Peter Pinney
Marchand
Anna
Alice
Sava
Estelle
Family
Email
Anna
Continued....
After crossing the Congo, travelling on boats, through swamps and sleeping in flea infested huts I'd had enough. I got a lift to Lagos and then to Kano. From there I crossed the dessert to Morocco with a big petrol tanker and landed for a while in Tangiers. Still hitchhiking I went from there by boat to Spain, through to Nice and so back to Holland.
I did not have a camera, too easy to be robbed at that time, but PP had a pocket size German camera and took many pictures. He came to visit me in Holland after he had finished what he was doing further in Africa, and we took a barge trip down the Rhine.
Peter promised to contact me but I never heard from him again until I heard from my sister that he did write, but my mother did not approve and sent a letter back saying I had left and was married.
I married an engineer, English Sth African in 1955 and lived for an odd 45 years in Nth and Sth Rhodesia and Sth Africa. I have 3 children and am 74 years old - I divorced my husband 2 years ago* and I left him in South Africa - I prefer to live the last of my years without all the violence but I am not so sure I have found it in Holland!
On the whole PP has not much exaggerated - as far as I was there, but of course I cannot vouch for the whole book. Although, I think he was very trustworthy and I found him a real old fashioned 'gentleman'. I did not try to contact him, because I thought - not hearing from him - that this was the end of a good friendship.
Only years later when I heard from my sister (after my mother's death) that PP had written and asked me to come to America with him, I surfed the internet for some information and found that he was dead and contacted his daughter Sava for information. The rest is history!
...I am aftaid there is nothing more to tell - I am very sorry that I have not been able to contact PP but there is nothing I can do about it.
Kind regards - Anna
*PP for Peter Pinney
*this email written by Anna (Anne Meisner/Kemp) in 2002
