The Slope of Kongwa Hill

In January 1952, a sensitive young boy named Tony Edwards moves with his parents from postwar London to Tanganyika (now Tanzania). He goes to a boarding school in Kongwa, a remote, barren region just south of the Masai Steppe. Several hundred miles from home, Tony spent his formative years in a derelict townsite that had been the base for a massive, postwar agricultural program. The Slope of Kongwa Hill recalls the tough, disciplinary, and sometimes brutal nature of British boarding schools, aggravated by primitive accommodation and the ever-present danger of East Africa's bundu. Fights, raids, and beatings contrast the grand excitement of animal and reptile confrontations, torrential storms, locust infestations, and other adventures. A face-to-face encounter with a black mamba in the toilet, running away from school, hunting game for meat, a narrow escape from lionesses, Boy Scout real-world field training, and a forbidden first romance -- all of it combines in a kaleidoscope of once-in-a-blue-moon, unforgettable experiences. The Slope of Kongwa Hill is an endearing, coming-of-age story in a most unique era and setting. This is the fourth edition and first republishing in the US, after three versions released in Canada under a previous ISBN.