Caught in the Political Storm

THE END OF MY YEARS at Sakeji School came quite suddenly six years after they began. In October 1961 Northern Rhodesia was in turmoil as nationalistic fervor was being stoked by various political leaders against the British colonial government, and anyone thought to be associated with it were subject to increasing pressure. Kawama Mission, where we had lived for ten years, is an isolated mission outpost in a long line of African villages that stretch along 80 miles of the Luapula River Valley. Through the years under the leadership of my father it had provided medical care and a primary school education for thousands of families in the surrounding villages. The mission church had provided a strong spiritual community when at the peal of the mission bell many would gather for daily early morning prayer meetings and hundreds would gather in the mission church each Sunday for worship and learning from the Word of God. Additionally my parents ministered with another dozen or more churches in villages up and down the Luapula River Valley and my father helped with the supervision of other primary schools. At no cost to the government he served as Manager of Schools and was thus also able to determine the religious instruction education in the schools.

Despite all that the mission had done for the surrounding communities local political agitators threatened my father, trying to intimidate him to throw his support to them and accusing him of being an enemy of the people if he didn't. Dad was never active in politics in his homeland so was not about to get caught up in a situation that would compromise the neutrality of the mission in local African politics. In his mind this would compromise his calling to serve all people. Threats were made to burn down our thatched roof house and the local police, based about twenty miles away at Mwense, did provide protection for several months. Dad was taken ill by the cumulative stress of running the mission, protecting single lady missionaries who were nurses at the hospital and who would also be harassed, and taking care of our mother and youngest sister who was just six months old. The three older ones of us were across the other side of the country at Sakeji School and had little idea of what was happening at home.

One October evening after dinner on that other side of the country the headmaster, Mr. Hess, called me over to take a walk with him to visit the building where the diesel engines that supplied power to the school were housed, normally out of bounds. It was not usually a pleasant experience to be called out by him - I had had my share of stripes for misdemeanors. But he was not upset, he just wanted to have a chat. He had received the news and needed to tell me that my father was quite ill and had had to leave Kawama Mission and had been advised to go back to England for medical help. The decision had also been made that the three of us would finish out the term at Sakeji which would end in early December. We would then be looked after by friends and put on a flight to London to be reunited with our parents and younger sister in England.

Later I was to learn that my father's condition had deteriorated to a point that he was bedridden and needed medical care. The political trouble had escalated over the weeks and wooden bridges on the main road along the valley were being burnt down, threatening to trap our family and others at the mission. The government had foreseen that possibility and had built a 'security' route with few bridges needed and all built with concrete. Adding to the agony of the time the mission church, a large mud brick and thatched roof structure that seated several hundred people, went up in flames after embers from a nearby bush fire on the grassy river plain were blown on to the dry grass of the roof. Dad received the news while in bed.

That October my mother, a strong lady, put her ailing husband and six-month old daughter into the family's 1956 black and white Ford Consul and drove the 130 miles (see picture) to Fort Rosebery (now Mansa) where I had been born twelve years earlier, where there was a doctor and hospital, and also caring friends at Mansa Mission. The doctor took one look at Dad and sedated him for almost three days. A few days later the trio moved on to Mufulira on the Copperbelt to stay with Mr and Mrs. Barham, very good family friends for many years. Arrangements were made for flights from nearby Ndola to London, the first time any of our family were to travel by air. Before they left arrangements were made for flights and immigration papers for our travel two months later.

Confirming the volatility of the times, a month earlier (September 18, 1961) Ndola airport had been the destination for United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld for meetings to try and negotiate peace for neighboring Congo when his plane crashed short of the airport under suspicious and never resolved circumstances. Hammarskjöld was killed in the crash and a memorial stands at the site. Roberta and I returned to Zambia from the United States in July 1971 just before the tenth anniversary of that crash and we attended a ceremony remembering Dag Hammarskjöld led by Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda.

(c) 2008 Roy Kruse