Reviews for Travels in the coastlands of British East Africa and the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba

The average rating for Travels in the coastlands of British East Africa and the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-14 00:00:00 Warren Campbell After World War II, Rosemary Rothschild Seys and family moved to Kenya to take up the offer of the British government for the British to colonize the country. The British colony was struggling for independence from Britain. The family bought land, a farm, in the White highlands east of Lake Victoria. Rosemary was brought up in a wealthy family and was not use to farm work until they started a Guernsey dairy farm in England. They had a large farm in the White highlands they called Rhodora. They had prize winning Guernsey dairy cattle, local cattle for meat, sheep, pigs, and grew coffee beans, oats etc. for cattle feed and various vegetables for the use by their employees, themselves and to sell. Rosemary was well known in England for breeding and training Sheltie dogs; she continued this is Kenya and competed in various kennel club shows. The farm also competed with their Guernsey cattle and won many awards. Seys provide beautiful descriptions of various birds, flowers, snakes, insects and wild and domesticated animals. I wished there had been a bit more information about the day to day mundane life on a farm. Because this was taken from the letters home, Seys had more information about people visiting or their going someplace. I did enjoy the comments on the movies they saw; I could remember most of them. Seys also provided some information on the various diseases they routinely had to deal with in both animals and people. They seemed to be always vaccinating the animals either just before or after and outbreak. I found the information about the Rift Valley Fever interesting as it was new to Kenya at the time but a big problem in Southern Africa. The Seys family built a life during the tumultuous time of the Mau Mau uprising. Rosemary had written letters home to family in England telling all about their colonial farm life. The author used these letters to write this memoir about life in 1950’s colonialism turmoil. Seys tells of her husband, Tony, belonging to the local police reserve and taking his turn patrolling the local farm area for Mau Mau. From what Seys describes it seem the Mau Mau war was a guerrilla action with night attacks on isolated farms and infiltrating into the local work crews and intimidating their workers. The book was well written. Sometimes the letters were written by Tony and some by Rosemary so the book goes back and forth between the two viewpoints. This was a most interesting book. I learned lots from reading it, beside it was just a fun read. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Rosemary’s son David did a good job narrating the book.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-08 00:00:00 Michael Koehler Recommended to me by a hitchhiker, the book starts as a story of a man taking his family to East Africa to forget about his dead sister. His observations and emotions seemed very egocentric, superficial and annoying. I was ready to put it down simply because it idolized every other European traveler who made Africa their home and bored me with his own uninteresting delusions that he could relate to the great wild animals he saw. It was trying hard to be something it wasn't and should have been, but once the author relaxed and stopped forcing it the observations became more factual and less emotion. He gave some historical accounts of conservationists I had no knowledge of. His final conclusion was obvious, at least to me, but perhaps some haven't thought that much about the topic so I'll leave it at that.