The ‘latter years’ loose description of the ‘post pioneering’ period of Ellen and David’s lives which was more about refuge survival and rebuilding. .The latter years was period in which adventure was self motivated and contrived rather than ‘suffered’. It took the the form of overland journeying to the Far East for example – or in David’s case – turning his attention to groundbreaking scientific research into echolocation of bats and building devices based on that. Ellen reinforced relationships, read and wrote.

David of course died tragically young at 51 in 1967, while Ellen lived a further 27 years till passing at 72.in 1994, Another loose way to think of this period is it was a kind of a life-plateau which coincided with the home in Highlands. Despite the crisis of UDI, the war of independence and the slip into privation resulting from Mugabe’s experiment rule it was a relatively stable time compared to the refugee years. As such there is less excitement to write about now or in returning to this as ‘voyeuring’ outsiders, but the drama of life is not only the ‘salad days’ or what people get up to in extremis. If one has to think of life as a test – what one gets up to, or what one thinks at times when one is not forced to get up to or think anything at all, is better test of character.. For Ellen much of this time was devoted to contemplating and understanding and maintaining her space as a cultural oasis into which visitors came and went to and from their own lives’ front lines..

The home, as with most properties occupied by the white colonialists was sprawling and hedged off from the world it was a kind of a haven – a world within a world – much as how the The Garden of the Finzi Continis was portrayed. And while no actually one came and ‘took anyone away‘ during Ellen’s tenure of her haven, the threat of ‘having once again to leave’ visited more than once as the politics shifted. There is a sense of ever-present insecurity which is at the soul of Africa, even those places where the weather is idyllic and life appears on the surface as a dream. That is something hypnotizing, deep and beyond the petty affairs of men and even power politics. It might be described as the soul of Africa and grabs the attention of people who live there and makes sure they are constantly attentive. Ellen describes how Africa ‘got under her skin’ and the latter years ran their course with this as her constant backdrop.