In my introduction to Benjamin Klempner’s update from Israel on the 20th of September, I referred to his taking his son into the war zone and close to the border where there was some degree of danger. I wrote that I would write about my experiences as a child and later, parenting in a country during a terrorist war, in the next post. Allowing children the freedom to take risks builds their resilience and equips them for the uncertain world we live in, You will find more on this lower down in this post, and in a series of future posts, but first a shout-out to a truly inspiring podcast host.
As you may know, I am the co-host and producer of The Yakking Show Podcast with Kathleen Beauvais. Recently, it was my turn to be on the other side of the microphone and camera when I appeared on Pat Wetzel’s Bump In The Road podcast. Pat has her own amazing story of overcoming adversity and she has an uncanny skill for finding people with their own incredible stories of overcoming their “Bumps In The Road”. I recently listened to her episode with Dr. Mary Neal who talked about her near-death experience after a kayaking mishap left her trapped underwater for 30 minutes.
A Child In A New Country
Shortly before my 6th birthday, my father flew to Rhodesia where he had been posted by his employer. Air travel in Africa in the 1950s was arduous, protracted and expensive. It took my father several days with many refuelling stops to make the journey from London. For convenience and I guess economy, my mother, younger brother and I made the journey by ship to Cape Town and then a two-day train ride to Salisbury.
That was a huge adventure for a young boy and the first of many I was fortunate to experience during my life in Africa.
My parents rented a house on two acres at the outer edge of Borrowdale, a suburb of Salisbury, the capital city. The house was about three miles from the junior school where I was soon enrolled and immediately subjected to teasing for my “Pommy” English accent. My father had a driver’s licence because he had learned to drive in the army during WWII. My mother had never driven a car.
A chauffeur driven car would come to collect my father for work and bring him home. He had the use of a company vehicle for weekends. I would be dropped at school in the morning, sometimes by a passenger van or minibus, occasionally travelling in the official large, stately, 1940’s 1940s-era Austin used for ceremonial functions. That enhanced my status at school and diminished the teasing. With essential transport requirements met my father was not in a great hurry to buy a car.
There was one problem, how to get me home from school which for kindergarten finished at 12 pm and for juniors, 1 pm.
For the first few weeks until my mother could arrange lifts for me with neighbours, she pushed my younger brother in a stroller the three miles to school and we walked home. his was unheard of in Rhodesia. There was limited public transport and no busses in our suburb. White people did not walk anywhere unless visiting places of interest or short distances between shops in city centres.
This added to my label of eccentricity. Going to school in a car, sometimes one that looked like a Rolls Royce, then walking three miles home under a hot African sun was more than most of my classmates could understand.
My First Horse
Fortunately, the walking home phase did not last long. Lifts with neighbours were arranged.
Then, my father started looking for a car. At the same time, he started looking for the horse he had promised me when we first arrived.
One Saturday, we travelled in the office minibus to Bromley about 25 miles or 40k southeast of Salisbury. There my father saw a three-year-old strawberry roan Basuto pony mare. He decided she would be right for me and bought her. Ignoring my mother’s protests that a car was a more urgent need because she couldn’t drive anyway.
Horse trailers were scarce in those days, so Rosebud as she was named was put in a stock carriage and sent by train to a siding in Lochinvar on the far side of Salisbury from Borrowdale. My father rode her home and she took up residence in a hastily built paddock with a huge wooden crate as a shelter.
The next day was my first riding lesson. I was lifted onto a very basic soft felt saddle on Rosebud’s back and my father led her out of the drive and along a road. At just three years old, she was not well trained and it soon became obvious that she had not been ridden much. Young horses and inexperienced riders are a dangerous combination
A few days later on my second or third ride, we came across an old rusty oil drum lying in the long grass on the side of the road. Rosebud was convinced it was a lion about to attack her and refused to move. My father kicked the drum to show her it was safe. She reared and dumped me on the ground. The first of many falls off that horse, it left me unhurt but shaken and with no sympathy from my father, I was told to stop whining and get back in the saddle. That was the style of parenting and I am glad I was exposed to it.
Relaxed Parenting and Building Resilience
Within a couple of months, my parents felt that I was competent enough to ride away from home on my own.
That was the start of a series of adventures and a lifelong love of horses and equine sports.
A few hundred yards down a quiet road were hundreds of acres of farmland which was designated for residential development in the years ahead. With its future uncertain for agriculture, it had reverted to grassland and bush. It linked up with a vast expanse of farmland and had become an informal game sanctuary inhabited by wild pigs, small antelope, civets and serval cats, an abundance of birdlife. Jackals and leopards were rumoured to pass through although I never saw any evidence.
This became my childhood extended backyard. After school, I would saddle Rosebud and ride along the footpaths that meandered across the expanse of unspoilt bush. At times in hollows or patches of bush, I could not see a single house or any sign of human interference. In my mind I was riding across the veld as a Boer fighter defending my country from the brutal English. Or a pioneer on the months-long trek from the Transvaal to the Rhodesian Highveld.
There were no mobile phones back then. Once I could ride reasonably well, my parents did not worry about me. Unless I had chores to do, collecting eggs, killing and plucking chickens, I was free to ride all afternoon as long as I was home by dusk and in time to feed and groom Rosebud.
I was not even 10 years old.
I have more to write about parenting and the gift my parents gave me by allowing me to take risks. I will continue in the next post.
If you are interested in other ideas on raising resilient kids, you might enjoy a recent Yakking Show episode with guest Jeff Nelligan who wrote a book with that name. You can get it here.
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