The Old Watering Hole: Life at Bata — The Place We Called Home

Join Frans as he bobs and weaves his way through childhood, from being a suspiciously blond-haired baby to leaving the nest at eighteen. Born in 1961 to a Dutch father working for the Bata Shoe Company and a Rhodesian mother, Frans grows up moving between worlds — from a steamy tropical island near India, to Kenya’s highlands, and ultimately to the Bata Shoe Estate in Gwelo, Rhodesia. Life at Bata was no ordinary upbringing. It was a self-contained village built around a factory — with its own houses, school, swimming pool, sports clubs and legendary social life — and it produced a tight-knit community of families who shared work, play, friendships and Friday nights at the Bata Club. Surrounded by a constant flow of people, places and events, Frans grows up in a world where childhood freedom rubs shoulders with history. Anecdote follows anecdote, weaving personal memories with historical insight and enough twists and turns to keep the pages turning. Discover what happened when a five-year-old boy from Africa visited Europe for the first time and why his mother once found him standing there with an armful of rusty bombs. What it was like to live near Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, and how did the bush war in Rhodesia slowly ripple through everyday village life. The Old Watering Hole is both a personal memoir and a tribute to a unique way of life and to the people who once called Bata home.