160:. With no formal training, Read survived largely on his local knowledge and language skills, supplemented by his cattle buying. Life on 'Mountainside' suited Read, despite the constant battles against Africa's unforgiving environment, but the winds of change were to bring a greater challenge and one that would ultimately end Read's dreams.
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picks up Read's story where "Barefoot" left off, with his parents moving to the Lupa
Goldfields to try to salvage their livelihoods after a catastrophic series of events that left them almost destitute, reliant on Read's hunting skills and the help of their Maasai friends. The book moves from Mission
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in
Abyssinia, Madagascar and Burma. After the War, he commanded the Uganda contingent in the Victory Parade in London and joined the Tanganyika Veterinary Department, where he spent the next six years. During this time, he covered areas that included parts of Maasailand when he was able to renew his
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Dangoya develops his reputation and leadership of his age-group and has to deal with envy, drought, superstition and colonialists. Dangoya proves to be an enlightened leader, respecting his tribe's traditions and his elders but at the same time challenging incompetence and mere superstition. – In a
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in Zambia as an
Agricultural Consultant. By 1975 the Tanzania Government had acquired the last of his properties and he left Tanzania for Zambia, and then South Africa, where he again tried his hand at farming, an interlude in his life that proved far from happy or satisfactory. Finally in 1979 he
48:. Left on her own with young David, his mother eventually sought a living in Maasailand when Read was seven, there she ran a small hotel and traded with the Maasai. Read spent his next seven years of childhood here, during which time his playmates were the Maasai children.
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history. He lived the life of a "white Maasai" and could speak their language before his own native
English. Born in Nairobi, Read spent his formative years in what is now Tanzania, a country to which he would always return. Read spent his final years in Momella near
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before
English, and he ran wild with his friends learning a lot about the Maasai way of life and associating closely with nature and the wildlife. Totally accepted as a Maasai by the tribe, he took part in meat festivals and other tribal gatherings and ceremonies.
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Read was married and had one daughter. He was a leading authority on the people of
Eastern Africa, speaking several African dialects, but it was with the Maasai that he spent his formative years, and with whom he is most closely associated with.
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Read's works, covering a period of seven decades, not only describe a unique life starting from the adoption of the young boy by the magnificent Maasai tribe whose influence never ceased through his adolescence and manhood; it is also an
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and was
Chairman of the Tanganyika Farmers Association from 1973 to 1975. However, after Independence was granted to Tanganyika in 1961, his properties began to be gradually eroded, during which period he was employed part-time by the
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School life to veterinary training, active service in
Abyssinia, Madagascar, Burma, and India, meetings with the King and Queen to privileged encounters with the hunter-gatherers of the
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Having eventually acquired a farm of his own on the slopes of
Kilimanjaro, also in Maasailand, he went on to become a leading farming figure and prominent landowner in
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At the age of 14, Read was sent to school in Arusha. His schooling was completed by correspondence course, when he was employed as an apprentice
Metallurgist by the
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This is Read's sole fiction novel, again situated in the Serengeti at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In a series of adventures the
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he roamed the African savannas of his childhood, investigating ritual tribal killings and working as a livestock marketing officer.
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This article is partly a translation of the article in the German Knowledge. – All biographical data are from the preliminary
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Like in his other works it is obvious that it is the people rather than the events that Read's narrative lays emphasis on.
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than I have from any of the countless scholarly anthropology tomes of colourful coffee table books written about them".
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or, in Maasai language, Ndorobo people. During six years employment by the Tanganyika Veterinary Department in
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19:(23 April 1922 – 2 July 2015) was an author of autobiographical works which reveal a profound knowledge of
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After the work for the Veterinary Department the Reads settled as wheat farmers on the Western slopes of
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285:, privately published by David Read, Nairobi 1979, 2nd ed. 1980 by Travel Book Club. Reprint 1984,
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This is Read's second autobiographical novel, covering the period between 1936 and 1952
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concentrated form the book encloses Maasai tradition such as male and female
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The book covers Read's adventures between seven and fourteen years in the
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returned to Kenya to join Lima Limited as their Agricultural Consultant.
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African Footsteps Magazine", 2009, as quoted on the author's homepage.
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is an accurate and admirable historic record of my people". (p. xi)
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and whose knowledge and history is, by the accuracy and the
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At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the
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Waters of the Sanjan. A Historical Novel of the Masai
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319:Beating about the Bush. Tales from Tanganyika
190:In his foreword Ole Ntekerei Memusi writes: “
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52:became his first language, followed by
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40:Read was born to British parents in
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64:Department of Geological Survey.
402:King's African Rifles officers
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392:Tanzanian non-fiction writers
303:David Read and Pamela Brown,
283:Barefoot over the Serengeti
118:Barefoot Over the Serengeti
107:Barefoot over the Serengeti
71:and later trained with the
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90:Anglo American Corporation
17:David William Lister Read
422:Immigrants to Tanganyika
397:Kenya Regiment officers
412:20th-century novelists
360:Beating about the Bush
353:Homepage of David Read
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125:Beating about the Bush
185:initiation ceremonies
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333:Another Load of Bull
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151:Another Load of Bull
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251:About the Author
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101:Bibliography
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28:in northern
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382:2015 deaths
377:1922 births
172:protagonist
158:Kilimanjaro
371:Categories
223:References
85:Tanganyika
62:Tanganyika
198:Relevance
114:Serengeti
36:Biography
237:"Eulogy"
181:polygamy
30:Tanzania
276:Sources
217:amnesia
213:empathy
187:, etc.
54:Swahili
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141:Dodoma
50:Maasai
26:Arusha
21:Maasai
42:Kenya
337:ISBN
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