A Memoir of an Indian Doctor in East Africa

In his memoir, Leo J. De Souza narrates the challenges of being an Indian doctor practising in colonial East Africa in the 1950s. The social structure imposed by the British relegates both the Indian and African to a position of little worth, restricting where they can work, live, and fraternise.

Determined to achieve equal status, Leo receives accreditation in 1962 from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and feels eminently suited to be the surgeon that newly independent Tanganyika desperately needs—but finds he is the wrong colour. In colonial times, he was not white; now, in Tanganyika, removed from the shackles of colonialism, he is not black.

Tremendously discouraged by the inability to obtain an appropriate surgical appointment, Leo accepts minor posts in Tanga, Arusha and Lindi, eventually moving his family to Uganda and leaving behind Tanganyika, the country he always thought of as home.

Doctoring people in a land where poverty and disease abound gives Leo great satisfaction. He is involved in the totality of his patients as advisor, guardian and friend; his years in Uganda provide the professional success that eluded him in Tanganyika. But that triumph is interrupted with the rise of Idi Amin, whose coup and campaign of terror force Leo and his family to flee Uganda, once again starting life anew in an unfamiliar place, the United States.