When my father departed Dar es Salaam my mother was left to clear out the TanCot House apartment. On our final day Jack Dickenson came to see us off. Then we walked out of the only home I had ever known, drove to Nairobi where the MG was sold. We then boarded a BOAC De Havilland Comet (the world's first operational jetliner) bound for London. Then a train and ferry journey took us to Cork in Ireland where I met my Irish relatives for the first time (including my mother's sister - Aunt Francis.) I discovered how different Europe was from the world I had known. I was cold all the time but I didn't care because it seemed to me that traveling the world was a great adventure. In 1959 we departed from Southampton on the Bloemfontein Castle for Harare, Zimbabwe where we lived for a year. On the ships manifest I was referred to as Master Paul and that made me feel like someone important - I liked that. In Harare I attended David Livingstone Junior School where a teacher wrote on my first report card that I was an undisciplined loner who needed to learn how to be a team player. My team-playing classmates were mostly the sons of farmers and traders who adamantly believed that theirs was the 'greatest country' in the world. I disagreed with them having actually seen some of the world myself. But I was aware that my new surroundings were much more modern looking that anything I had seen in Ireland, Europe or Dar es Salaam. Harare had tall skyscrapers and I was impressed by the space-age electricity pylons that were being built everywhere in the country to distribute power from the brand new Kariba Dam.
But my mother was restless, and we travelled backwards and forwards between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. This grand tour took me by iconic trains, planes and ocean liners to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, Aden, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, and Zimbabwe. I became very familiar with the interiors of several famous passenger ships. I could confidently name all the aircraft types I saw parked on any airport apron. My favorite airplane was the Lockheed Connie Constellation with its three distinctive fins. This was when I spent very little time in school, became a seasoned citizen of the world and learned to love the feeling of being in a foreign land.
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