To address a few points about the case raised here.
1) The kids at this
private school were middle-class, aged between six and twelve. They included black African children, white ones with forebears from Britain and South Africa, Asians, and those of mixed race – a “cross-section of Zimbabwe” as Cynthia Hind called them. (I copy from FT: see below) They were not “unwordy” (
sic = unworldly) primitives as if they had bones through their noses.
2) Ergo they would most likely have satellite TV, and ergo it’s possible they saw some Power Rangers episodes, whatever channel that was on at the time. Amazingly enough people even have telephones.
3) Ruwa is not isolated. Nor is it really rural. The outskirts/suburbs of Harare stretch for miles, and you can drive for bloody ever through populated districts before you reach the city proper. Houses are sparse by UK standards, true, but Ruwa isn’t as isolated as (say) Reserve, NM.
4) That said, the bush that separates settlements is rough and risky stuff to drive. Hippies might be daft enough to try it, but then there is a curious shortage of them in the country, then as now. White Rhodesians are, perhaps not surprisingly, remarkably conservative in their dress, even the loopiest New-Agey ones, in my experience. No idea what they smoke though.
5) The ‘case’ was discussed in the Flying Sorcery column in FT347 (I think), which mentions Emily Trim (eight at the time but not interviewed by Hind and Mack) and gives a link (
http://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.co.uk/) to Gilles Fernandez’s excellent dissection of H&M’s incompetent interrogatory methods.
6) I have no idea what the root cause of this incident was. I do know kids can make up the most remarkable tales at that age. Its interest to me is the way it’s become part of the substrand of ‘school sightings’ in UFO folklore, and quasi-canonical.