Thorny Issues

Sunday Times Book Review by Kathy Brewis. 18 May 2008 

Flights to Gaborone are only £600. Ten hours in the air and you could start a new life in Botswana. I mention this because for the first 131 pages of Robyn Scott's memoir of her childhood in this beautiful African democracy, emigrating there seems an excellent idea. But then, after plenty of quirky, idyllic tales of eccentric relatives and winsome innocence, Scott slips in a nasty little portent of doom. “Later, Dad would also say that only Grandpa Ivor could manage to close a coffin business just as everyone started to die.” Scott's parents moved the family (Robyn, then six, and her younger brother and sister) from New Zealand to Botswana in 1987. Aids was a curiosity then, the newest STD on the block. By the mid-1990s, Botswana had one of the highest infection rates in the world.

There's a danger with any childhood memoir that those family legends recalled over every Christmas dinner can be soporific for anyone else. But this one, endorsed by Alexander McCall Smith, is neither twee, nor unchallenging.

There's the doctor father whose idea it was to up sticks and start over in Africa; the hippy, inspiring mother who gives homeopathic remedies to children and animals alike; the seemingly fearless grandfather, a pilot in the war, who looks danger in the face without blinking. In the opening scene, Grandpa Ivor is letting giant brown moths drink a mixture of red wine and grape juice from his mouth, while the children watch in awe. This is the kind of grandfather everyone should have.

Scott is a poster girl for home schooling. That's “schooling” in the loosest possible sense. Now a confident, twentysomething first-time author with two degrees, she had spent just one term in formal education by the time she was 14. Her Oxford graduate mother's educational “philosophy” was a combination of benign neglect and enthusiasm for knowledge. The only rule was that learning should be fun.

Scott is a tough little child. The optimism, some would say recklessness, that runs in her family makes her mount an unbroken horse - at her father's suggestion - and persist in riding it despite numerous falls. After a while, she explains, she just learns to roll when she hits the ground. Or there's the time when her father lets her have a go (aged 11) with an angle grinder, with near-fatal results. Her reaction is excitement at the thought of narrowly escaping death.

Most interesting of all is her father's experience as a western doctor having to adapt to Botswanian beliefs and customs. His female patients blame everything on their wombs; male patients always say they have kidney trouble. They all expect to be sent home with tablets and ointments, and consider blood-letting essential. Sometimes people's bizarre stories turn out to be true, as with the man who insists he has a snake in his belly.