From Picanin Master to Mambo

When the worst of times are the best of times

Two years before Nikita Khrushchev's famous shoe banging incident at a United Nations gathering, the writer's father fears political sabre rattling is leading up to another war.
Losing parents, wife and child still fresh in his mind he evacuates his young new family to colonial Southern Rhodesia.

While the Cold War takes hold on the other side of the equator and Patrice Lumumba is murdered in the Belgian Congo, life is good.

Labour hopefuls in the UK make idealistic promises, igniting an untimely process with serious repercussions for ordinary Rhodesians.
Skipping some thirty years of 'hard-labour' in the global corporate world the writer is at crossroads of his own.

Picking himself up, he heads back to what was Rhodesia. Zimbabwe has retained its vast natural beauty and once again, life is good.

Eventually, totally unprepared, he ventures into farming. With more than 350 men, women and children living on his land, two villages and a cemetery he develops a deeper understanding or lack thereof and discovery of a whole new world of pitfalls and astonishment, simultaneously rewarding and excruciatingly painful.

After ten years in the 'Most Beautiful Empty Spot on Earth' the wheels come off as the country sinks into financial quagmire.
Inspired by his father's life lessons and ability of 'starting again', humour is never far beneath the surface, despite mishaps, heartaches and hardships.

Anecdotes backed up with just a few historical insights provide the reader with a light-hearted narrative of a writer who (almost) always sees the bright side.