Every day when we came home from school my sister Jenny and I would sit at the huge desk in our parents’ bedroom and finish our homework. Our mother was often still at work but she insisted on this, and it was a habit we did not resist.

Elsie worked half day as a shorthand typist and secretary at the cement factory where my father was chief chemist, but sometimes the days were longer. Jenny and I were looked after by live-in domestic workers – a nanny/housekeeper and a gardener. All white people in Rhodesia had servants, usually more than one. When I travel to other African countries these days and I see how many servants my academic colleagues have, I think of how colonial traditions of master and servant are alive and well. There was certainly no question in our house about who would cook, clean and look after us while our parents worked. I don't remember a single other school friend whose mother worked outside the home, but they all had servants. Elsie accepted having domestic workers as natural, and she was kind but not disruptive of the power relationships. To be fair, though, she was not one for laziness. Years later when a cousin was having marital problems and she got to know something of his domestic situation, she discovered that this young then-childless couple lived in an easy-to-run flat, that the wife who was causing all the trouble did not work outside the home, and that the couple employed a full-time maid. ‘What does the wife do all day?’ Elsie wanted to know. Her answer to her own rhetorical question was the tight-lipped ‘Well, I suppose someone has to watch the maid.’

There were those amongst the friends, and their parents especially, who disapproved of my mother's working (‘No wife of mine will do that, I tell you for sure’). I don't remember feeling anything other than proud of the fact that Elsie worked. It was something that set us apart from others, and she enjoyed the work, that was clear. And I think I came to see that she needed it, but more about that later.

Jenny and I were good at entertaining ourselves.