his school trunk, had to "make a plan" at that early age. He enlisted the aid of a piccanin to carry his trunk and guide him to the school. He was only at that school for a few years when Mary was ready for school, so a different plan had to be made for them both. By that time we had moved to a place called Mwomboshi, not very far from Lusaka and the best arrangement my parents could make to get them to school was to put them on a goods train before light in the morning for the short journey to Lusaka where the station master took them to his house and put them back to bed with his own school children. I can still remember the ritual of lighting up the paraffin lamps needed on these days, even for getting them to the train. This arrangement lasted until I was ready for school, so we then lived in Lusaka for a number of years and Dad did the commuting on a bike. At some point he had been using a motor bike, but not wearing goggles, he was unfortunate enough to have a moth fly into his eye, which resulted in the complete loss of sight in that eye.
When Laura was still in school we were transferred again to a place called Ngwerere so a new plan had to be made for schooling. Uncle Jack Reid stepped in then and undertook to be responsible for Harry's education in his own old school, St. George's, which had then moved from Bulawayo to Salisbury, and the rest of us were home-taught with correspondence courses until we were finally transferred out of Zambia (which was then deemed to be too dangerously malarial for Dad and me to survive many more attacks). And wonder of wonders, this new place, an actual village with its own ten pupil primary school, and a brick built house for us, was pure magic. Harry of course remained a stranger whom we only saw during the school holidays. On our final move from Zambia he was permitted to join us in our week-long journey in our goods van home on rail, and was dropped off in Harare as we passed through to our final destination. So you see he grew up as being somewhat of an outsider, which was sad for him.
When he finished school he was also employed by the Railways as a goods clerk in the Macheke station, and during that time he bought himself a vintage Citroen, shaped like a rowing boat with no roof and three seats (only one in the v-shaped back) which he permitted me and my friends, all aged about 11 or 12, and including Ronnie Drysdale, to drive it if we put our pocket money into it in petrol. None of us knew how to drive, and the thing was held together with wire mostly, with no ignition, so it had to be push started. We became quite proficient but didn't know how to keep the car stationary once it ignited, to allow the pushers on, so those who couldn't successfully scramble, got left behind. Harry didn't seem to mind what we were doing to his car, but the combined parents eventually put a stop to it.
Harry wasn't home long before the Second World War broke out and he was called up for active service as a boy of nineteen. He and my young looking Dad looked like brothers then and the doctor wouldn't divulge the results of Harry's medical to Dad on that assumption. (On the other hand, my mother who was aging naturally, was taken for Dad's mother on occasions. Not very nice for her). Six years of war followed before Harry mercifully came home again, and he returned to his old job, but at Headlands instead necessitating living away again. He served in North Africa mostly ending up in Italy when the war ended. One notable thing which happened to him during that time was when he crossed by troop ship from Africa to Italy, and the ship was torpedoed and sunk. He had been on deck duty that very early morning, so wasn't trapped below like so many others were, but he noticed that someone had dropped a cauldron of porridge at the top of the steps, which made those trying to escape, slip back on the porridge. He stayed as long as it was prudent to do so, pulling soldiers up, and when he finally found himself in the water, he grabbed onto a piece of floating plank only to find my boyfriend on the other end, so they made it out together after an hour in the water. He had formed an attachment to my boyfriend's sister, but sadly she didn't wait out the long war years for his return, and he never found another replacement for her. That might have had something to do with lack of opportunity as well, as he left the Railways to take up a bush job with the Blair Institute on malaria and bilharzia control. From then on he lived a lonely life in camps, mainly in the Concession and Chiredzi areas, and finally succumbed to the effects of the bottle, which cost him his job. He then went home again to Macheke, by which time Dad had retired and was living in what he facetiously called The White House (his private little joke), and Harry took a job at Theydon controlling the maize dumps there for the Grain Marketing Board. He was home when Dad died in that house, and stayed on with Mum until his own death at age 60 from lung cancer.