Tanganyika Childhood
Me second from lhs, my brother Michael on the right, together with little friends in 1952
Being lucky enough to grow up in Tanzania - Tanganyika Territory as it was in those days - I thought I'd share a few photos from my childhood. We lived in Dodoma, where my father worked for the Geological Survey.
With father Benedetto and the Bishop at Bihawana Mission in 1955
Looking at the photo of my First Communion at Bihawana Mission I see that kindly Father Benedetto (on the left), who taught us our catechism in the Dodoma church every Sunday and put up with quite a lot of naughtiness especially on my part, was actually rather dishy!
Bihawana was not so far from Dodoma, and the brothers there grew vines and produced a red altar wine from Italian grapes - this was the beginning of the Dodoma wine industry.
On Safari with my parents and brother Michael to the Chunya goldfields in 1950
My father often travelled around the country on geological expeditions and when possible took us with him. Here we visited Chunya, near Mbeya in the west of Tanzania where my father was working on extraction of gold from the ore. He was a Metallurgist, and there was a large section of staff at the Geological Survey, as Tanzania is a country very rich in minerals.
The Survey is still being used today.