Nomondi's Basket

By Gael Whelan

Two men entered a branch of Barclays Bank on Pearl Street in Salisbury this morning. They held the four bank employees at gunpoint whilst they robbed the vault that had just been opened for business hours. They escaped with five hundred thousand pounds. Along with the money, three newly minted seal matrixes and their molds were stolen. The seals are unique in that two of them are used in the office of the prime minister Sir Godfrey Martin Huggins, while the third seal is a newly designed seal, designed by local artist Lawenta Godari. This seal has been minted in honor of Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth IIs upcoming visit to Southern Rhodesia in August of this year. Seal matrixes of this type are often considered to be powerful political tools, as they are used to seal and confirm agreements between foreign governments. The seal designed by Godaria is known as the Great Rhodesian Seal and was to be used to notarize the signing of the agreement between Northern and Southern Rhodesia to build the Kariba Dam Hydro Electric Project.

At time of going to press, the British South Africa Police Robbery Branch have no leads as to the whereabouts of the thieves or the stolen property. Barclays Bank has offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds for the return of the stolen property and the capture and conviction of the thieves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Jan 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781482877281

Gael Whelan

Gael was born in Scotland and went on her first journey, as an infant, from the United Kingdom to Canada on the Queen Mary liner. This was to be the first of many journeys to come. When she was three years old, she moved to Africa with her family. It was here that she learned that Africans referred to a journey as a “safari.” Somehow, the family adopted “safari” for every trip, as it built anticipation for an exciting adventure! The earliest safaris took the family along the strip roads of northern and southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) where there were many close encounters with wild elephants, buck, birds, crocodiles, rhinos, and people! To this day, every member of Gael’s family continue to call their trips “safaris.” It was on one of these safaris to Mana Pools that Gael introduced her young children and their cousins to the characters of the Masawani Game Park, to entertain them on their safari. The children enjoyed the stories immensely, especially when their ideas were woven into the tale and time seemed to stand still. Gael’s sister, Lexie, thankful for both the peace and quiet of the distracted children and the memories the stories evoked, insisted that they be recorded! Well, here they are. It is the author’s hope that everyone who reads her stories will develop a curiosity and a respect for life and nature in other countries.

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Nomondi’s Basket

GAEL WHELAN

Copyright © 2017 Gael Whelan. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-7727-4 (sc)

978-1-4828-7728-1 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/africa

01/09/2017

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One The Adventure Begins

Chapter Two The Police Become Involved

Chapter Three Lost in Zimbabwe

Chapter Four Namali and Tembo are Rescued

Chapter Five Nomondi Finds a Safe Haven

Chapter Six The Prisoners Refuse to Cooperate

Chapter Seven The Rescue Team for Nomondi Goes into Action

PART TWO

Chapter One We Meet the Intrepid Scott Brown Interpol Agent ‘Extraordinaire!’

Chapter Two Timzani Primary School

Chapter Three The Elusive Fat Man Rears His Head

Chapter Four Hot Air Balloons

Chapter Five Planning a Trip to the Ancient City of Zimbabwe

Chapter Six We Meet Monty Serote

Chapter Seven Arrival at the Zimbabwe Ruins

Chapter Eight Monty Becomes Trapped

Chapter Nine Nomondi to the Rescue!

Chapter Ten Monty Spills the Beans!

Chapter Eleven Hot Air Balloon Races

Chapter Twelve Mike is Held Hostage

Chapter Thirteen Medals and Money!

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Prologue

The Rhodesian Herald

24 June 1954

Two men entered a branch of Barclays Bank on Pearl Street in Salisbury this morning. They held the four bank employees at gunpoint, whilst they robbed the vault that had just been opened for business hours. They escaped with five hundred thousand pounds. Along with the money, three newly minted seal matrixes and their moulds were stolen. The seals are unique in that two of them are used in the office of the Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Martin Huggins, while the third seal is a newly designed seal designed by local artist, Lawenta Godari. This seal has been minted in honour of Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II’s upcoming visit to Southern Rhodesia in August of this year. Seal matrixes of this type are often considered to be ‘Powerful Political Tools’, as they are used to seal and confirm agreements between foreign governments. The seal designed by Godaria is known as the Great Rhodesian Seal, and was to be used to notarize the signing of the agreement between Northern and Southern Rhodesia to build the Kariba Dam Hydro Electric Project.

At time of going to press, the British South Africa Police, robbery branch, have no leads as to the whereabouts of the thieves or the stolen property. Barclays Bank has offered a reward of twenty thousand pounds for the return of the stolen property, and the capture and conviction of the thieves.

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Chapter One

The Adventure Begins

Present Day Zimbabwe

Simone ran up the path that wound between the balancing rocks. She glanced over her shoulder to see if she had been followed. So far, she was alone. She hurried on up the hill. When she reached the top of the hill, she looked down into the valley in front of her. She could see the smoke rising from an open pit fire. Simone suspected that Tembo’s mother, Namali, had started the fire. She usually built a fire, when they were out here at Myanara, to boil water and the colouring for dyeing some of the grass that she used in her basket weaving. Namali’s fame as one of Africa’s foremost basket weavers had grown over the last eight years. Her work was meticulous, and her baskets were sought by international buyers.

Namali and Simone’s mother, Lexie, had been close friends for many years. It was Namali that had given Simone her African name, Nomondi. The name Nomondi means ‘patience’, and Simone never knew if Namali had thought that she had lots of patience, or if anyone dealing with her had to have a lot of patience. When she asked her mom which it was? Her mother would just laugh and say, ‘It’s both. Sometimes, we have to be patient with you, but mostly, you have lots of patience when learning something new.’

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Nomondi is 10 years old. She stands 145-cm tall, and weighs forty-three kilograms. She has fair hair and grey eyes. Her distinguishing features are her happy smile and sharp wit. She often has her friends laughing in minutes at her humorous observations about life. She had come to visit her grandparents at their farm in Zimbabwe. She travelled up from Molelo with Tembo and her mother, Namali.

Tembo and her mother were staying on the farm, Myanara, right next to Nomondi’s grandparents’ farm, Chikoma. While Simone and Tembo are not in the same grade at school, they ride the Green Mamba to the school that they both attend in a small town called Timzani.

The Green Mamba is one of the regular local buses in Timzani, and it derived its nickname from the fact that it is painted a brilliant green colour similar to the poisonous snake of the same name. It takes them to Timzani and then back to Molelo every school day. They both have to wear a uniform to school, and are always very glad to be able to change into summer dresses or jeans and tank tops when the school day is over.

Namali and Lexie had become very good friends when they decided to open a craft cooperative to help the women of Timzani and Molelo sell their crafts. The cooperative has grown and is now very successful. Many tourists travelling between South Africa and Zimbabwe stop to buy curios and crafts from the Molitizani Craft Store. Lexie had come up with the name of the store. Neither she nor Namali could make up their minds which town the store should be named after until Lexie suggested that it should be a combination of the names of both towns.

Of course, it helps that the store stands on the outskirts of one of the biggest game parks in Africa. The Masawani Game Park covers an area of over fifty thousand square miles. It is so big that the rangers use different means of transport in the park such as Land Rovers, a small aeroplane, all terrain vehicles, horses, bicycles, and even a helicopter. Of course, there are also the large lorries or trucks that come specially equipped with seats on the back that are used to take the tourists on ‘game drives’.

Tembo comes to stay on the farm, Myanara, whenever her mother comes to supervise the cutting and collecting of the special grass she uses for weaving her famous baskets. This time, Namali had offered to let Nomondi travel with her and Tembo, so that she could visit her grandparents. When they had dropped her off at Chikoma the week before, Tembo had promised to phone her. To date, that had not happened and Nomondi was worried. She felt certain that she would not normally have been worried if Tembo had forgotten to call. But today, when speaking to her grandfather’s foreman, Pangani, he mentioned that a gang of thieves had been seen in the area, and that they had threatened some of the workers on other farms near Juliusdale and Mutari.

‘How do you know about this gang?’ Nomondi had asked.

‘Well, Nomondi,’ the old man had replied. ‘I heard the message being tapped out on the talking drums last night. Didn’t you hear them?’

‘Yes, I did hear them, but I didn’t know that they were sending a message. I thought that they were just playing music for people to dance.’

‘No, those were the talking drums that you heard last night,’ said Pangani. ‘The music drums have a completely different sound to them, and they are used for music only.’

‘I remember my grandmother telling me about some drums that only certain people could understand. Are those the talking drums that you are talking about, Pangani?’

‘Yes, Nomondi, they are. A number of people in this area still rely on this very old-fashioned method of sending messages across the country.’

‘Why do they prefer to use them, Pangani?’

‘Well, Nomondi, because only the drummers know the codes for the messages that they send, and only they will understand the message. This means that they can keep the messages a secret.’

‘Whom would they keep the messages a secret from, and how do you know what the messages are?’

Pangani smiled and said, ‘I used to be a code drummer in my youth, Nomondi, and I can still decipher the codes. As for the reason that the drums were used to transmit these messages, I am not sure. Perhaps the phones were not working last night after that rainstorm in the Hondi Valley, or they were just trying to keep the message a secret.’