Ups and Downs of One Sort or Another
After three months back at Sonderwater Army Base Camp, Morris Hirsch was posted to East Africa on two day's notice.
The Lockheed stopped off in Bulawayo where they spent a day. He was impressed with its neatness, cleanliness and sedate friendly confidence, confirming the reputation he gleaned from those who had visited. A place to settle, maybe, after the war, little anticipating the hand of fate.
They then droned over the seemingly endless African savannah and bush, too high to sight any game. They refueled at the hot primitive village of Mbeya, in Tanganyika. He remembered its limited dirt runway and Africans garbed in long white robes and red Moslem fez. They happily jabbered in Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. The first word to record was 'Bwana' (Master) which summed up the colonial relationships, apparently harmonious, expressed in the happy effusive welcome of 'Habari', with wide white smiles bisecting jet black faces, much blacker than Africans in South Africa.
What they enjoyed most was skirting the majestic, snow covered dome of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak. It was incongruously isolated in the endless plain. He mused he'd like to climb it when the war was over.
Nairobi was hot, humid and tropically green. The town bustled with military activity and East Indian and Arab commerce plying Eastern trinkets, filigreed ivory and animal curios. The backwater was very much alive. The exotic novelty was thrilling. The New Stanley Hotel, the White social hub, was effervescent and exciting, fueled by free flowing alcohol, the staple Kenyan fare: everyone imbibed. He was caught up in the exuberance which dispelled for a while the disappointment of his posting.
In the year Morris spent in East Africa his manic depressive affect was accentuated by stimulating experience alternating with boring routine, isolation and the soul depressing uncertainty of not knowing when the times of despondency would end. He served in all the field medical roles - to a Battalion, to a Troop Ship and Ambulance Convoy, in a Field Ambulance and Casualty Clearing Station.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
References:
Excerpt from Dr. Morris Isaac Hirsch's Unpublished Memoirs. Hirsch Archives.