The Good Old Days

Back in the Jurassic period when I was a kid in Zimbabwe, school holidays were very different from the way they work today. We had no TV. We only had our bikes, our friends and our imaginations - and freedom to roam.

We'd swim in the roadside ditches after a thunderstorm. We built forts and teepees and tree houses. We constructed secret tunnels in the elephant grass fields. We had picnics with edible wild plants. We made bike paths over fields and through ditches. We climbed gigantic granite boulders and explored the neighbourhood. We rode our bikes fast down the biggest hill we could find, or made the hour-long trip to the nearest big shop and back. We stopped off for ice-creams so large they melted before you got to the cone.

Our families had picnics and potlucks. We went to natural attractions like the river which flowed over smooth rocks, making a natural waterslide that ended in a lake. We went on bush-walks. We camped in the Vumba mountains, at Mana Pools on the Zambezi River, at Lake McIlwain. We travelled to our grandparents in South Africa and to friends around Zimbabwe.

We had secret groups and passwords and meeting places. We made what we didn't have - toys, hidey-holes, doll clothes, snacks from strange things such as salt and a rhubard-like garden plant.

We tracked animals, we ate marula fruit. We learned what birds lived where and how to run from buffalos or rhinos.

I wish my son's school holidays looked like mine...