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My first memories of Africa, were incredibly surreal, I remember emerging from the fuselage of a long silver aeroplane, adorned with what appeared to me to be gigantic propellers, holding my mothers hand in one of my hands and in the other a brown paper bag into which I had recently, during the turbulent descent and landing, vomited the entire contents of my four year old stomach into. 

 

As we descended the steps from the aircraft and walked onto the tarmac at Entebbe airport, I think that what struck me as most strange, other than the extraordinary parcel held in my hand, was the heat, an almost perceptible solid wall of heat and light, the sun shining off every possible reflective surface and sending lightning blasts of flickering images back at you. Even the tarmac, seemed to be gleaming and I had my first experience of how the sun shines in Africa and makes the surface of the road, when looked at from a distance, disappear beneath what seems to be a shimmering pool of water .

 

We walked towards the airport building, it seemed to me that it was miles away, and all the while we were walking I was thinking, I wonder what everyone thinks about the mysterious parcel in my hand, do they know what is in it? Why won’t my mother carry it for me and spare me this embarrassment? But mum, plodded on, dragging me behind her in an effort to find somewhere suitable to dispose of the telltale bag containing my abject humiliation. I can only think that she had finally found a way to pay me back for the time I stuck chewing gum in her hair, while the curlers were still in; she had to have the chewing gum cut out. I think my father did the cutting, causing us to go away on holiday with an irate mother due to her hair being less than ideal in that a few chunks were missing from her normally quite perfect coiffure. The incident was hardly my fault though; in my opinion the person who should be blamed is the person who gave me the chewing gum. 

 

Upon entering the un-airconditioned building, another change in climate - sweltering closed in heat. We quickly sought out and found a lavatory, where I was allowed without too much persuasion to chuck the offending parcel into a dustbin, what a relief! A hurried drink in the stifling airport and then back out onto the tarmac again and into that dreaded mode of transport, the aeroplane, the silver cigar made entirely out of aluminium foil and hurtling through space at a million miles per hour. I had already decided, even at that young age, that air travel was not my most preferred mode of travel.

 

A nice air hostess was handing out boiled sweets to suck so our ears didn’t pop, we were taking off again and having all these people leaning over onto the one side of the plane - oohing and aahing at Lake Victoria, me in the meanwhile leaning as hard as I could in the opposite direction to bring the plane back over onto my side in fear of the stupid hoards of ignoramus; couldn’t they see that they were making the plane lean over because they were all crowded onto one side? and please could they close the shutters on the windows too? I didn’t care how pretty it all looked, I really didn’t want to know how far off the ground we were, and what if the terrible churning in my tummy began again? I knew there wouldn’t be enough brown paper bags on the planet, let alone on the plane, to contain what I was going to spew.

 

Fortunately I don’t remember much more about that trip, but once settled in Zambia and meeting many other émigré children I was completely disgusted with my parents for making me travel in such a manner, everyone else had arrived on a big boat that took two weeks, with swimming pools on board and entertainment for children, landing in a nice holiday town called Durban while enjoying a lovely holiday on their way here. Not my parents though, no messing about for them, “let’s fly to Africa and terrorize our four year old daughter in the process”. Only many years later, whilst crossing the English Channel and being horribly seasick, did I realize that getting that trip over with as quickly and painlessly as possible was the best. Judging by the magnitude of my sea sickness on the English channel, I would rather be quickly airsick than have to spend two weeks on a ship, heaving and clawing at the lavatory.