Three busy days in London (Day 3)

Musing. 

We are going to Africa in just over five weeks, and we are wondering how we'll react to how much they have changed since our childhoods in Zimbabwe (Peter) and in Tanzania (me). We are also wondering how much we'll remember from when we lived there so long ago - especially me because I was only 10 when I left. Today I had a similar experience of both looking forward to and also wondering about changes and memories. I walked through London to a reunion of some people from Lushoto school, my primary school in Tanzania. I have had no news of any of them since I left Tanzania. One of them, Angela, found me a few months ago and organized a get-together, of three of us who had been in the same class, and a couple of others who were also at the school at the same time. I wondered if I'd recognize any of them, if we would have anything to say to each other, if the meeting would be fun or awful.

Meeting again after 59 years.  Both Angela and I have kept a class photo from when we were in Mr Flowers' class. In that photo Heleni, Angela and I were stood side by side at the back, being tall. So a new picture was taken of the three of us, in the same relative positions. If I get one of those, I'll add it in.


The whole meeting was wonderful! We started with lunch at half past twelve and were still talking at quarter of four, when it became time to go.

And no, I didn't recognise anyone. And yes, we did share memories of each other and of the school. Angela had brought some photos and her old autograph book - with my childish signature as one of four best friends. When I talked about Mrs Smith's embroidery class she produced her sampler. I still have my autograph book and sampler somewhere, too. I wish I'd looked for them and brought them.

It was great just sharing memories of a kind of school that has completely vanished. It belongs to another era entirely, that little colonial boarding school with its motley collection of staff (some great, some appalling) and its African setting. I don't now know anyone apart from my brothers who experienced anything like it. We talked about the teachers, of course, and also about the playground (break place, we called it) with its gum trees  - we ate the gum and moulded it into shapes - and about the trees at the far end of the playground which had lianas we could swing on if nobody official noticed.There were the crazes that swept through: jacks, marbles, hula hoops, stilts.We remembered how sweets were doled out each weekend, strictly rationed, and how birthdays meant cakes and sweets sent from home for tea with best friends.

It was good, reassuring even, to find that everyone shared my view of the matron. To a woman we had hated her, cruel and spiteful as she was. We also all found we remembered the slimy spinach and cold, lumpy porridge. But while one of us shuddered to remember the banana curry, others had loved it. I couldn't remember it at all. Similarly it was interesting to find out that some of us remembered our time at Lushoto as happy (I do), others did not.


 Walking. I enjoyed walking through London, instead of taking the tube. The city becomes a smaller place in a way. It took only half an hour to walk to and from King's Cross to Trafalgar Square. I went through a lovely variety of neighbourhoods, architecture and public art works.


 Before I started back I looked at some collections in the Portrait Gallery itself. A Victorian gallery with the busts of great men, with the portraits of just two women making it to the walls behind them. To be fair. there was a (small) exhibition timed for the centenary of women's suffrage in the UK. I also visited the British Museum to admire a very small exhibition of Ethiopian art works. There wasn't much information though. Why are the eyes of the Ethiopians in the picture of their glorious victory at Adwa painted in the usual style of Ethiopia, but the eyes of the opposing Italian army not?









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