12 R E C O L L E C T I O N S
Family Histories
KWIATKOWSKI Family
9/ Dad's letter
Dad's unit left Italy and sailed to England to be stationed in East Anglia. There was still nothing settled about our future. It wasn't until mid 1947 that he wrote to us that we were going to join him in the U.K. once he was demobilised, date still unknown. By this time people started leaving the settlement. There were empty houses a few streets away, passing these on our way to the cat’s favourite area of the jungle didn't really make us think about the changes they signified. A month or so later reality arrived in the shape of Dad's letter. We were joining him in the UK early the following year. Within weeks the settlement administration notified us of our leaving date at the end of February 1948. We began getting ready though the date was months in the future. Mum had made a large, cane woven “suitcase" (still in my possession). All the rest of our meagre chattels would go into bundles.
Time passed quickly. At Christmas, the Church was packed with people attending Midnight Mass, many had to stand outside. There was a full moon shining very brightly, it's silver light clearly picked out the nearest buildings of my school and for the first time I realised soon all this was to be just a memory. The first weeks of the New Year passed in a mild series of disruptions in daily routine. It was the hottest part of the year but the jungle with it's coolness no longer attracted us.
At the beginning of February, I no longer had to attend school. It felt strange, an unpleasant change. At home we were packed, living a strange existence of waiting for the day. I can't remember the exact date when, towards the end of the month, we mounted a lorry outside the storehouse and were taken to an assembly point by the shop/post office. There a line of buses awaited us. It was about 2 a.m. Quickly aboard and settled on wooden seats we were on our way with minimum delay. It was a cool night as we headed for Masindi and the road for Kampala, Uganda's capital, and the railway station for the Kenyan port of Mombasa. About 6 o’clock our bus stopped, the driver and his assistant went off in the direction of a nearby patch of trees. They returned with two large containers of water and refilled the radiator of our bus.
Soon we caught up with the rest of our convoy. We drove through grassland until midday. That's when disaster struck our bus. There was a loud thud from the front, a gush of white water vapour and we stopped. As the rest of the buses went on, our driver went off somewhere. We had stopped in a banana plantation but there were no buildings or people visible anywhere. It was hot, very hot. We waited and waited and waited. About four hours passed before another bus turned up and we were on our way again. The sun was setting when we reached the waiting train at Mukono, the station 29 kilometres outside Kampala.
The night was spent on the train which moved off the next day at about ten. Soon we were passing over the bridge spanning Owen Falls. It took seven attempts before the train mastered the slope to the next station with the help of a second engine. The line ran through some spectacular country, sometimes at walking pace, as demonstrated by my brother walking beside it at Tororo on the Ugandan/ Kenyan border. A derailed cattle train held us up overnight. There were still dead cattle by the track when we moved off in the morning. Making up for the lost time the train travelled quickly, by midday we were on the causeway to Kilindini Harbour. From an unseen mosque, a loud voice was calling the faithful to prayer. The short distance from the train to the waiting ship "M.V. Caernarvon", only took minutes. Up a wide ramp carrying our belongings and we were aboard for the next part of our travels. We sailed before noon the next day. Goodbye Africa.