by Shirley Baseley

As a child with a father in the military establishment, Shirley Baseley spent a large portion of her childhood in East Africa before returning to England as a young adult, where she married and raised children. And yet she still felt the African sun was in her blood. Many of her siblings and their families had returned to the land of their childhood, settling in various African countries on the east coast of that magical continent. In due time, she followed suit, settling in Kenya. In this memoir, she recalls the ups and downs of her many years there: her marriage to a native son, the years during which they ran a successful business together, the dangers of life in an African village during politically unstable times, the friendships forged, the consequences of learning to live without a fridge and electricity, and the inevitable farcicality of utilising alternatives.