Rhodesian author Peter Wood, who lives at Mau Ping, Sai Kung
Mau Ping resident Peter Wood, a former Rhodesian farmer now semi-paralysed, has taken over from Steve Vines as back-page columnist for Sai Kung Magazine. Peter has a book out, Mud Between Your Toes, which tells of life growing up on a farm playing amongst hippos, crocodiles and elephants. If you like books set in Africa — among my favourites The Poisonwood Bible and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight — you will find Mud a damn good read.
You will see Peter around Sai Kung town on his walker or in a wheelchair with a helper by his side. “I had a tumour in my spine. When the doctors removed it that created other problems, first my right leg went, then my whole right side.” Peter is a writer and photographer who arrived in Hong Kong in 1993, first working for Eastern Express (Vines’ newspaper) then AFP as a photo editor until his developing paralysis confined him to a desk working on marketing.
Woods’ book Mud Between Your Toes was published in 2016
Peter narrates podcasts which you can find at mudbetweenyourtoes.podbean.com. At first he read from his book, then he interviewed African exiles, now he’ll talk to anyone with a good story to tell. He lives up on the Mau Ping hill above Sai Kung where he “can see for bloody miles. I love my veranda, love my garden, love my view”. Also he is turning his writing talents to fiction, “which is a whole new thing entirely”.
In Mud Peter comes out with many good lines. Of his days as a young man in the fast-fading Rhodesian Army, he wrote how splendidly fit he used to be. “I could run like 40 bastards”. A writer with good descriptive powers, Peter tells a lot of amusing anecdotes. Doctor Scott was the nearest MD to the family farm on the African plains. “My father once had an operation for piles. Anything related to that part of the body or any of those bodily functions was a no-go topic of conversation for the prim and proper Woody (his father)”. Drinking quietly at the bar of the club with his mates, Woody saw Doctor Scott appear at the door. Scott looked around and roared, “Evening Woody. How’s your backside?”
Peter’s parents Libby and John Wood at home at M’sitwe
Every eye in the pub turned to John (father’s Christian name). All you could hear was the clicking of Dawn Fussel’s double-stranded pearls. Mortified, John turned away and mumbled something under his breath. Scott yelled to the bar crowd. “You should have seen him with that cotton wool up his jacksy. My god, he looked like a bloody bunny girl.”
Peter as a young soldier in the Rhodesian Army
Peter’s book closes with a powerful scene. His mother Libby — still living at 84 in Harare today — in the dying days of the family farm, M’sitwe, is confronted by an African mob threatening to rape and murder her. Many of them have grown up on M’sitwe. “We are going to kill you, you white bitch.” “You deserve to die, you white whore.” Libby knows the blacks are superstitious, particularly scared of a powerful spirit medium hanged by the colonial government in 1898 called Mbuya Nehanda. Libby says to the slavering mob, “Now listen here, you little shits . . .” she paused for effect. “I am related to Mbuya Nehanda”. She said, “I don’t care what you do to me. You can kill me. But I am the white Mbuya Nehanda. I know you. I know all your faces. if you harm any of my children, I will come back and haunt you.”
The mob melted away. Two weeks later Peter’s parents were forced to leave M’sitwe. “The dogs were put down. It was the end of my family’s time on the farm.”
And Peter closes his book.
BAYETE!*
- A salute chanted by the Matabele to their KIngs
Mud Between Your Toes: Peter Woods. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (February 17, 2016). ISBN-10: 1518830730. ISBN-13: 978-1518830730
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