An African Childhood by Stephanie Keating, co-author of In Borrowed Light

We spent our childhood in Kenya where our parents lived in the port city of Mombasa. From our earliest days we were surrounded by a kaleidoscope of cultures, and a dramatic changes of scenery, from the blue water, powdery sand and palm groves of the Indian Ocean to the highlands with their fertile farms where cattle, sheep, wheat, tea and coffe were grown in abundance.

Beit el Ras - our Mombasa Home

Our boarding school was almost 600 miles from home, at an altitude of some 6000 feet. The journey took two days by train with the huge engine puffing and crawling up steep escarpments to reach our destination. Gum trees rattled in the wind, and red murram roads turned from dust to a quagmire as soon as the first raindrops fell. Our holidays were spent snorkelling and sailing in Mombasa and Lamu, or on safari in one of the magnificent parks or game reserves. We often camped in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by grazing zebra, gazelle and wildebeeste with the sound of lions or the trumpeting of a bull elephant only a few hundred yards from our frail tents.

Barbara on a bad tempered mount!

At home our parents entertained sheiks and scholars, swamis and bishops, actors, singers and diplomats - people of every persuasion, culture and colour. There were some who came to dinner and were still there a week or a month later. This open attitude – unusual in colonial days – has always stayed with us and has made acceptance of change a core part of our lives.
Since then, our paths have been full of surprises and upheavals. Barbara decided on a career in criminal law but wound up marrying and taking care of a large family. Her children now live as far away as Australia, Thailand and the Caribbean where she travels to visit them. She is based in Dublin but also spends time in the south of France where she has a house. Stephanie returned to Kenya after her schooling, and then wandered on to Mauritius, the Seychelles and the Caribbean before spending four years sailing round the world. She now lives between France and the United States.

Stephanie on the equator

Our first novel was based in France and in Ireland, drawing on people and places we had discovered in both countries and using these as valuable inspiration and background for the book. The portraits of those who survived the German occupation of Paris and the horrors of Auschwitz during World War Two were drawn largely from personal encounters. 

The African Trilogy was also based largely on our own experiences. Prior to Independence, the Kenya highlands were farmed by British and Afrikaans settlers whose forbears had arrived in Kenya at the turn of the 20th century, carving out their farms from the surrounding bush which was teeming with wildlife. The British then brought Indian labourers and Sikhs from the Punjab to work on the railways and to form part of the colonial police and the army services. But the issue of land, unfairly taken from the indigenous tribes of Kenya, was always at the heart of the country’s development and these were circumstances that have created the fictional Langani Farm that is the centrepiece of our African books.

What next? Another story of family secrets, love and death and passion, set in Hong Kong, Ireland and wherever our characters bring us.

In Borrowed Light is now available from Harvill Secker - please click here for more information.

Please click here for more information on Barbara & Stephanie Keating and their books.