William Ross McKenzie 1894 - 1974

THE LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSS McKENZIE (or Willie, as he was known)
Willie was one of twin sons born to Maria Jacoba and Thomas Henry McKenzie in Mafeking on 31st August 1894. His twin was named Jack and he had two older sisters, Minnie and Susan, an older brother Tommy and two earlier siblings, Roderick and an unnamed one, both of whom had died in infancy. I believe Ross to be an acquired name, which is yet another indication of the McKenzies having originally hailed from Ross & Cromarty, born out too by the naming of his first farm on retirement i.e. "Rossie" and his father's farm in Monze - Glenshiels.
I believe I told you about the twins’ "famous" crocodile. It was their habit when going to bed to take with them a jug of milk, which regularly attracted a python during the night. Whilst it was drinking their milk, they treated it as a pet and stroked it with bits of straw. On hearing them talking about their crocodile, their mother investigated which of course ended in the demise of their pet.
His father at the time of his birth was an engine driver working for George Pauling contractors who were laying the railway line through Bechuanaland to Bulawayo, and at the age of two in 1897, his mother put her daughters into boarding school in Bloemfontein to join her husband in Bulawayo where her next four children were born, and where Willie and Jack were enrolled in Plumtree School. They were not there for long as, in a fit of anger over something which displeased her at the school, their mother removed them from school and made no more attempt to educate them.
The family moved to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1907, then on to Zimba and Matetsi and his father bought a farm in Magoye, which much later, was sold and replaced with another farm in Monze, and this one was eventually bequeathed to his daughter Susan on his death. The Magoye period must have been at the time Willie married Ella as his marriage certificate declared him to be a farmer, which probably meant that he was helping his father. Also prior to this he was a transport rider, moving goods on ox-wagons. On one of these trips he was alone (inexplicably) when he was chased by a lion in very open country, and his only means of escape was to climb the only miserable thorn tree in sight where he was obliged to spend the whole night before the lion gave up and moved on. He recounted another strange incident whilst camping on one of his trips, and whilst sitting quietly beside his camp fire, he heard galloping horses approaching, but they stopped in the trees on the perimeter just outside the light cast by his camp fire and he heard his sister's voice urgently calling him. He found no trace of anyone however, so erroneously took this as advance warning that something bad had happened to someone in the family, as had happened on two other occasions, once when the glass on a portrait of his brother hanging on the wall of his house, for no reason whatsoever, cracked across his face from corner to corner at the time he later found was the time of his brother's death, and on the other, a trinket box presented to him by another brother, which proudly sat on a corner shelf, inexplicably fell from its place with no interference, and that also heralded the death of that brother.
They led a sad and dangerous life as death visited the family with monotonous regularity. His twin died in Bulawayo in 1907 of pneumonia, his youngest sister died in Livingstone in 1924 (the same year as her father died) and just a week before her scheduled wedding, of blackwater fever, as did his brother Harry at the age of eighteen at Monze, his brother Alfie was taken by a crocodile at the age of 25, Tommy of course first went missing for two years between the age of 7 and 9, and then again when he enlisted in the First World war, never to be heard of again, and his sister Susan and brother Eddie both died around the early nineteen fifties, Eddie in the cab of a railway engine in a crash or derailment. That left Willie and Minnie, and finally just Minnie after Willie's death on 4/7/1974. His poor mother survived all but four of her many children. (Sep 9 2007 I withdraw my understanding of Eddie's accident. Mona must be right, as I have just checked this out with Mary and her version is a similar variation of the accident in that she says he was unwell when the accident occurred and it was he who drove the engine into the buffers, injuring himself badly in the process. She says he was thrown against the hot metal inside the cab.)
You probably have photos of dynamiting the Kafue River. They would be of Alfie's brothers trying to retrieve his body from the crocodiles they had witnessed from the railway bridge, pushing Alfie's body downstream laid across their snouts. He had been crossing the river at a drift, probably swimming next to his horse when he was snatched. As a result Willie had a life-long hatred of crocodiles, and refused to have their effigies in the house. He had a very unpleasant experience once when he entered his pump house to find a group of crocodiles in possession of it. I don't know how he despatched them, possibly by returning to the house for a gun. He often had to contend with large snakes which he consigned to the furnace, and rats too, larger than the cat which was intended to control them, so that he was obliged to go to the assistance of the cat.
Periodic visitations by hoppers (locusts in their pre-flight stage) and army ants, were taxing events, the latter aptly named as they came in their thousands like an invading army, devouring everything in their path and making it necessary to remove oneself from their advance. They came during the night once in Ngwerere when Jack was still a baby, and the whole family had to abscond with their bedding to the pump house for shelter until they had passed, Willie riding pick-a-back on an African, as he was at that time laid up with a broken leg. When they returned the next morning, they found nothing but bones instead of joints hanging from the meat hooks in the pantry. No fridges then, so the custom was to have a pantry with a through draft and smooth concrete shelves and bowls of cold water to keep food cool.
When the word got out that the hoppers were coming, long trenches about a meter deep were quickly dug blocking their path, and drums of water put to heat over open fires. The hoppers didn't stop hopping though, and like lemmings jumped straight into the trenches where they were shoveled into grain bags and dumped into cauldrons of boiling water, to become instant protein meals for the eager gangs.
For the entire length of his married life, until his retirement, Willie worked as a pumper on the Railways. This post came with the provision of a house, free rail travel and goods transport, medical care for the whole family, and sufficient acreage to grow his own fruit and vegetables and keep his own dairy cows and whatever other animals he desired, but these pumping stations were always in remote areas with no neighbours, so the family lived in total isolation. The stations he was posted to were Kalomo, Mwomboshi, and Ngwerere in Northern Rhodesia before a long period in Southern Rhodesia at Macheke, and a return to Northern Rhodesia to a place called Kafulafuta before his retirement in Macheke where he bought a farm about five miles out on the Mtoko Road which he called Rossie. He kept a dairy herd, horses for his personal use, grew maize and opened what was known as a kaffir store, and remained there for a number of years before selling that and buying another farm a bit further out called Dawn, on which he did much the same as he had done on Rossie. When he sold Dawn it was to move nearer into the village, so he replaced that farm with a smallholding called Halsprings about 2 miles out on the Salisbury road, where he made building bricks, then he sold that to move to the larger Killarney where he again kept dairy cows. From there he bought his final property which was a partially completed house on 14 acres of land on the edge of the village, but only retained 5 of those on which was an established orchard, and where he again kept cows and horses. There were always chickens on each of these places, but that was Ella's own project. This house was adjacent to the one earlier occupied by Ella's parents and later owned by Willie and Ella's youngest son Jack. Whist he was completing the house, he rented a cottage in the village.
He had a very definite nose for property and could not resist the buying and selling he indulged in, in most cases without even consulting his wife before moving her to yet another new home, mostly in need of massive repair or development. She just accepted and adapted in her inimitable way.
He was also very skillful with his hands and could make a wide range of useful things, such as horse or ox-drawn vehicles, tables and deckchairs, and even baking utensils, endowing his children with miniature sized deckchairs, stools and baking pans to suit their sizes.
Willie was a kindly and unselfish man who was always ready to help those around him who might need his assistance. He was particularly fond of the babies in the family, but had less patience with them as they grew older, though he was never at any time mean or harsh with them.
He had a sense of responsibility towards his mother and took care of her physical needs, but emotionally he found her difficult, and was apt to abandon her to his wife to deal with.
He loved horses and usually owned a few wherever he was. He encouraged us all to become proficient at riding. For a short while he also had a racehorse in Lusaka.
One notable thing about him was his attachment to his hat. He NEVER went out of doors without it, and even wore it on the verandah. Another notable thing about him was his apparent youth where on occasions he was mistaken for his wife's son and his children's brother.
In his younger days, Willie traveled by motorbike, but he didn't wear protective goggles, and whilst traveling by night once, a moth attracted by his headlight, flew into his eye resulting in complete blindness in that eye.
He and Ella were a very close couple, whose habit it was to wake very early to chat and drink copious cups of coffee in bed before getting ready for the day. In the evenings it was their wont for her to read to him. He was very fond of walking and did much of that, but he also liked above anything to sit beside a river, a tumbling brook or a waterfall.
He died comfortably in one of his deckchairs in the bedroom of "The White House" on 4/7/1974, cared for to the end by his devoted Ella.