Rift Valley Rambles by Wendy Maitland

RIFT VALLEY RAMBLES continues the story told in Rambles with my Family as Wendy returns to Kenya at the age of twenty four, leaving behind the jumbled misfortunes of life at home as she sets out to find new purpose and direction for her own life. At this time Kenya was on the verge of independence from colonial rule, so it was into this charged atmosphere of anticipation and expectation that she arrives with her own hopes and plans. These are quickly challenged as it remains a recurring feature in these rambles that nothing ever goes quite to plan. Setbacks impose themselves unpredictably in the same way that became an almost inescapable theme during the tempestuous times of Wendy’s childhood and growing up, but this time she has a new family and new situations to confront. Family dynamics intervene alongside a shifting tide of history that in Africa has its own momentum and drama. The observation of these events with candid humour provides an antidote to misadventure, while all this takes place on a farm in the great wide, wild and glorious Rift Valley of Kenya during a time of political change and evolution.