Robyn Scott's memoir of her childhood in the African bush brings to life the magic and adventure of growing up in beautiful, remote Botswana - a place where, from puff adders to ponies, as her father says, 'This is Africa. You never know what to expect.'Most parents would be reluctant to move to a land where scorpions hide beneath sofas and snakes drop from thorn trees onto unsuspecting passers-by. The Scotts, however, are not most parents. Warm, impulsive and profoundly eccentric, they are blissfully unaware of their eldest daughter's dismay when, in the late 1980s, they decamp to a disused cowshed in rural Botswana.There, Robyn and her two younger siblings grow up in a landscape of exceptional natural beauty, surrounded by a cast of characters as weird and wonderful as the creatures that wiggle, pad and crawl their way into the Scotts' makeshift home. Their intrepid, iconoclastic father is a flying doctor who dreams of being a farmer; their unfailingly optimistic mother a concoctor of homeopathic cures for everything from stomach-ache to stubbornness. Across the road, Grandpa Ivor is convinced his coffin-making business is the route to riches, while stoic Granny Betty serenely accepts the airplane wing that hangs from their bedroom ceiling and the pet calf that clambers into their bed. Happily ensconced in their midst, Robyn and her siblings spend their days puzzling through their mother's erratic approach to home-schooling and their nights navigating midnight encounters with poisonous snakes. It is a magical world, a place of fable and endless veldt, where sun-dappled, crocodile-filled rivers run alongside darker undercurrents - including the terrible legacy of apartheid and increasing devastation of AIDS.Through it all, Robyn's parents remain buoyantly undaunted by the challenges of living in their beautiful, isolated land, in this wonderfully evocative and moving memoir. Beautifully written, unsentimental and funny, this irresistible account of Robyn's unique childhood is a deeply affectionate portrayal of an extraordinary place and family.