Hi, this is Jane...from Zimbabwe

Raised in Zimbabwe, Jane Skovgaard, an artist and interior designer in her mid-thirties, has a classic Nordic look, inherited from her father - platinum blonde cropped hair and a tall, willowy figure. On the surface, she is soft-spoken and feminine. But once you get to know her, you discover that she is possessed of a wicked sense of humour. She is extremely well liked by her art students, and one client of hers said that she was a ‘calming and inspirational influence’.* We met up at the cottage she shares with her film-maker boyfriend, Ed and their dog Benny.

I was born in Kenya. My father’s from Denmark. My mum’s from Hertfordshire. They met in Kitali, in Kenya. Dad had been there for a few years as a forester. He’d also worked in forestry in Burma and Canada. Mum was a teacher. In those days you either taught or nursed, or got married. After an unhappy love affair, she’d travelled round the States, and on her return to England, she was offered a job as a teacher in Kitali in Kenya – which was a bit like Kinsale, a small town where you could make friends, a lovely place. She met my dad there, who was recently divorced from his first wife. I think they had a bit of an affair, she got pregnant and they got married a month before I was born.

Then, when I was one, the Mau Mau killings started and we moved to Botwana. Dad worked for Danida there, a Danish aid organisation. At the time aid was quite new and Denmark literally poured money into the country. Dad was a forester and was sent to plant trees. But Botswana was a desert! A few problems there, an unbelievable amount of money wasted. Dad wrote a letter to Danida, and they put it up on the wall as ‘the letter that should never have been written.’ It was very politically incorrect, describing the utter nonsense that was going on, with aid people and stuff. This was 1971. Denmark was a particularly liberal democracy, but they did the most stupid things. Sending those typical aid workers floating around Botswana, ‘being helpful’, and all the Africans taking them for a ride.

Dad was apparently told he’d have a house when he arrived. But when he got there, someone was living in the house. Dad was the first person ever to go and shout at the person in charge and say, ‘I have a wife and daughter coming in one week and I want that house vacated by then.’ The person living there was an African, and it was actually unheard of that, you know, a white person would turf this black person out. But that was his allocated house. Dad said when he got there he made them scrub the walls from top to bottom because they were covered with soot and handprints etc. And that was also seen as a no-no. But Dad wasn’t someone to pander to politically correct opinion.

My first memory was of a goat being born there. I just remember this green stuff coming out of the goat’s bum. I was about two. But then Dad decided it was all a crock of shit, and we moved to Melsetter in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). By now I was almost three. Dad bought a farm in the mountains and called it Perversity. He farmed pyrethrum there, which is the main ingredient in fly spray. He built the house himself, a wooden house, and a waterfall so there was enough pressure for the water supply to get to the house. There were scorpions everywhere. And then the war started, so Dad got a job in forestry in Angola, Portuguese Angola. He thought we’d all move there. But you know Africa and wars. He got there just as the Angolan revolution started, so he came straight back. There was an earthquake and a revolution at the same time. Dad came back and said, ‘we can’t make it work there, we’ll try central Zimbabwe’, which out of the war zone. Where we were, was becoming a bit of a liability. So we sold our farm and moved to Chegutu, the arsehole of the world. I was now four, about to go to kindergarten.

Dad hooked up with an old mate, Eric. Eric said he knew an Indian called Ranchid, who farmed in Chegutu. We ended up leasing his farm for 25 years. Dad never wanted to own anything in Africa ever again. He was sick of owning things and then losing everything. He turned out to be quite a good farmer. He didn’t expand much, but always repaid what he owed, and made enough for us to travel once a year or go on nice holidays, and send me to a private school. Good for Dad!

So there we were living in Chegutu. I met my best friend there, Laura. She called me the girl with the blue shoes. So although I was an only child, I wasn’t really lonely, because I had her.

Later I went to primary school in Hartley. Then Dad was called up to the war, and we built brick walls around the farmhouse. The farmhouse was riddled with termites, the walls were hollow, and the ceiling dripped. It was a typical farmhouse, just absolute chaos. Mum despaired of it for 25 years.

Dad went off to the war and Mum made a big veggie garden. It was outside the security
gates, so whenever you went outside, you had to wear your holster and your gun. She learned how to shoot at the gun range. At school we learned about grenade attacks and how to dive under our desk.

What I remember from primary school are things like staying at friends’ farms when your Dad went away. He was a ‘bright light,’ not a solider. A bright light was someone who would go out to really remote farms - like that back road from Mutare all the way down to Beitbridge through Chiredzi – you’d go to a remote farm and stay with a farmer’s wife for a few days and make sure she was alright. And there was a lot of drinking involved. And pissing in cupboards. (Mistaking it for the loo!) It happened quite a lot, I think! Dad made some of his greatest friends while on patrol. They hardly ever came across any action. It was just the camaraderie of being out there, together in the bush. It was great for community spirit afterwards

Mum and I would sometimes go and stay with a neighbour whose husband was at home. Women, I think, felt they could defend themselves, but it was nicer to be in company.

After the war, the only thing that affected us was that blacks came to our school. I was about eleven. That was 1981. We had Charity, Hope and Love in the class. And they were all great. There was no problem.

And Dad sold the TV. He said he just thought black television would be worse than white television. I remember doom and gloom, quickly replaced by a feeling of ‘the war’s over, thank God.’ But not much really changed. One thing I did notice – I was part of the Young Farmers’ Club – where you learned to make hanging baskets and things - and you get your Young Farmers’ Club badge. Black kids would come from the local school while we were gardening and stuff, and call us white racist pigs. But that was the only thing really.


Secondary school was a nightmare. It was a private boarding school called Arundel, and I was lonely as hell for three or four years. I couldn’t make friends. It was a huge transition going from solitary farm life, your own life, where your best friends are your dogs, to a place where there are groups of people all fighting for top place in class. I became quite concerned about my marks. I was a swot, a nerd, a religious maniac, all the cool things in life! I became born again, to my Dad’s horror. My parents were both atheist. Well, my Mum was an Anglican. But you know, English people don’t have real feelings about the church. It’s just part of an institution, part of being English. And they couldn’t bear the happy clappy thing, which of course I embraced with fervour. That was my rebellion. Sad but true! Every weekend stretched like an eternity. It was so lonely. Mum and Dad would come and visit me only very occasionally, because although they only lived an hour away, there was a petrol shortage.

Then onto South Africa, where I went to Fine Art college. Fantastic. Wearing mini skirts, and short hair for the first time. First boyfriend. Tim. In South Africa you either join the army or the police. Or you go to university. But you have to do either of those first two at some point. So when I met him, Tim had joined the police, and they’d made him a detective. It was before the end of apartheid. They were a very English family. He wasn’t like a Boer. It was all very wonderful and scary. Ja. So that was my first love. It was very passionate. You know, there were all these art schoolboys, and they were very rebellious against apartheid. I looked and I thought, no. I was searching for that authority figure. I’ve always had boyfriends like that.

After college, Jane spent time in Italy and Spain, first with her friend Karen. Later Tim joined her, and they toured the States for nine months before returning to England.

I was now 24, taking a whole load of ecstasy and acid, basically enjoying the London nightlife. What happens is you end up in a big, dark, depressing space, only alleviated by more clubbing more drugs, more…and I could see my life not going anywhere and I realised I was getting to a place I shouldn’t be.

My mum came over for a visit and I wasn’t very nice to her. I realized it was only a matter of time before I had to face up to myself. I’m not saying I was a druggie or anything like that, but …at the time it was quite strong. Yeah, it was quite a drug culture then. Life was shallow. I was doing social work through an agency, which was pretty depressing, working with lots of old and lonely people, surrounded by photos of their children, going, ‘these are my children.’ Who never visit.

So I said to Tim, ‘We have to go back to Africa, we have to go and see our parents.’ I went back first, and he followed. But when I got back to Zimbabwe, I realized I wanted to stay there for a while, to get back to myself, my life. And I realized I didn’t want to be with him anymore. He’d mentioned marriage – ‘shall we do the next thing?’ and I had a terrible feeling at the pit of my stomach and knew it wasn’t right. So I wrote him a letter – a real Dear John letter. Terrible.

I moved to South Africa and spent about 2 years there, working illegally.

Then I got cancer. By then I’d met Gully, my very confrontational, Jewish Iraqi boyfriend. Got pregnant. Abortion. You know. Life. And around that time I went for a facial and the beautician noticed a lump on my neck, and advised me to go to the doctor immediately. Within about two weeks I was in hospital having an operation. They’d found a carcinoma. I’d had an abortion in February, had my thyroid in June, then immigration got onto me, and I was basically deported in September. It was quite a year. I’d never really thought about anything too hard. The cancer, well you deal with it the rest of your life. If you live.

So I went to England. Lived with my folks, who had moved there, until they went mad. Then I got this call about a house-sitting job in Kinsale. I negotiated a price, £500 a month, a studio of my own, all expenses paid except food and petrol. I drove to Ireland in spring. It was March. The moment I drove into Ireland, through all the wild flowers – I got onto a back road by mistake, as you do – and that was it. I fell in love.

The house was divine. It was the biggest break I’ve ever had…it’s probably the nicest
thing that ever happened to me. I was in a huge Georgian house in the middle of the
countryside. I like my own company. I probably went into a bit of mad syndrome, doing strange things that nobody could see, and only I knew just how strange things were getting. It was kind of nice. I spent lots of time by the Aga, reading lots of books, pretending I was working. But I did have two big exhibitions while I was living there. Then I got a job teaching in Kinsale. I’d avoided people up to then. Once you get involved in a community there’s no way out. And there I was, involved. And that was the beginning.

Then I met Ed. He makes me laugh because he’s really black. We’ve both known shit, and we’re able to laugh, knowing we can be completely politically incorrect constantly. And we can shock each other, but only to spur each other on. What I love about Ed is his tremendous compassion. The average weeping willow won’t affect him, but give him someone like a physically disabled kid with no home and he’ll give them respect, treat them in a way they value. He likes the offbeat. He has a strange social conscience. It doesn’t always extend to the social circle. He’s hard on that, but oddly compassionate with down and outers.

I ended up buying a boat, and living on it, which was wonderful. The boat for me was like Crime and Punishment – candlelight, pasta – and wind. And always battening down the hatches.

Then we moved into a derelict cottage together, on the edge of the ocean. Walking through one field, two fences, at least 15 cows every night to get to a completely drenched stone house. Often the electricity was off because we’d overloaded the electricity with the computer, TV, video and cooking. So we had about 5 fuses always ready to pop in. and salad ready. Covered in dust, covered in cow shit, no showers. Showers at the leisure centre every two or three days. Maddening when you’re having sex. Lots of baths though, in a tin bath by the fire. Good parties there, intimate dinners,
walks by the cliffs. When friends came from London to stay, and saw just the Atlantic ocean in front of them, and not another house within sight, they went, ‘oh my god’ …it was wonderful.

Then I found a new lump in the old place. We were in a nightclub in Cork and I felt something, but I kind of ignored it. But then I kept getting cystitis. And the kidneys and the thyroid are connected. Finally I had to overcome my resistance to the signs and book another appointment with a doctor. And then I got the news. Again.

In Johannesburg, there was no counselling. But at least you had the illusion of people caring, and I was dealing with one doctor. Here, you sit on plastic chairs in an echoing room along with 50 other sick people, all the Wednesday endocrine cases. You sit there until you’re called, one or two hours later. And they hand your file to the nearest doctor, and whoever’s free at the time looks at your file and either sends you for tests or decides what’s wrong with you…it was just appalling. It was not so much a lack of caring as a lack of understanding, or sensitivity to what it’s like to be the person being told ‘you have cancer’. People would say, ‘is there someone with you, are you alright?’ No, you’re not. You’ve just been told you’ve got a tumour. And how much worse do you think is it when you’re young and you’ve got a violently active one?

So anyway, I had the operation. It’s quite difficult to understand the experience of being close to dying if you don’t feel that unwell. So it was on my mind, but without the real terror and horror of it all. The drama of everyone’s concern, on the other hand, was quite interesting. Ja, it gave me a chance to be noble! Despicable. But human, I think. And then people’s interest faded, even though I had to keep going back for iodine – you know people’s attention span is very short – they’d just hear, ‘she’s fine’. So they’d think, ‘grand’.

And suddenly there was the realization that the radioactive iodine I was taking could give me leukaemia later on, or make me sterile, and it went on and on. All this stuff you hear about but you don’t actually understand. It’s quite good to talk about this sort of stuff; it’s
good to have a cry. But it ends up that you don’t want to talk to your boyfriend, to your friends, because it’s a huge load to lay on them, and people have their own shit. And parents just go completely into heart attack mode. They don’t show it, but you feel it. And I sometimes wonder, without being too egotistical about it, whether I’ve caused their health problems.

So you carry your emotions inside you, keep them there. You can’t, you can’t do it to them. I ended up, after a dreadful experience in the hospital where the doctors and nurses stood shouting and screaming, not being able to take it anymore. It was truly horrible. I had to go back to the hospital for these periodic radioactive iodine pills, and once I lost my letter and missed the date of my appointment. I came the next day instead. I was almost comatose because to prepare my body to take the radioactive iodine, I couldn’t take my thyroid pills – because now I have no thyroid – so I was almost in a comatose state. And they just screamed at me for missing my appointment. And made me wait another 2 weeks. So, two weeks later, still not on my thyroid pills, I was even worse, and now my eyes had all swollen up, and I thought it was just cruel. I just decided I wouldn’t go back after that. Wouldn’t take any more iodine. I’d just sort out my health myself with a macrobiotic diet.

Now, every little thing has to be considered, all the time. Is this toxic? And I’m not a very relaxed person, and sometimes it really stresses me out. And sometimes you just want to break out, have a drink, a cigarette. You want to be fun for your partner. Not be heavy for him. He’s wonderful. And he really understands.

I truly believe that the cancer is my lesson in life, that I have something to learn from it. Because I’ll probably die when I’m like, 85. It’s changed my priorities, made me realize what I want to do. I’m not so driven by ambition. It’s not all about money. Getting things. I still worry that I don’t have them, and that I’m useless and inferior and all these kinds of things, but I also realize what I have. I get worked up, but now I realize why, and watch
myself doing it, so I can change my thought process, laugh at myself. There’s more awareness. It’s about who you are, right now. I have learned that the most important thing is to love. And be loved. And to find your place.

Africa is still my home. But I also have to consider what you have to go through to be a white African. I don’t really like the new Africa. I love the old Africa, the kraals, the old ways. Without even going back, I know I’m African. I’m not guilty anymore about being white. I’m not prepared to be guilty anymore, to bear the responsibility for the sins of our colonial past.

Then, there’s Ireland. It’s kind of like a haven, like a green haven. But I think that the Irish are leaving behind a lot of the good things in their mad headlong rush to get as many material things as they can. They’re leaving behind their traditional sense of extended family and community. Before this rich, liberal era, I think there was a freshness and simplicity.

I feel I belong in a way, in that I’m part of my boyfriend’s family. I think going through a tragedy together (when Ed’s brother committed suicide) really brought us close. Just being there. It was an opportunity to show them how much I loved them, which was quite important for me. To be part of the whole family, especially for me, as an only child, has been a big thing.

The sense of community here is kind of like Zimbabwe, but less open. They don’t have the energy to open their doors to strangers, to newcomers. Their lives are full enough with the family and friends and neighbours they have already. So you end up being friends with other foreigners. Or Irish people who have travelled. Kinsale people are different though, because there are so many different nationalities here.

I’m proud that I’ve coped here, I’ve never had to go on the dole, I’ve always been in a happy situation, and now I’m teaching. So I feel I’m contributing to Ireland, and I’m a part of it. It’s important to be able to offer something.


(A year after this interview, Jane and Ed took the plunge, and got married.)

**


In 1966, a white minority regime under Ian Smith took power in Southern Rhodesia, just north of the South African border, unilaterally declaring independence from Britain and preventing the colony from being released into independence under a government representing the black majority. The settler regime named their new country Rhodesia. Britain and the rest of the world imposed sanctions immediately, and the country was only recognised by Apartheid-era South Africa. When the Rhodesian government banned all political activity by the black nationalist opposition parties, ZANU-PF and ZAPU, they decided to turn to guerilla war as their only alternative. The civil war ("Chimurenga") cost numerous lives. From 1976 Black nationalist forces operated not only from Zambia on the north border but also Mozambique to the east. More and more white farmers emigrated to South Africa, Britain or Australia.

In the late 1970s, the government finally agreed to negotiations, which eventually led to the country becoming independent as Zimbabwe. In 1980 ZANU won an election victory and Robert Mugabe became the new leader of the country.

The country was not to enjoy freedom for very long. Rivalries between the ZANU party (dominated by ethnic Shona from the North) and ZAPU (based mainly in Matabeleland in the South) escalated into a low scale guerilla war. The government responded brutally, torturing and murdering many ZAPU-supporters and suspects. ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo went into exile in the UK. Later he returned to make a deal with Mugabe and ZAPU merged with ZANU. Peace returned, but the country effectively became a one party state.

Since then Mugabe has remained in power, in spite of evidence of election rigging and forcible removal from office of independent judges and imprisonment or deportation of journalists who publicly denounced him. Mugabe initiated compulsory land acquisition, forcing almost all commercial farmers, and hundreds of thousands of farm workers off their land, and giving most of the land to his cronies. As a result, there is a critical food shortage, and the economy has collapsed, with inflation at over 1000% and rising daily. More than a third of the population has emigrated, and there is 80% unemployment among those remaining. The AIDS epidemic has added to the crisis. As Zimbabwe’s rich mineral wealth has been depleted, and there is no oil, the UN and international community have not seen fit to intervene.

Source: BBC World History