Product Description
by Robin Swift (Author)
THE 'OLD AFRICA' MAGAZINE'S REVIEW OF - A KENYA BEGINNING The first part of this book tells of Robin Swift's story of growing up in Nairobi in the 1940s and 1950s. His family had a long history in Kenya with Robin's great-uncle Randall Swift settling in Kenya in 1904. Robin's mother Yolande was born in Kenya in 1916 and Robin's father Jack Swift and uncle, the well-known farmer-painter Hobo Swift, went out to Kenya in the 1930s Sadly, Robin's father Jack died in 1943 from complications after a motorcycle accident while serving with the Kenya Regiment in the Middle East. His mother Yolande later remarried Gordon Smith, a Senior Superintendent in the Kenya Police. Robin started his education at the Nairobi Primary school as a five year old and he went on from there to the Duke of York School. The author has a keen memory of his school days as well as biking around Nairobi on his Raleigh bicycle with his friend Mark Steed. He also writes fondly of visits to his uncle Hobo and aunt Marian's farm in Thomsons Falls during the school holidays and tells of hitchhiking to Naro Moru to climb Mt Kenya. These schoolboy memories are delightful and echo similar memories in readers who grew up or have lived in Kenya. The book carries on with Robin's college education in the UK and the subsequent years as a coffee farm manager in Kenya followed by a career in farm and earthmoving machinery across Africa from Zambia to Rhodesia to Botswana. The author and his wife Jinx, who he married in Rhodesia, moved back to the now-Zimbabwe in the 1990s before migrating to Australia in 2004. The book ends with Robin telling about his not so easy transition to life in Australia. In his retirement he took up the project of telling his life story and this book is the commendable result.
