Rainbow's End
A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm
1
Most people left Rhodesia to get away from the War. We came back for it.
It was April 1975. One year after moving to South Africa to start a new life, we were in a car crammed with possessions and we were barreling once more into the indigo haze, into the thorny, blond bush, somewhere beyond which our next new life was waiting. Dad had a Peter Stuyvesant out in the air, twisting smoke, the twin gray lines of the strip road were tapering crazily into the horizon, and he was saying, categorically: "Two things got me down about Cape Town. One was the weather and the other was people telling me I'd run away from the War. I couldn't stand people saying I'd run away from the War."
Which was ironic because it wasn't even his war.
It had become his war only because in 1960 he happened to see a recruitment ad for the Rhodesian Army the same week he received his National Service papers in his home town of Uitenhage, South Africa, and he'd thought to himself: A chance to see another country! What a pleasure! Even though he wa ... read full excerpt from Rainbow's End: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm ebook
