We were children of great fortune – our father was shipped to East Africa on an expat assignment in the late sixties and my two brothers and I were born in Nairobi, Kenya. Whilst he missed out on flower power, free love and the music of Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, we grew up in a tropical paradise with year-round sunshine and a swimming pool in the garden. I learnt to swim by the age of three and started windsurfing at the age of six. We’d spend long weekends in tentedcamps pitched on the shores of the Rift Valley; when we weren’t windsurfing or sailing we would be competing with the local hippos and crocs for shoals of spiny tilapia and whiskered cat-fish.
By Craig Rogers
al outpost Like most expatriate families, our long holidays were spent on the Kenyan coast. A ‘makuti’ (palm-thatched) cottage would be home for three weeks. Fishermen would come to the door every morning with baskets of red-snapper, squid and occasional lobster. Local kids would appear with ‘madafu’ (young coconut) which I’d trade for old tennis balls.
Rabbiosi and Rogers boys, Mombasa, ‘79. Poling around the lagoon, Vipingo, ‘84.
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