My mother, enjoyed having a daughter between her two sons, it gave her reason to be feminine and teach me to some extent about femininity. She also enjoyed dress making and having me to dress gave her the perfect opportunity to make “pretty” clothing for me. Much, I think to her disappointment, I thought I was one of the boys, and although not too averse to being dressed up on the odd occasion, much preferred to dress the same as them, bare-feet or slops, shorts and T-shirts. I always felt quite uncomfortable in girly clothes, particularly if I was made to wear them too often.

Occasions that were looked forward to with great expectation and significantly celebrated whilst we were in Zambia, were birthdays. Any excuse for a party! I recall one such occasion, in fact I don’t think I will forget it for the rest of my days. It was my 7^th birthday and I was having a party. Mummy had spent literally days, baking, organizing games, making little tiny mini trifles, and doing all those things absolutely necessary for a really successful Mufalira Birthday Party. 

Shortly before our guests were due to arrive, Mummy had us bathed and dressed and my brother and I were told to wait on the verandah and more expressly, stay clean. Mummy had sewed a suitably pretty new dress for me for the party and I wore little white frilly socks and black patent leather shoes. My brother, never the most patient of people was fidgeting while sitting next to me on the stoep, I was too distracted and excited to notice that he was plotting something. Mummy was indoors putting the finishing touches to her make up or changing the baby, something of that nature.

The driveways of most homes were not paved and were actually composed of gravel, the reason for this being that the copper mine had so much waste rock from the mining process that these rocks were crushed and then sold as gravel for paving driveways. Sometimes the rock was crushed till it was very small and other times left a little larger. Out driveway was covered with the very fine, small type of gravel and we would spend hours like monkeys seeking salt, sifting through the gravel searching for bits of malachite or fools gold and many other types of semi precious stone that became mixed in with the gravel.

Ivan was obviously bored and as always fidgety, his busy little mind mulling over ways to torture me, then he must have hit on it, the perfect plan to relieve his boredom! He called me over to him and told me to close my eyes and open my mouth. There I was, thinking that he had stolen something from the party table and was going to share his loot with me, I was hoping that it was a butterfly cake, so I shut my eyes and opened my mouth, what happened next? He threw, with full force, a handful of the driveway gravel straight into my wide open maw. After the initial nasty shock the full horror of what he had done hit me, I flipped out, I had a mouth full of gravel, I couldn’t breathe and I had swallowed quite a few pieces of gravel with the force of his throw.

I ran into the house screaming (as best I could through a mouth full of gravel), retching and spluttering saliva and bits of gravel all over the carpets, while searching for my mother, this was one he was not going to get away with. As I found my mother and told her what my ape of a brother had got up to this time, in-between spitting out gravel and hoping that my teeth were not going to be spat out with it, our guests started arriving. Mummy cleaned me up as best she could, cleaned the floor up as best she could and comforted me far too little in my opinion for the severity of the crime against me. She couldn’t give Ivan a spanking because he was busily ushering our guests in. I was panic stricken because I felt that due to swallowing a few pieces of gravel I was going to die a terrible cruel death. Mummy said I shouldn’t be so silly, that I would just poop it out. Then I was panic stricken because I thought that it would hurt when I excreted the gravel.

I didn’t have that great a birthday party, chiefly because Ivan had escaped punishment for his completely stupid behaviour, so I didn’t even have the satisfaction of his punishment to make me feel better.  One thing I did learn though, was when Ivan the Terrible told you to close your eyes and open your mouth, you never ever listened to him because next time it could be a sweet but you never knew with him so best not go there.