Home in the open savannah

On our bathroom shelf, next to a bar of French lavender soap, sits a relic from my past - the dismembered leg of a miniature gazelle. As my eye passes over this keepsake I sometimes think back to the little girl who collected it, picking through scraps left over after a dik-dik had been butchered for our evening meal.

I was born on the red dust plains of Tanzania, back when it was called Tanganyika, before independence. It was in the area of the Wagogo tribe, among whom I’m known as toto wa nchi, a child of the land.

My father was a safari doctor who took long journeys to remote areas, where he ran a clinic from his car. We four kids, along with our mother, often travelled with him, spending weeks camping. Dad was the only doctor many tribespeople ever saw. While