Growing Up in Africa: Rabbit for Dinner

I spent my childhood in Africa. Uganda to be precise. A glorious country of warm friendly people and a hot but not oppressive climate. This was before Idi Amin came to power and ruined both the country and the people. My parents were teachers and having qualified in England they decided to go in search of adventure. The options were few and far between but through a series of contacts my father managed to get a job as an educational adviser, employed by the UK foreign office, to support the struggling network of schools in the Ugandan bush. His arrival in Africa and his first year there are another story, but this one begins 10 years later, when the family were well established in a small town called Masindi.

We lived in a 3 bedroom bungalow on the edge of a school “compound” a mile from the outskirts of the town. Our house was low and cool and surrounded by a large veranda running all the way around it. The garden was about a half an acre in all cut from the surrounding grasslands by some willing volunteers armed with machetes. Had we had the energy the garden could have been 10 times larger, but tough elephant grass and the hot sun limited our ambition. Being that close to the natural savanna grassland of the “bush” had both its benefits and its drawbacks. As a child it was wonderful to be able to explore the long grasses and see the range of animals, snakes and birds that existed within yards of our front door. As a parent it must have been a cause for constant anxiety.

And that is where my story really starts. I was 5 going on 6 and had developed a passion for keeping rabbits. My father built a large cage in the garden and covered it in chicken wire to stop any escaping. Then my parents bought 2 rabbits for my birthday and they were installed in their new lodgings. Everything went beautifully. We played with the rabbits in the sunshine, fed and watered them and soon enough rabbits being rabbits we had several more. After a fairly short time we were up to 22. The previously spacious cage was now rather cramped. my father, being a resourceful man soon found some more boards and chicken wire and built an open air extension to the cage, large enough to provide plenty of room for the extra inhabitants to run and graze without escaping.