Excerpt from The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Fred 'Mopane' Clarke – a native moniker, for he was 'tall and straight and has a heart like a mopane tree' – was the original white settler here. He came around 1898 and became a forwarding agent, then started a transport service across the Zambesi. He later went on to great fortune building hotels and selling them off. But when I met him, we were simply two men making the best of it. Mopane was amused that I had tossed a coin to choose my new vocation – photography was a relatively new field in those days. I didn't bother to explain my ousting from the Trinity chemistry lab.

 'The bollocks on you!' he said. 'Did you journey to Rhodesia on such a whim, too?'

'Yes,' I lied. 'Took up a post at a studio in Bulawayo. But toning and fixing is rather a chancy business in Africa, with the dust, not to mention the dust-devils. So I quit.' Another lie.

'But you've stayed on, it seems. Does life here in the bush suit you?' 'The settlers are a good sort. Honest, spirited. Don't turn their nose up at people. The Kaffirs are bewildering, of course, but seem pliable enough. The insects are rather an abomination.'

We exchanged bug stories. Tam-Pam beetles tugging at the hair, rhino beetles blundering into the knob, the putrid stink beetle and whistling Christmas bug. Scorpions, spiders, centipedes. Beasties all. I won the debate by telling him about the day I arrived in Bulawayo two years earlier. The blinding sun plumb vanished behind a black cloud: not a dust storm but a plague of biblical locusts! Then came the clamour: the frantic beating of pots and trays to scare them off. A hellish din, but effective.

'You shall face far worse here,' said old Mopane cryptically. 'Do you intend to pioneer?'

'To wander. Pa always said, "My boy, never settle till you have to and never work for another man." Time to play my own hand, do a touch of exploring. I believe I shall be the first to follow the Zambesi from the Falls all the way to the coast,' I boasted.

'Like the good Dr Livingstone.'

'Oh. Yes, I suppose.' I shook off my frown. 'But without the religion.'

Mopane Clarke gripped my hand with a devilish grin.

Excerpted from The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.