Fried Ants and Yorkshire Pudding

By Glenville Kedie

In 1970, my Father packed up his family, left the gritty industrial northern English steel town of Sheffield, and moved to Africa seeking a better life. In England, a working-class family such as ours had a place, and we were expected to stay in it. In Uganda, such social barriers no longer mattered to the expatriate community; my parents quickly found themselves part of a widening egalitarian social circle, while slowly, I began to think of myself less and less as English -- as M'zungu - and more and more as African.But shortly after our arrival, the infamous dictator Idi Amin staged a military coup, and literally overnight the country changed. Amin rounded up thousands in the first few weeks, and tens of thousands over the next several years. There were mass deportations, of Israelis and Indians, and thousands of executions. Many disgraced soldiers, officers and ministers were publicly executed less than a mile from our house.As a boy I was caught between two worlds, English at home and African everywhere else, and the sight of bodies washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria become so frequent that they were little more than scenery, even becoming part of our childhood games.After a while the sight of corpses became so commonplace that no one in the expatriate community really thought twice about them anymore. The M'zungus all believe that the troubles were temporary, and beyond the control of a few European families. Surely, they thought, the British government will step in, any day now...'This is the story of what it was like to grow up where terrifying brutality and death were commonplace, everyday occurrences... this is also the story of a perfectly normal childhood, in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1482756951
• ISBN13: 9781482756951
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.6" x 5.0"