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Partners
They last saw each other 66 years ago but when they clapped eyes on each other again it was love at first sight.
And after all that time, Andrew (76) and Dolly (78) Saunderson got hitched on 20 March at the home affairs office in Springbok in the Northern Cape.
Their parents were neighbours in Usakos northeast of Swakopmund in Namibia when they were kids.
Andrew and Dolly’s brother, Freddie, were friends and so were Dolly and Andrew’s sister, Rina. Dolly was 12 and Andrew 10 – he was born exactly two years after her in the same Catholic hospital.
In 1952 Dolly’s family moved to Keetmanshoop in Nambia and Andrew stayed behind.
Two years ago he started trying to track Freddie down. A friend told Dolly, who gave him a call.
“I had to share the tragic news that Freddie had died twee weeks earlier,” Dolly tells us in Andrew’s Pretoria flat.
The place is messy and half-empty as Andrew is packing up to join Dolly in Keetmanshoop.
Andrew used to work for the railways and Dolly was an upholsterer and worked in a bakery. They got in touch on 23 November last year via WhasApp and Dolly sent Andrew a photo of them as kids.
“We would chat right through the night when I called her,” Andrew says. “My cellphone account was around R945 a month.”
Dolly says she’s not made for single life and asked God to send her a man she’d receive with open arms.
“On 5 March he took the bus to Springbok where I picked him up at two in the morning. He didn’t recognise me and asked whether he could borrow my cellphone to call someone.
“I hugged him with open arms and said, ‘Andrew, it’s me, Dolly’.”
The couple are madly in love and Andrew popped the question in the Wimpy in Springbok. Dolly’s response was an immediate “yes”.
Dolly has three sons and Andrew has two daughters, and all of them are delighted their parents have found happiness again.
