A couple of weeks, ago Mervyn Morgan spoke of how he got much, much more than he bargained for on a trip across Africa in the late 1940's. During his travels he met up with eleven year old Anne Fiske, with whom he lost all contact after they were both in an accident in which Anne's mother was killed. Last week a friend of Anne's heard ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Truths and made a call to South Africa, where Anne, now Kempe, lives. This is Anne's story...
Just after the war, Anne's parents, discontented with the new Attlee government decided to travel to South Africa after spotting an advert for a trip from London to Johannesburg. It was on this trip that the Fiske family met up with Mervyn Morgan.
After going their separate ways, the Fiske family met up again with Mervyn in Kano, Nigeria. The fateful crash in which Anne's mother was killed happened not long after. Sitting in front of the car with her mother, with Mervyn driving, a tyre burst, "I remember the sound of the tyre burst. The last thing I remember my mother saying was, 'I knew it would happen'." The car was thrown up in the air, landing on both Anne and her mother, who was killed immediately. Anne wasn't badly injured, but the petrol cap had come off, "It was pouring over my head, I was drinking it and breathing it. To this day I have a very strong phobia against petrol."
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After the crash, the Fiskes lost all contact with Mervyn. Life would never be the same again. Anne's brother, Roderick, was devastated by his mother's death. "My father wasn't a fatherly father. He had great difficulty getting used to us when my mother died." The family decided to stay in Africa, and for a period moved from place to place, settling eventually in a hotel in Mombassa. At this point, Anne's father, who fallen in love with sea went off, literally, on a schooner, leaving his two children to the care of the hotel manager and his daughter.
Anne had always been a daddy's girl, but over the years her relationship with her father grew very strained. The breach was healed years later with the help of Anne's father's second wife.
Mervyn's story & photos Travelling Companions
