Allan Anderson's Blogs

After returning from six months’ “Homeland Furlough” in 1970 and a short return to Bulawayo, my parents were promoted to Brigadiers and appointed Officers Commanding, Zambia Command, based in Lusaka, the capital city. They were there for just over two years (1971-73), after which their last appointment was in South Africa. After three years working in the Magistrates’ Courts and becoming a public prosecutor in 1970, I moved to Vereeniging in South Africa to attend a small Pentecostal Bible College in March 1971. Carol had begun nursing training in Salisbury, but withdrew and would pick it up again in Canada after she moved there with her husband and daughter in 1980. After a few years in Canada, they moved to the United States and live on the south-western coast of Florida. P.O. Box RW 193 Ridgeway, Lusaka. Zambia. June 1971. This is the first opportunity I have had of writing to our friends since we arrived in Zambia, as we have been kept very busy. We had a long wait before w...

3 Forbes Avenue, BULAWAYO. November 1967. Once more we wish to send our best wishes… If anything we have had a busier time than usual this year. I have no African servant now, as we can’t afford one, so I do all my own housework, but I must say my family are most helpful. At the beginning of the year I had an unusual experience of being in charge of the Men’s Hostel while the Officers were away. This was something new for me, and I learned a lot in that month. One thing to which I could not get hardened was to see police taking off young fellows who were staying at the Hostel. I am still Chairman of the Women’s World Day of Prayer Committee, and of the Women’s Group Liaison which takes a good deal of my time, especially the W.G.L. which includes arranging united Training Courses, attendance at Working Party meetings in Salisbury, as well as Committee meetings. At our Annual General Meeting I tried to resign from Chairmanship, as I felt it was making too many demands on my time,...

  NOTE: Letters between June 1963 and November 1965 are missing from my files. We had our second “Homeland Furlough” from December 1964 to June 1965, although I had to return to Salisbury for the beginning of my ‘O Level’ year in January. It was my first air flight, in a Vickers VC 10. My parents were now returning to Rhodesia by boat from Southampton and train from Cape Town to their new appointment in Bulawayo, my father’s birthplace and where his parents had retired. His parents had spent their entire ministry in the London Missionary Society (Congregational) since their marriage in 1915 in rural area of this region (Shangani and Dombodema missions). Three Anderson generations before that were involved in the LMS in South Africa since the first William Anderson arrived in Cape Town in 1800. His younger brother Alec and oldest sister Sheila and their families (eight of my cousins!) were also living there. At one stage two other sisters and their families lived in Bulawayo, so we ...

Since posting the first four groups of newsletters, I have had some encouraging comments from friends who have read them. I did not anticipate that my mother's words would have such impact over half a century later. But in particular, I would like to highlight the comments received from two Zimbabwean women academics who work in a British university, who I know personally. I have their permission to publish their comments but for the moment they remain anonymous. The first one is here: Your mother’s letters are powerful and offer an amazing and refreshing window into the missionary world of that time in ways that I’ve not seen in the literature about missionaries that I’ve read. As such the suggestion for you to turn the blog into a book is an excellent one. I can also imagine a movie/documentary type!!! Additionally, ‘seeing’ the environment you grew up in and the kinds of people your parents and grandparents were and the kind of person you became is also testimony to the many pos...

NOTE: My parents’ first term in Zambia was only two years, and they were to return later as Officers Commanding the Zambia Command, which was separated from Rhodesia after Zambian independence in 1964. They were sent back to the Howard Institute, the largest rural Army mission station in the Territory; this time Dad was appointed Principal. Carol and I had to change schools again. After only six months in boarding school in Lusaka, I went to Prince Edward School (a boys’ boarding school in Salisbury/ Harare) and Carol went to Routledge primary school next to Prince Edward in Belvedere, for the first time as a boarder. This is quite a controversial letter, at least for me it is reading it almost half a century later! Some of my mother’s comments are looking at the consequences rather than the causes of a liberation struggle going on in what was a European settler-ruled country, where Africans were segregated and did not have the right to vote. The Rhodesian white-ruled government declar...

NOTE: These three letters cover the two years following our first "Homeland Furlough" in England in 1959, when they only spent a few months back in Sinoia before being transferred to Mazabuka in what is today Zambia.   P.O. Box 33, Sinoia. S. Rhodesia. June 1960. I must write to all my friends letting them know how we are getting on since returning from our very enjoyable Homeland furlough. [1] Unexpectedly when we reached Bulawayo Keith was asked to inspect the Matabeleland schools as they had been without a D.C. [Divisional Commander] since July, so he went off into the Bush and the children and I took up temporary residence at the D.H.Q. [Divisional Headquarters] in Bulawayo. We were happy to associate with the Bulawayo European Corps and Allan was able to play his cornet with the small band. One Sunday we went to an African Location Corps, where they have a Band. Allan played with them but as we had to march about 2 miles to the Open Air stand in terrific heat, ...