Waiting for the Rain

Thomas Gowan is fed up with life in England and in 1904 he immigrates to Africa, where he sees possibilities for self-determination and personal fulfilment. He buys land, starts a farm and falls in love. He forms an unlikely relationship with a black man, who becomes his mentor, confidant and eventually, partner. He struggles against the elements, the people, the supernatural and his own weaknesses. People and place drive this story of post Anglo-Boer War colonial life - unglamorous, hard work and often dangerous, with the capricious forces of nature and the machinations of colonial officials and other flotsam of the colonial era a constant threat to survival. The efforts of people with seemingly divergent backgrounds forge a common destiny, against the simple beauty of Africa's vast open spaces and untamed wilderness, where the elements reign supreme. The story is shaped by real historical events. Although the Boer War is over, it is a time of extreme hardship for many as bitter enmities continue to affect people's lives. Immigrants are settling into new territories where remote governments view them as expendable. There is British indifference to the plight of the Boer, and deep ignorance of the lives of black Africans. Genocide by the brutal German military and genetic experiments by German scientists on the native population establish a pattern for racial attitudes that will shape Africa's development for more than a century. The story explores the attitudes and behaviours that are in part responsible for the intractable problem that is Africa's condition today. The story is a paean to the beauty of the arid Kalahari and the wild African bushveld - the canvas for hope and despair that appealed so strongly to a few maverick settlers. The constancy of the hostile physical environment and the unpredictable influence of the elements on effort and outcome - sun, wind and rain - constituted their litany of phlegmatic complaints down the years: if only...just a few more inches of pula...