I grew up surrounded by souvenirs of my family’s time in southern England. Years later I finally visited that fabled land
In most of the children’s books I browsed through as a last-born child, there was an address in southern England handwritten in the inside cover. I vaguely knew my parents and two siblings lived there at some point, and I grew up surrounded by minor monuments to that life in England: Dad’s records, the faux-Victorian framed mirror above the fireplace, and – Mum’s holy grail – a bedside Teasmade with an integrated lamp and clock. And I was fascinated by the pictures of my two older siblings hosting a birthday party, making a snowman, and posing in front of Buckingham Palace in our family albums. They seemed so removed from my reality of growing up in a small town in Kenya’s Rift Valley. I promised myself that I would one day visit Coulsdon, in the London borough of Croydon, then outgrew my fascination.
In 1981, my father had left Kenya to study psychiatry in the UK, and, one year later, my mother, brother and sister had joined him. As a resident doctor on rotation, he worked in many hospitals, including Cane Hill in Coulsdon, while my mother made a busy life for herself, often rushing from typist training to pick up my siblings from school in her beloved sky-blue Mini Cooper.
