The Little Green Book

This must be about the most unassuming little book in our library, small, thin, with a cloth cover, and only found because I was looking for a book amongst the East African ones about Swahili. But as I pulled it off the shelf I knew immediately where it came from as I can remember my mother buying it.

We'd driven up from Mombasa along the Nairobi road as far as the first entrance gate into Tsavo East National Park, and had gone into the little shop the park rangers ran in the ticket office. We knew our African animals pretty well so were surprised when Mum bought this, 'The Game Animals of Eastern Africa'.

Arriving at the park was always an exciting moment. We would ask the rangers for news - "habari gani?", "what news?" - and they would tell us where elephant had been seen, and rhino, and buffalo, and....

This was in 1960, the date, 17th/18th September indicating that that we spent the night at the park, most likely in one of the cottages at the Aruba dam, and also that this was....

....right at the end of the holidays, when Richard and I would have been finding life increasingly difficult as the date for our flight to the UK loomed towards us. That day, with its miserable farewells, must also have been dreaded by our mother for, although we knew that it was she who was so keen on us receiving a British prep/public school education, there was an emotional price to pay for it.

I have no idea why the two stamps are there, but the pencilled 6/50 at the top means that Mum would have paid six shillings and fifty cents for the book.

In the event the book was pretty useless, being far too detailed to be of any use in the field; and, as I said earlier, we were already pretty good at identifying most of the animals we were likely to see.

The book must have stayed in East Africa with my parents, and probably came with us when we made our next annual Tsavo pilgrimage - on that occasion, in 1961, for the last time. Then it came to England with my parents when they retired, and I probably picked it up from my mother's flat in Hastings when she moved into a nursing home, since when it has stood neglected upon our bookshelves.