My life in a picture
Childhood loves stay with us, says author Alexander McCall Smith
I love looking at old photographs – the sort of pictures you find in the attic, tucked away in an old biscuit tin or a dog-eared album. People do such odd things in these photographs. Then, years later, they look at them and ask themselves, ‘What on earth was I doing dressed up like that? Did I really wear that dress, that shirt, that peculiar hat?’
Here I am on a horse, aged 10 or 11. Growing up in Zimbabwe when it was the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, I spent quite a bit of time on horseback. This horse was called Ranger. He must have wondered what this boy was thinking, sitting astride him with a lance. The boy, I think, was impressionable and had clearly read Don Quixote.
That was a long time ago, in a vanished world. But the memories of one’s early years stay, and although I was to spend most of the rest of my life in Scotland, my affection for Africa has never dimmed. Many years later, in my job as Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, I looked after students from Botswana, and went out there to work for a while at its university. I fell in love with Africa all over again, but I did not realise I was on the verge of doing something that would change the course of my life.
One day I went to visit friends who lived in a village north of the capital, Gaborone.
That is the village you can see behind me in the other photograph. I am pictured on a hill, and from below could be heard the sound of cattle bells. I can hear that sound as I write this. I can feel the dry wind that comes in from the Kalahari.
On that visit, my friend’s wife took me to the house of a woman they knew.
The woman wanted to give them a chicken. The chicken was plucked from its innocent life in the yard and handed over. The woman who had raised it had the friendliest smile, and I remember thinking, ‘One day I might write about somebody like this.’
And that is what I did. Some years later, I sat down and remembered that day. In
