The Bush Jacket

When I was nine this man was my hero. He's J A Hunter, an appropriate name for a Scotsman who was one of Kenya's top 'white hunters'. My mother knew how much I revered him for, in September 1954, she bought me his first book, African Hunter, to read on the 'plane on my way back to England to boarding school.

In the picture, Hunter is wearing a bush jacket, a wonderful article of clothing because, being loose, it was fairly cool, but its main attraction was the number of pockets it had. My brother and I, therefore....

....had to have bush jackets, which were made to measure by one of Mombasa's Indian tailors. We even felt the need to wear them when, in 1956....

....we spent our precious summer holiday not in Kenya but in the UK.

I don't think other boys in Mombasa wore this garment, though I may be wrong. Certainly, as time passed and we grew older, the bush jacket disappeared and....

....we wore what everyone else wore, a shirt or a t-shirt, though there was still a nod to our African existence: the belt is made of zebra skin.