A hard but rewarding life in Africa

Alexandra Fuller wrote the story of her childhood in Africa as Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (see my review here). It was a fascinating and often funny story and the person who remained in the memory of the reader for longest was the author’s mother Nicola. Nicola was a complex person who lived in difficult times and Alexandra has written her mother’s full story in Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness.

Nicola Fuller and her husband Tim (the author’s parents) came to Africa to farm and bring up a family but the political situation in Rhodesia and nearby countries continually interfered with their ideal life and presented them with a series of challenges. They lost some of their children, they were forced off the land they farmed and they were often in fear of their lives. Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, as she liked to be known, experienced mental health issues and an alcohol dependency.

The author presents her mother in all her complexity including the casual racism of the time and her colonial attitudes to the people and the country. She also shows her family’s abiding love for the places where they lived and their identity as white African people. The story is funny when it addresses Nicola’s eccentricities and touching when it explores her losses. It introduces us to a host of other people whose lives touched those of the Fuller family – sometimes in a positive way but often not. The narrative of Nicola’s life is interspersed with details of her later life, still in Africa, and her reaction to her daughter’s first book.

This is, however, a book of love from a daughter to a mother. It’s a story of a woman trying to make a living and survive in a landscape that is often hostile but always beautiful. It’s about hard work, family and relationships as well as the changes in the political landscape of the area. It might be interesting to read and compare it with Christina Lamb’s book The Africa ouseHHouse about an Englishman in Northern Rhodesia (see review here) although I find Nicola Fuller a more sympathetic person to read about.