Voir Dire, Part 4: Marshmallow Fishes

(L) Ms O’Dea, accompanied by Shadow Foreign Sec’y Michael Ancram, left, and Euro MP Neil Parish, Photo: Richard Austin, Western Morning News (R) Google Map of southern Africa

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

During this vigil of the Brisbane trial of Russell Pridgeon and Patrick O’Dea, I’ve hardly said much about Patrick.  So I typed “O’Dea, Zimbabwe” into a search and what came up was Patrick’s sister Kathleen O’Dea. Her marvelous autobiography is called “Marshmallow Fishes.”  So I ordered it from abebooks.com, and now it is in my hand. It’s also in my spirit — eegads what a book!

It was published in 2014, so it’s not about Operation Noetic. It’s about joy. It’s about being alive. It’s about caring for the people in one’s nation. Let me ask you — offhand — how many times have you knocked on the door of 10 Downing Street to recommend prime ministerial action? I’ll bet not too many, right?  But Kathleen (b 1964) couldn’t help herself. She was driven to help Zimbabwe. She knocked.

We’ll get to that in a later article, deus volens. (She was trying to get Tony Blair to intervene for the tortured and starving people in Zimbabwe.)

Boy, trauma is not a nice thing — imagine having to experience it every day, on and on!  In her book, Kathleen admits to having never got over watching people be killed or tortured when Mugabe’s troops were fighting “the enemy” (i.e., whites, but also hundreds of thousands of blacks).

I originally planned to recount, from Kathleen’s book, some scenes of the Bush War, in which her older bro, Patrick O’Dea (and also Russell Pridgeon) were soldiers. But instead I will show you happy scenes. I urge you to buy the book as it’s a real page-turner — describing her life in Africa, England, and now Australia.

And yes, I am trying to show where Patrick hails from. Kathleen herself is a justice warrior. Let us remember that the thing for which Patrick has now been suffering for 1,675 days (as of May 22, 2023), is The Law coming down on a man who was doing justice-warrior work, trying to protect a helpless boy.  Got that?

I entitled this article “Mercy, and 1675 Days of Terror” as I’m switching from my “Let’s arrest the judges” mode to my “Please give this man mercy” mode. It’s not for me to say that Patrick has had actual terror for 1,675 days. I have not spoken to him. But he already had painful war wounds (in the spine, from hitting a landmine), and I’ll bet that is exacerbated by the sheer unfairness of Operation Fucking Noetic (oh excuse me, my typewriter did that!). (You know how typewriters are sometimes, they have a mind of their own.)

So wouldn’t it be nice if Australia could stand up for him and say “Give this guy a break.” Hmm, his lawyer might not appreciate that, if it interferes with strategy. Oh wait, he ain’t got no lawyer. Still, I’m taking a risk here.

The author of Marshmallow Fishes, Kathleen O’Dea, does allow me to quote extensively from Chapter 1 of her work. (Approximately 4,000 words). So sit back and enjoy. She was a national champ at swimming and also won prizes at “underwater hockey.” (What?)

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Chapter One

I WAS born in Bulawayo. My dad was Scottish. He had emigrated to Rhodesia when he was in his early 20’s. He had a choice. It was Rhodesia or Alaska. (Shit! I could have been an Eskimo! ) My dad, John McGarry O’Dea, was born in Glasgow in 1926. My mom, Daphne Lena Ferreira, was born in Gwelo, Rhodesia in 1927. Her dad was of Portuguese origin.

The name of Gwelo was changed to Gweru when Mugabe came to power. Just like he changed Salisbury to Harare, he changed the names of all the roads in Bulawayo. Overnight, Matabele names or English names became Shona names. I think Grey Street became Robert Mugabe Way.

Before all that happened Mr and Mrs O’Dea happily reared four kids. Patrick, Sharon, Theresa and me. Their first born was named Patrick   I was the last, born prematurely. I weighed 3lbs 16ounces.

All the girls went to convent school and Patrick went to Christian Brothers College. I started swimming before I was five.  We lived in the poorer part of town then, North End. Living in those poorer places never affected us. We would look up to the kids who had nicer things but we never felt deprived.

I used to collect all the stray dogs. One was a black bitsa dog (bitsa this and bitsa that!) that we used to call Blackballs. He would go wandering and bailing him out of the pound became an expensive pastime. My dad soon discovered that it was cheaper if he pretended he wanted to give a home to a pet, rather than to own up and say Blackballs already was our pet, but it was a dead giveaway when Blackballs always went nuts when he saw my dad. I think the guys at the pound eventually turned a blind eye.

My dad worked for Rhodesian Railways as a train driver. He would do the Mafeking run into Botswana. Often he would come home with one of the huge tortoises they would find on the side of the railway tracks. My mom was a shorthand typist. She was the secretary to Brigadier Shaw who was later killed in a helicopter crash. It must have been pressurised work because everything was top secret. We were fighting a war. Even as a child I could not understand how that big wide world out there could let this happen.

Our favourite treat was marshmallow fishes. If we didn’t have any money we would hang around the tuck shop and cling to the bars looking pleadingly at the African shop keeper, who was called Jock, hoping that we might get a marshmallow fish for free. He would often swing a couple of free fishes our way.

As a kid those marshmallow fishes made such an impact. It is funny how something like that meant so much to us kids. Sometimes you got to notice that your fish was missing an eye (perhaps the mould didn’t always work properly) and I would feel sorry for that fish. Before I ate a marshmallow fish I would have to make the huge decision to chomp the tail first or the head. I always felt guilty if I ate the head first.

[MM — see what we’re dealing with here?]

Somehow, marshmallow fishes seem to stand for the uncomplicated innocence of our lives in Rhodesia before so much shit hit the fan and changed our lives and our land for ever. Marshmallow fishes were childhood expectation; our hope and happiness.

It was only when I got to about 16-years-old that I realised how hard it must have been for my dad, a Scotsman, to come as a foreigner to this strange country, Southern Rhodesia. He always used to lie on his stomach in front of the TV and watch the news. If we were making a noise he would say: “Weesht!” And we would copy him. “Weesht!” we would go, imitating his Glaswegian accent.

The Way We Were. The O’Dea family pictured at a local event. Left to right: Theresa,7, Sharon,14, dad John, mum Daphne, Patrick,15 and Kathleen, 6.

My dad left school when he was 14-years-old. Apparently his dad was a hard task master. He was a coal miner who married my grandmother Annie Kane.

All of us O’Dea kids could swim. We were naturals. We all swam competitively and we were always making the headlines. Patrick and Sharon both captaining our province Matabeleland. Sharon then went on from competitive swimming to synchronised swimming for Rhodesia.

Patrick went to Christian Brothers College. He was naughty, so the Catholic brothers refused to award him with his sports colours blazer. So to piss everyone off he managed to get his name on the college cups for swimming and athletics and made the first eleven at cricket and the first fifteen at Rugby. But still they never gave him his sports blazer. Perhaps that’s why he’s such a grump arse. I’m only teasing. I love Patrick to bits.

Ted Broster was my coach and he could see my potential, although it took a bit of coaxing. Getting to that stage, I must have quit about twenty times so it became a joke. My dad would say: “So, Kathleen. Are you retiring this week?” I was about 8 years old. My dad would be one of the judges in competitions and one time he disqualified Theresa. Some of the over pushy parents could not believe it:

“He’s disqualified his own daughter!” they said.  I loved my dad. He had good values.

We kept making the newspapers as swimmers so being poor didn’t really bother us. Looking back now, I can see that we had status in other ways. Not that I am one for status or material things. I am more concerned about justice.

I remember one of my bosses in Australia, John Brown an ex-air force man, saying to me: “Kathleen, how did you ever swim?”

I said: “Why?”
He said: “You never look left or right.”
He was being deep. He meant in life, because if I sense injustice in anything I don’t mess about. I just put my blinkers on and go for it because I have to try and stop it.

We were taught by Dominican nuns. They were quite harsh. Most of them were German. I am sure I was supposed to be left handed but I was made to write  right handed. If I didn’t, I would get a rap on the knuckles with a wooden ruler.  Put it this way: There was never even one fleeting moment that I thought about becoming a nun. I know my brother Patrick at one time wanted to become a priest. This worried my mom a bit because that would mean she would have to stop hanging her bra on the door handles.

A psychologist who helped me with post-traumatic stress told me: “Kathleen, you are so determined to make the world the way you want it to be. It is just not going to happen.”

Well one day it might.

We used to share the swimming pool with boys from the Milton School but I never had much to do with boys.  Boys and girls would admire each other from afar. Just a look was all it took. You could be boyfriend and girlfriend without even talking to each other! My childhood sweetheart was Harry and my friend Tracy’s was Guy. Many years later we all met up again in Perth, Australia, Harry and I just friends, Tracy and Guy now married. Guy and Harry were complaining that they had had to leave Zimbabwe and go to Australia to lose their virginity!

I believe in Guardian Angels. And my Guardian Angel has had his work cut out from Day One. I call my Guardian Angel Jessop. When I was deciding what to call him I asked the universe. It’s not psychic stuff,  just intuition. Anyway, two answers came back to me. I got Jessop and Aaron loud and clear. I chose Jessop. Now here’s the weirdest part: when I was in England my mom came from Australia to be with me because I was post traumatised.  One day I said to her: “Mom, don’t think about it. Just answer. What is your Guardian Angel’s name?” Immediately she answered: “Aaron.”

In 1974 my brother Patrick joined the Army. I was about 10 years old. Patrick was 19. I really feared for him because there was so much death in this Rhodesian bush war that was being fought. They had to do two days at Llewellyn Barracks in Bulawayo then he was recruited into the Gwelo School of Infantry, an officers’ training course. Just like at school, Patrick had a big lack of discipline and only came out as a corporal.

When they were out on patrol my brother and his mate Jimmy Jeans would sit at the back of the army truck on the rear wheels because if they hit a landmine that would absorb a lot of the blast. One time when they hit a landmine my brother had the machine gun between his legs facing outwards on a sandbag. It was a MAG. Jimmy had a standard FN rifle. The normal procedure if you hit a landmine was to empty your magazine into the surrounding bush in case of an ambush.

After the huge shock of the blast Jimmy felt a tremendous weight on top of his head. Patrick’s machine gun had been blown into the air and landed on his head. If the machine gun had been just two inches further back the very long foresight would have penetrated Jimmy’s skull and killed him. Jimmy had blood pouring down his face as well as tears from nervous laughter. Patrick was nervously laughing too – reaction, I guess, to being still alive.

Meantime, Jimmy jokes that he is sure to this day that Patrick wanted either his girlfriend or his motor bike and saw an opportunity to take him out! Later Jimmy made Patrick Godfather to his son. That was just to keep Patrick happy, Jimmy said, so he wouldn’t try to kill him again!

When the nights were very cold Jimmy used to wear ballet tights under his uniform trousers because that kept him warm. Patrick asked Jimmy to get him a pair as well. Unfortunately they had run out of black ones (at least that’s what Jimmy claimed) so he bought Patrick a pair of pink ones. It then became a great prank for Patrick, wearing nothing but his pink ballet tights, to streak past the Major’s tent.

Another story they told was when there was a parade the main Army dude stuck his stick up the nose of one of the soldiers and shouted: “What is this piece of shit on the end of this stick?”

The soldier’s reply: “It depends which end of the stick you are looking at, Sir!”

So, all of this was going on while we were counting the tiles at the bottom of the swimming pool. School started at 7am with assembly but we would get up at 4.30am to go training first. We would complete 4,000 to 5,000 metres before school. If I remember correctly, we would do 4,000 metres in about an hour. Boy, did we smell of chlorine! We would sit in assembly and lick our own skin to taste the chlorine. Somehow that proved to ourselves what we had just achieved because people in school could not believe that we did this.

What we were doing at that age would have been hailed as phenomenal in the first world countries and even today would probably set us on a path to big bucks. But it was just normal to us; we didn’t know any different. My dad was so good. He would get up that early with us and cook breakfast for us at the pool before we went to school. That was our incentive…the wonderful smell of bacon and eggs.

My dad was so inspirational and intelligent and knowledgeable.  You would never believe he was just a miner’s son who left school at 14.  He had such a wide perspective on life.  If Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on our door he would always invite them in and they would walk away knowing more about their own religion than when they walked in!

Dad used to help people by using hypnosis. I remember one guy ringing up with the worst stutter you ever heard. I thought it was my brother Patrick taking the piss. It wasn’t. My dad ended up curing this guy of his awful stutter by taking him back to a traumatic event in his childhood. My dad was also a volunteer with the Good Samaritans, taking telephone calls from people whose lives were in desperate crisis, suicidal often.

We were a bit backward in Rhodesia. It was that time warp thing I told you about, the world moving forward while we were fighting a war. When I look back at our swimming years, how we ever did all that I will never know. I was National Backstroke Champion in 1979 and 1980. Competitive swimming is very much a lonely sport. Up and down. Up and down. Racing against the clock.

One time five of us girls – my sister Theresa and I being part of that five – and five boys swam in relay for two hundred meters and keeping it under a certain time. We swam like this for 24 hours. At the time the Guinness Book of Records had recorded 80kms. We managed to get to 100kms but it could not go on record because we were missing one official.

By this time we had managed to move into the nicer suburbs and now I could ride my bike to school. I have always regretted that because of all the shit that was hitting the fan in Zimbabwe when Theresa and I were kids we were never able to bond as siblings with Patrick and Sharon. We never went on holiday with them like that time mom and dad took us to so many places. We never did that sort of normal family thing with them. Instead we bonded in turmoil.

When I was 12 years old I was coming home from school on my bike, whizzed around the corner with my feet on the handle bars and hit a tree stump in our drive way. I went flying through the air. My mom was at home sick in bed. Was I in deep shit! She didn’t need this!  Turned out I had fractured my right leg. It was not the only time I broke a leg and I’ve sprained ankles, ligaments and things I don’t know how many times.

Anyway, this was 1976 and the Rhodesian bush war was well alight. My dad was in the Police Reserve and he used to escort convoys between towns. It was often not safe to travel by yourself. There would be an army truck at the front of these convoys, one in the middle and one at the back and often a chopper flying overhead.

We had gone up in the world. My dad now owned a little book shop and we bought a house in Catherine-Berry Drive, Ilanda. Keeping a book shop was the most natural thing for my dad to do. My dad loved to read. He could read four books in a day. Although he had left school at 14 he had so much knowledge and he used to tell me it all came from books. He had to teach himself.. There was nobody better to run a bookshop. To this day, I’m so proud of my dad and what he made of his life.

We loved our pets. We had Nero, a Bull Mastif cross; Lady, a Pekinese cross; King, a Great Dane; two miniature Fox Terriers, Ben and Shelley and two cats, Buffy, who was ginger and Rubbish, who Patrick named.

My closest friend at high school was Debbie. We were inseparable. I was also close friends with Tracy and Shareen. Our paths have since crossed several times. Like me, they are travelling Zimbabweans. Their souls don’t rest, either. Debbie married a farmer who was badly affected by everything Mugabe put us through and now lives in Southern Ireland. I always preferred eating out of Deb’s lunch box. Her mom used to bake all these lovely fancy cakes.

Then we did our ‘O’ Levels. We worked on the British system of education. How we coped with those ‘O’ Levels I will never know. Debbie was going to leave for college. I said: “No – we have to stay on and do our Matric Level.” Carol was great. She was a feisty, outspoken short girl who had wild uncontrollable hair. We used to have to wear our school hats in assembly but, because of Carol’s wild locks, her boater could never sit properly on her head. This would irritate the teachers who would berate her for being scruffy. This was so unfair and it wasn’t long before Carol had had enough of it. One day when we were all in assembly and the prefects were giving her a hard time she bellowed in her loudest voice, which was very loud: “You think I chose to be born with this hair? Just because you have a piece of f****** tin on your tit it doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.”

Well said, Carol. That told ‘em! If we’d been as gutsy as she was we would all have burst into a round of applause for her. Anyway, inside our heads, that’s just what we were doing.

Another time, when Carol was a bit late getting to school, a teacher asked her: “Why are you so late?” Carol said: “Because you started before I got here.” I loved Carol. She had such spirit.

After leaving college my first job was as a secretary with an insurance company and Deb went to work for a textile firm.  My boss was Kish Desai. He was Indian. We liked Kish very much. He was a really top guy. Affectionately, we would call him “the wagon burner.” He didn’t mind at all. He took it all in his stride and he mocked us right back. I hadn’t been there long when one of the directors came down from Harare. I was so nervous. I had to take dictation from him for about an hour and when I came out I couldn’t read any of my shorthand.

Our house in Catherine Berry Drive was just a few doors down from a Mess called Tarino Tavern. For people who did not know Africa at that time let me explain that a Mess was a rented house shared by young professional people, each of whom would put money in to pay the bills and buy food, etc.

They had servants.
We did, too.
That was the way in Africa
And for anybody who wants to pass judgement on that, listen: We cared for them, heart and soul. I have done the same sort of work myself in a first world country and I can promise you, our servants had the better deal.

These Messes were big old houses; huge, colonial, and English. Every Mess was given a name by the occupants.  Tarino Tavern was a contradictory name because Tarino was the name of an orange soft drink like Fanta and in the homemade pub which was the big double garage of the house I can promise you that they did not drink anything like Fanta! The parties were many; too many, perhaps.

But it was all just innocent fun.

I guess it was a way of coming together and having a normal life after the war, especially for those who were ex-Army. These were young people re-capturing the fun they had missed out on. There were doctors, hunters, vets, physiotherapists. They were mostly in their late twenties/early thirties. At the Mess parties I was, as a secretary, one of the lowliest professions there – and at 20, I was one of the youngest.

There was total unity between all the Mess dwellers; never any trouble or fights despite the booze; just fun and laughter, joking and japing, dancing and drinking.

All the Messes had their great characters. At Tarino Tavern we had Fats. He was about my brother’s age and had the driest sense of humour.  Another was Steve, who came equipped with a glass eye (he lost an eye playing polo cross) and a wicked sense of humour. Once a party was on a roll some poor unsuspecting girl would suddenly find a glass eye in her drink. When a party had passed the point of no return, out would come Steve’s eye to be used as the ball in a game of cricket with mini bats.

Also part of this household was Carl. He was my rock ‘n roll dance partner. He was Debbie’s boss at the textile company. Carl and I could dance really well. At least I thought so.

I had worked out that my chore of walking our dogs could be made much easier if I let them all run behind my scooter. Well, Fats would be drinking in their double garage pub when he would see this little motor bike go past with, as he put it, all the neighbourhood dogs running behind. He called me the Pied Piper.

I got a room in the Mess at the Flying Alligator. I can’t remember how. I was lucky. It was a sought after position. Even though I had the crappy room I was happy. It was the first place I moved to when I moved out of home. The Flying Alligator was the doctors’ Mess. This consisted of a bunch of medical interns. Little piss pots, to be honest.

Among them were Topher, who became a gynaecologist and ended up in Brunei and Drew, who became a plastic surgeon in Cape Town. The hospital in Harare was named after Drew’s grandfather but Mugabe’s lot changed the name to Parirenyatwa Hospital. Then there was Geoff. He  had been a medic in the Army and he became a GP. So did Colin. And there was Fuzzy, who was another great larger-than-life character. The girls were Jayne, Tina, Deidre and me.

Tina and Deidre were related. They had lost 14 of their family, killed in the Rhodesian war. Deidre’s sister was in one of the Viscounts that were shot down by Nkomo. This was when terrorism was rampant. In September 1978 an Air Rhodesia scheduled flight from Kariba to Salisbury was shot down by a missile fired by ZIPRA guerrillas. The pilot tried desperately to belly-land the plane and nearly did but it crashed, flipped over and burst into flames. Only 18 of the 56 passengers survived the crash.

The survivors went to a local village for water and when they went back to the plane the guerrillas killed ten of them. Then in February 1979 another missile attack brought down a second Air Rhodesia plane on the same flight. This time there were no survivors. All 59 people on board died.

Can you believe that, apart from the International Airline Pilots Association, there was no official condemnation of these outrages from anywhere outside Rhodesia? Britain and America stayed silent because, some reckoned, they did not want to appear to be supporting Ian Smith.

This ‘deafening silence’ was condemned by the Very Reverend John da Costa, Dean of the Anglican Church in Rhodesia. In his sermon to a memorial service for the dead he said he could not comprehend the absence of protest from so-called civilised nations in the face of “this bestiality which stinks in the nostrils of heaven.”

It was not the last time that the rest of the world would turn a blind eye to atrocities in our country.

Deidre became my best friend in the Mess and of all the guys my favourite was Topher, but not as a boyfriend, just as a good friend. I was a bit naive (or ‘blonde’ as we called it) I still am. I miss worldly wise things that are going on around me. Well, Topher took me under his wing. He would look after me. He was fair-skinned and we used to take the piss out of him because he wore Oil of Olay on his face.

Topher had a fish tank, full of beautiful tropical fish, quite an achievement for inland Zimbabwe. This fish tank was his chick magnet. You know, sort of: “Come up and see my etchings.”

This was the time that my brother Patrick was made the youngest director for Minet Sheldon Insurance. He had moved to Gweru but he would come back to Bulawayo to party with us, terrorise all the doctors, leave them with huge hangovers (which he never seemed to get) then leave to drive 164km back to Gweru. He never had a speed limit and I worried that he would hit a donkey on that road.

We had a greasy pole over the pool and different teams whacking each other until they fell off the pole. The good part was we did not have to worry about First Aid because we had a house full of doctors and vets. One time Fuzzy and Geoff had had a few too many and Fuzzy had cut his forehead open on his beer glass and in both their states Geoff sewed him up with just an ordinary needle and thread and whatever alcohol was available to kill the germs. It was beautifully done; hardly a scar.

All these doctors, although still trainees, were good. There was so much talent in one household. Just as talented were the vets in  our midst, like Johnny who now practices in New Zealand. The sort of conversation you would hear in the bar: “It’s a bit different putting a dog under anaesthetic or prescribing penicillin and having to go and sort out a sick Ostrich. And how much anaesthetic do you give a Rhino?”

Deidre’s hunter boyfriend was a great guy. The hunters’ Lion’s Inn had special exclusive beer mugs with a male lion shagging a lioness on them. Needless to say, this Mess were all professional hunters. They were a crazy bunch. But their skills were unbelievable; men like Barney, a chopper pilot who worked tirelessly and courageously to stop rhino horn poaching. Barney was so brave. Rhino horn poaching was for big rich pickings and the poachers were brutal killers of men as well as animals.

Despite all the drinking and partying there were a lot of serious and grim times during those Mess days of our youth. I have been telling you about the drunken and fun times rather than the bad and the sad times because I remember the fun times best. I guess that’s what human nature does, rejecting bad memories as the years pass.

The Gukurahundi was raging, thousands of innocent men, women and children were being tortured, raped and massacred.  Unspeakable atrocities were being committed.  Mashonaland was thriving while Matabeleland was in a sort of semi choke hold.

And what were we doing?
We were partying up a storm!
This was all so weird, so unreal. Looking back,

maybe it was just our way, in our youth, of coping with all the shit that was happening. Mugabe’s Army people would scale our fence and steal the wheels off our cars. We knew this because we would see them doing it. One morning we came out and Topher’s car was leaning on its side with all the wheels missing.

Topher needed his car. He was one of the doctors who had to go to Mpilo Hospital, which was in a mainly poor black area, to perform operations. This was high pressured work, to say the least and it was reckoned to be good training for interns because of the things they had to cope with. Not sniffles and colds but malaria, Aids, leopard mauls and gunshot wounds, African women coming in while giving birth, babies half in half out.

Mugabe’s police and soldiers would just turn up at your house with AK47s to do searches for petrol, which it was illegal to store, or weapons or ammunition. They also searched for old army boots or uniforms to show them who had fought against them in the war. It was frightening and horrible.

Just before I moved out of home my mom was lying in bed one morning. From her bed you could see straight down the passage onto our veranda and she saw about twelve police and soldiers, all armed with AK47s. Mom was petrified. She got up and put on her dressing gown then had to let them into our garage so they could search it. I trailed behind and my heart was pounding. In the corner, a pair of my brother’s Army boots was hanging from the beams. They didn’t spot them, thank God, but it was a very close call.

My last Mess Sports Day was a fun time and a sad time, too.

Mom and dad could take no more of what was happening to our country.

They were emigrating to Australia.
And I was going with them.
The Embassy kept delaying the paperwork and several times we had to cancel our plans. I was given three farewell parties. This was wonderful because I had such good friends who cared about me leaving but, at the same time, it was so stressful.

My last Mess Sports Day was held at Victoria Falls. It was in April, 1985.
It was my 21st birthday.

Kathleen wearing her green and gold Australian team tracksuit, in underwater hockey.