Michael Rees

I may be a Wazungu by birth but Africa is in my blood and I have many more stories to share.

My conception occurred in Ghana West Africa during the good economic times of power sharing. But possibly colonialism imposed a mentality of competitive, individualistic and bourgeois behavior that was not the African way? When independence was approved, my family departed for Wales. The following year Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African Country to escape European colonization. In Wales I lingered a while getting the first part of my formal education completed. Around the time of my coming of age, the seed of my own Africa wanderlust was planted by my sister. She presented me with a trilogy of Wilbur Smith novels that changed my life.

My Africa wanderlust returned me from Europe just in time for to catch the tail end of the terrible war in the territory which is now the country of Zimbabwe. They were interested times and very much new experiences for a young man working in the ‘so called’ front-line state of Zambian. The Rhodesians military with the support of South Africa did their worse to test our patience.

It seems to me ironic that I voted just once in my lifetime as a young idealist before I graduated. Yet the fight for political franchise has cast a big shadow over many years of my African experiences. And so it was again in my move from Central Africa to Zululand. I got out before the wonderful Nelson Mandela was released. My return to Africa came just a few years later when I lived on the edge of a wilderness in the rift valley on one of those very strange soda lakes.

These days I am enjoy telling and writing stories from the convivence of my Dubai base and the new adventures my East African home dishes up.