“Mine Shafts and Mountains”

A true story dedicated with respect to a great friend, the late Robert Hynds, and his family.

August is poised to pounce on us in a matter of days, bringing with it the reality of whatever our lives may have in store for us. For most people residing in Southern Africa the inevitable changes will be welcomed because their days will become warmer and longer.

For me, the memories of our own wonderful days of childhood in Rhodesia sprint back into my mind every year at about this time. In particular I love to reflect on the splendid first few weeks of spring in that part of the world when Mother Nature refreshes the landscape so perfectly. Her miraculous palette of colours like those burgundy, yellow, copper, lime green, dark green, and so many in-between hues appear in all their splendour. They seem to burst into life all over the M’sasa trees. And as prolifically on the Prince of Wales Feathers trees. Other indigenous trees and shrubs too. For me, these two tree varieties in particular seem to vie for the highest accolades in God’s art gallery every year.

But I also remember spring time in Rhodesia for other reasons. You will probably have one or two stored in your own memory bank too.

We were mostly a gregarious bunch of kids, surrounded by true friends, still in our early teens, and settling into the new routines of our high school careers. Two of my faithful friends were Robert Hynds and Roger Nichols. The three of us had often discussed the possibility of exploring what was left of the three old mine shafts that existed as large as life in the bundu behind our two plots out at Sabonabon. My much-loved uncle Dudley Attwell had previously discovered them one evening when he was out hunting guinea fowl around there.

On Friday 7 August at school I could see that Robert Hynds was troubled by something. At recess mid-morning that same day my suspicion was confirmed. Robert told me that his parents had flown out of Salisbury early that morning en route to England, for their annual holiday. They were aboard a scheduled Central African Airways (CAA) Vickers Viscount flight that would stop off at Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, as well as about 5 other stops including Benghazi, on the North African coast.

As we all loved adventure, Roger Nichols and I hatched a plan to cheer Robert up by taking him “potholing” that very afternoon. You see, the idea had germinated during our English Literature class. That week our teacher Mrs. Eakins had been revising part of our set book which described in its main story a lot about potholing in the UK. The die was set, and Roger, Robert and I agreed to meet at my home as early in the afternoon as possible. We were going potholing!

I remembered that the previous weekend, Uncle Dudley was telling my parents about the old shafts, saying that they were completely unprotected by any fencing material, heavily overgrown by trees and shrubs and were therefore extremely dangerous.

He was deeply concerned that any unsuspecting person – or wild animal – wandering around that part of the bush could easily fall into the shafts and never be seen again. He was pretty sure that these neglected old mine shafts must have been sunk by early prospectors who had hoped to discover a second Cam and Motor gold mine. “The Cam” as we called it was, after all, only about two miles away from our plots and was very productive. It was Rhodesia’s single biggest producer of gold. The thought that pioneering prospectors had invaded the surrounding countryside around our home while searching for that illusive pot of gold was certainly an exciting thought.

Well, after Uncle Dudley had told us his fascinating story, it had taken me no more than twenty four hours to get myself into that part of the bundu to find the shafts. I remember lying on my stomach gingerly (for a few minutes) peering down into the haunting darkness of the first shaft. Then I found the other two, but they were not, apparently, quite as deep as the first one. However, they all demanded a great deal of respect because they were equally as unpredictable.

I secretly named them, in turn, “Kaposi,” “Kapiri” and “Katema.” In English, “One,” “Two” and “Three” and came from a chant my black friend Ponisa Mafunga (son of our “cookboy”) had taught me when we counted in his language. I was privileged to have the most knowledgeable teachers on earth when it came to the language and culture of Africa! Ponisa was six years old when we first met and soon after that he taught me the rudiments of his language.

I qualified the shafts for rank entirely on their estimated depth, according to my very rough estimations. And ignorance. As a measure, I dropped a stone down each shaft and counted how many seconds it took to reach the bottom. “Katema” was, according to my method of assessment, only about thirty feet deep, but it had an angry swarm of African honey bees in it. I made a mental note to be very careful not to disturb them any day I might decide to climb down into the shaft.  “Kaposi” seemed to be bottomless and” Kapiri” fitted somewhere between the other two. A very real threat was that the walls of all three shafts were unstable. All I had to do was kick some soil into any of them and even that light disturbance would cause telling mini-landslides to happen almost immediately. Each slide would have produced enough rocks and gravel to fill a wheelbarrow.

The Friday afternoon in question, three high-spirited boys Rog, Rob and Dave set off through the bundu carrying a couple of coils of cotton rope, our sheath knives (of course!) with our hearts full of adventure and our young heads packed full of plain stupidity. Had our parents known what we were up to…. Well, let your imagination run wild!

After taking a look at the three mine shafts we all agreed to tackle “Kapiri” first and at least learn a thing or two about climbing down treacherous scars of the mines of days gone by. I remember that the main deciding factors were that we could actually see the bottom of the shaft about fifty feet below us. Also, there was a sufficiently big tree close enough for us to attach our longest rope to its base and still have enough of its length to reach the bottom of the gaping hole. Also, it didn’t host a swarm of bees.

We agreed that only one of us would climb into Kapiri at a time, leaving the other two at the surface to mount some sort of rescue mission if needs be – although we had no idea what that rescue mission would look like. Maybe one would remain on site to guard the injured climber while the other ran back to my home to call for help.

The most difficult part of each descent proved to be for every one of us to dangle our body over the edge while holding tightly onto the rope with both hands. Keeping a cool head as loads of loosened soil and rocks crashed all the way to the bottom was also inclined to rapidly drain one’s courage, but in the end our competitive nature saw to it that we managed to clamber down and then out again, climbing hand over hand. Because of the provokingly eerie feeling we got while down there, our period of rest before climbing back to the surface, hand over hand was as short as we could make it! Brave and infallible as us guys thought we were, the spooky images coming to mind along with the definite feeling of haunting was almost too much to bear.  We’d get back to the surface sweating and gasping for breath and, quite honestly, glad to be out of the final resting place of who knows what!

Anyway, we had accomplished what we had set out to do, we felt good about our feat – albeit with slight pangs of guilt, and slapped each other on the back as friends are apt to do. Then, judging that there was just enough time left before sunset for each of my pals to be able to cycle home safely, we packed up our kit and walked back to our oasis-like property.

Robert rode off towards Gatooma to reunite with the Leach family who were his uncle, aunt and cousins. He was boarding with them for the duration of his parents’ overseas holiday. The family lived in a lovely home on Robert Taylor Drive. Roger and I waved him goodbye, content in the knowledge that our crazy little expedition had at least taken Rob’s mind off the fact that his parents were away for a month.

Little did we know that the course of life was to deal Robert a crushing and most terrible blow.  The Vickers Viscount Christened “Mpika” with registration number VP-YNE from Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia had flown all the way up Africa and was only a few miles south east of Benina International Airport at Benghazi, Libya, with Rob’s parents and some forty five other passengers and a crew of seven aboard.

Some say it was pilot fatigue probably due to pilot error, but nevertheless the Viscount crashed into high ground on its approach and of all of the passengers on board, only eighteen survived.

I still have the image of that Sunday’s national newspaper in my mind as clear as day. The Sunday Times carried the story with bold headlines announcing that the aircraft had crashed. Further down the columns of the article it listed the names of the passengers who so tragically lost their lives. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Hynds stood out at me as if welded to my very being.

Of course our little Gatooma community was devastated by the news but that simply couldn’t possibly match what I felt for my pal, Robert. Afterwards, during my many hours of regret and deep feelings for the family, I thought back to the Friday morning when Rob seemed to be so untypically sad at school. Maybe his spirit had pre-warned him of a real premonition about how long it would be before he would see his parents again. That was to be, as it turned out, many decades later.

Eventually, after living with his uncle and aunt and family, Rob qualified to join the Royal Navy. All through his exemplary service as a sailor on one of Britain’s warships, my sister Brenda and I kept in regular contact with Rob and cherished the all-too- rare occasions when we were able to spend a few hours with him when he was on shore leave. Rob had matured into a great young man with great looks and was always a whole load of fun!

Sadly, one day many years later Rob suddenly passed on to join his parents in Heaven. It was another inexplicable and very tragic event, as awful as the one that took away his parents’ lives on the 9^th. of August 1958. Rob is the only one who really knows what happened during the last fatal minutes of his life on earth. None should ever judge him because it is not given to us to understand some things about life.

However, as clearly as there will always be the splashes of brilliant colours on the M’sasa and Prince of Wales Feathers trees in late August and September, so our spirits will forever be lifted sky high at this time of the year. It is the natural epitaph to those we loved. And those we love. It’s sent to us all as a reminder of the promise of eternity, with thoughts gently triggered by the flooding back of memories coming all the way from the awe-inspiring Southern Africa we loved so dearly.