This website is based around interviews that I - Faith Dyson ( née Brooking) - had conducted in 2003, during the first year of a Life History Course at the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sussex. Creating a website from these interviews, in the Spring and Summer terms of the second year, is an integral part of the two year course.

Originally I had been torn between committing myself to doing a family history, or a project on the quality of life in Southern Rhodesia in the 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's, my childhood and adolescent years in that country. I approached an old family friend, now in England, who had lived in the same Anglican community in Bulawayo as my family, to see if she would agree to a recorded interview. Luckily she was as interested as I was in exploring our memories of a very happy period in our lives.

I was put in touch with other members of St. Margaret's Church, North End, who also agreed to being interviewed for my project .... so the decision was made for me! I concentrated my research on the memories of four British immigrants, now living in England, who had shared those years in Southern Rhodesia with me. As well as narrating their stories, they also generously provided photographs and artefacts from their family archives, enabling me to produce a vibrant and rich portrayal of that period in history. I visited Zimbabwe in 2001 and I have used some of the photos I took then to supplement those I had from the past.

The whole experience has been revitalizing for me, not only because I rekindled memories of my adolescent self, unburdened with the responsibilities and decisions of adult life, but also because my knowlege has been enriched by gaining new insights into the society in which I was brought up, through the perspectives of others who were older and younger than myself. I hope my intrusion into their lives has been a positive experience for them too.

I was helped in my research, and with the graphics for this website, by access to the following publications loaned to me by one of my narrators:
(1953) Rhodes & Rhodesia, The Man and his Monument, Rhodesian Graphic, Salisbury; Cary R & Mitchell D (1977), Who's Who, AN leaders in Rhodesia, Books of Rhodesia, Bulawayo; and A Tourist Map of Rhodesia, Rhodesian Tourist Board.