Through High Water and Low: My Unusual Travels

by Margaret Haswell

Through High Water and Low strikes an exceptional note as it leads the author to travel half the way round the world at a time of momentous global change. It opens with a family tragedy when the author is a teenager, and it is only when she becomes engaged in a challenging occupation during the Second World War that her true vocation begins to unfold. On a fine May morning in 1947 Margaret Haswell flies to West Africa. Born in London of Scottish parents, the pioneering spirit which she inherits, is tested when the aircraft crashes in Bordeau, and foretells in the book hair-raising, often hilarious happenings. After spending three years in a remote Gambian village, Haswell returns to England, writes the lifestyle of her African community, and takes a degree at Oxford. Here the reader follows her career as a rural development consultant with particular interest in tropical countries, which take her over the next forty years to some of the more remote and least developed countries of the world. What makes this book fascinating is its historical impact in today s world. It sites the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and travels the full cycle to the end of the century. Haswell happens to be in exciting venues and uncharted locations when countries of Africa and Asia are experiencing great and revolutionary crises in the run-up to becoming self-governing nations. She engages with peoples of many persuasions as a new dawn breaks in some of the most fascinating parts of the world.

97 pages, Paperback

Published April 23, 2010