I am grateful to Cheltenham Festival for sending me to Kampala on the ‘Across Continents’ exchange with Ugandan writer Ayeta Anne Wangusa in 2003; and to Hannah Henderson at the British Council for inviting me to the 2005 International Writers’ Conference in Kampala, whose programme and personnel were not the same as the ones imagined in My Driver. Thanks above all to Nick McDowell and Arts Council England for the bursary that enabled me to spend a longer time in Uganda in 2007, where I wrote much of this book. Thanks to Sophie Kandaouroff and the Committee of the beautiful Chateau de Lavigny writers’ retreat near Lausanne (www.chateaudelavigny.ch) for their generous hospitality, which allowed me to finish my second draft three feet away from the room where my literary hero Vladimir Nabokov used to sleep. My warm thanks to Dr Declan Conway at UEA and Dr Marisa Goulden at UEA and in Uganda, who taught me a lot about water. Thank you to Dr Chris Kidd of Glasgow University for his great kindness in saving me from at least one mistake about the Batwa.
In Kampala, grateful thanks to three friends, Sandra Hook, formerly at the British Council, and writers Jackee Budesta Batanda and Hilda Twongyeirwe, whose combination of editorial judgement and local knowledge helped me to fine-tune My Driver and to avoid certain errors. Jackee Batanda is the author of The Blue Marble (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006) and many prize-winning short stories, Hilda Twongyeirwe has published, inter alia, Fina the Dancer, (Longhorn Publishers, 2006, PO Box 18033-00500, Nairobi, Kenya). Julius Ocwinyo, who makes a brief imaginary walk-on appearance in My Driver, is the author of inter alia the impressive novel Footprints of the Outsider (Fountain Books, 2002). Other gripping, readable fiction by Ugandan writers including Jackee Batanda and Ayeta Anne Wangusa can be viewed on Femrite’s website (www.femriteug.org/publications.php/, info@femriteug.org) and ordered from the African Books Collective (www.africanbookscollective.com) or directly from the Femrite Offices, Plot 147 Kira Road, Kamwokya, Kampala, Uganda. I would like to thank Geoffrey Baluku at African Pearl Safaris for all his help, and Ian Sendagala, the excellent Assistant Manager at the Gorilla Forest Camp.
In London, thanks to my friend and editor Anna Wilson for initiating my first visit to Uganda, and for her insights into this book. I am grateful to John Ryle, Chair of the Rift Valley Institute (www.riftvalley.net). Thanks always to Mai Ghoussoub and André Gaspard; to Lynn Gaspard for her design, and to Ana Mendes. Lastly, thanks to beloved Barbara Goodwin, Nicholas Rankin and Rosa Rankin-Gee for being my first readers as well as my family.