Mishkid: A Kenyan Childhood

Born in colonial Kenya of missionary parents, David Webster describes what it was like to grow up as a missionary child: a mishkid. Much of his childhood was spent in the remote Northern Frontier District, on a mountain, Marsabit, surrounded by desert. With primal forest at the back door, elephants in the garden by night and baboons by day, it was an unusual upbringing: barefoot and free, shared with his African friends. It also meant early separation from his parents and enrolment in boarding school, and the ambiguity of growing up in another culture, posing the inevitable question: 'Where in the world do I belong?'