Snapshots of a White British Kid Finding Her Feet in Tanzania
Moments from my formative years in a climate and culture far from home
My childhood wasn’t particularly run-of-the-mill. With my mother’s family in Israel, and my English father’s profession in development economics taking us to numerous exotic locations around the world, I spent more time living away from our British family home than I spent in it.
I was born during one of my dad’s long contracts abroad — in Malaysia. The next of his lengthy contracts was a project in Tanzania, where we stayed for around eighteen months from the winter after I turned four.
It was during those months in Tanzania — not a long time in the grand scheme of things but an entire quarter of my six-year-long life by the time we returned to the UK — that I ticked off a great number of early childhood milestones. Milestones that marked growth, change, and a deepening awareness of the world and the people around me.
But the thing is that all of the memories I have — of which there are many — are like isolated flashes of a life rather than a series that flow into one another to make up a coherent story.
For instance, I don’t so much remember the process of being taught to read. I do, however, remember being…
