Childhood in Africa thrilling

Robyn Scott, author of the delightful "Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood," now lives in London. She spent her first six years of life in lush New Zealand, then her family decided to move to a cow shed in Botswana, partly because of family connections there and because her mother and father loved a challenge.

Looking back on it, Scott, 27, referred to the "wonderful resilience of childhood, when you look forward and not back." During a phone interview from her London home, Scott asserted that "the excitement of living there was sufficient to obliterate any pangs of regret. Immersion in an environment as different as Africa was thrilling. My parents so enjoyed the change, too. We were so excited about the present that we were caught up with the infectious sense of living in the moment," Scott said.

Scott's eccentric grandfather, Ivor, had been a pilot for Seretse Khama, Botswana's first president; Linda, Scott's highly educated mother, is a scientist with a belief in holistic medicine and cultivates an inveterate love of life; Keith, Scott's father, is a doctor who would have rather been a vet, but who infused new life into his practice by learning to fly to treat his patients at a variety of bush clinics.

Meanwhile, the three kids, including Robyn, Damien and Lulu, enjoyed their unique environment, becoming familiar with snakes, crocodiles and baobab trees. They had extra time because their mother home-schooled them, held them to little structure and mostly read to them, often for days at a time.

"In retrospect," Scott said, "I really treasure the intellectual freedom of our childhoods. I grew up with a real thirst to try different things. My parents and grandparents were both intellectually curious. We learned extraordinary things in stimulating settings, and my parents always talked to us as if we were adults."

Scott's nature was to be a "serious, straightforward child, so my father tried to lighten me up."

Still, Scott realized there was a downside to home schooling. "When I eventually went to school, I wasn't used to interacting in big groups and I asked questions and demanded to know things. I lacked a bit of tact, so my teachers had a love/hate relationship with me," Scott said.