Kilimanjaro tales

In 1925 Gwen and Don Latham arrived in the young British territory of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in East Africa. They had come to run a hospital, to raise a family and to seek adventure. They got much more than they bargained for: trained man-eating crocodiles; mauled hunters; a first British ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro and the discovery of Hemingway's frozen leopard; two lion cubs to raise; a gold rush; and the life of a bush doctor.

These are only a few of the tales Gwen Latham tells with wit, wonder and an exquisite eye for detail.

Almost 30 years later Gwen's son, Michael, a young doctor, arrives in Tanzania with his wife, and with very similar objectives. He too met with adventures great and small. In his skillful and moving narrative he describes his experiences of the Africa his parents passed on to him, his life as a district medical officer, and the idealist President Julius Nyerere leading the country in its peaceful steps to independence.

Gwen Latham belongs to the old tradition of the unusual women pioneers in Africa. Michael Latham, like Albert Schweitzer before him, belongs to that line of visionary doctors in Africa, striving timelessly for a better world.