Hunting

As boys, living in the 'wilds of Africa', it was somehow normal to model ourselves on the great 'white hunters', to which end we usually went around with a sheath knife on our belts and an elephant hair bracelet on our wrists - and, of course, we needed to actually hunt.

This was made possible by this man, Mlalo, our 'garden boy', who provided us each with a catapult, made from a forked stick, the inner tube of a bicycle tyre, and a small leather cup which held the pebble. Thus armed, we ventured into the wilds, of which there were still some on Mombasa island, in search of game.

This bird, a mouse bird, was one of our top targets, for reasons which are lost in the mists of time. Other birds were also fair game, but what we dreaded coming across was a snake.

Happily, we were pretty useless as hunters, so I do not recall a single animal being harmed by our antics. But what I am so relieved about is that the hunting we used to practice changed, to hunting with a camera. The cameras we had in those days - ours was a Kodak Brownie 127 - were also....

....pretty useless but, happily, by the time I returned to East Africa in my sixties, I carried the digital technology which enabled me....

....to shoot game - this in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania - with precious little understanding of how my camera worked but some success.