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Postcards from the Past
By Susan Cook-Jahme
Rated "G" by the Author.
Last
edited: Friday, February 29, 2008
Posted: Tuesday, May 11, 2004
*When Bill first invited me to write editorial for Rhodesia was Super I was thrilled. At last, my chance to delve deep into the past. A chance to share mutual amusement of antics carried out by local people in Africa, going about their daily lives and to re-live the memories of golden years with fellow “When-wee” brethren, who have a passion for a place we all lived in and loved. A massive country that now exists in cyberspace,Rhodesia.
“Rhodesia is Super” was stretched on the banner across her ample breasts, as the logo of the cheerful looking elephant changed shape and bounced with every step she took. I watched her with envy and wished my flat chest would miraculously billow like hers and I too could wear a T-shirt like that with such confidence down Salisbury’s First Street on a Saturday morning, causing the school boys heads to turn in their dry-cleaned Number One’s and the passing troopies packed in the back of R.L’s to wolf-whistle and wave. It was the 1970’s and this patriotic slogan was amongst the many that had been made up along with bumper stickers such as “I’ve got a Tiger in My Tank, he Ate Harold,” “Rhodesians Never Die”, “Vote R.F”, “Fergus Drink’s Dairy-Board”, the list was endless. If we didn’t have a sticker or T-shirt, the slogan was carefully written in chubby rounded graphics, coloured in with psychedelic paisley designs, sticky-taped over to make it waterproof and stuck on our pencil cases. Although our young men were fighting a bush war, we were living a life with a passionate pride for our Country and its people. We had a well run government, its infrastructure was sound and we stubbornly refused to allow Sanctions imposed upon Rhodesia by the rest of the world to affect us. No, we learnt to recycle paper and plastic, using every resource available to us. We were a proud people, self sufficient in agriculture, mining, health, transport, education and our pensioners were always paid on time. How sad the stark contrast is today, where once a proud Nation stood, smokes the Ruins of a Zimbabwe in chaos, genocide, anarchism and corruption.
Yes, Rhodesia was Super, let it live on in our memories, along with the good old days from the past.
Susan Cook-Jahme© Copyright 2004
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