I am not sure when my journey of questioning conventional wisdom about wild animals and cultures began. What is clear is that these later inferences and reflections were based in early childhood and youthful explorations on the developing frontiers within two continents. Until I was eight years old, I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was then a bustling shipyard and railway centre contributing to the Allied war efforts of World War II. It was also the backyard of Robert Ruark, a noted southern author and newspaper columnist, among whose legacies were the moving stories of his warm, instructional relationship with his grandfather as they explored the nearby woods, fields, and neighbours (Ruark 1958). My father was a dentist in Wilmington during those war years and the son of a prominent farmer and lumberman in a neighbouring county. His siblings and their families gathered during the weekends at this farm, where sons were introduced to the intricacies of adult lore in hunting and fishing. These exercises expressed gamesmanship and entrepreneurial values, yet also reflected gleanings from a recent past, as we ate what fell to the guns and was lifted with the hooks. During ceremonial meals, men cooked and presided over their dedicated platters. I was too young to handle anything, but to watch and wonder about what was taking place. The different landscapes of open fields and closed forests fascinated me as did the new varieties of plants, birds and mammals within them. Modernising forces from the engagements of a global war and the opportunities of expanding trades were rapidly transforming this landscape.

My father was also a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church and involved in its missions at home and abroad, labelled ‘Program of Progress’. When he learned about the needs and potentials of the Presbyterian mission in the Belgian Congo, he accepted a summons to serve the dental needs of missionaries and Congolese there. In 1948, the family left for the interior of the Congo, then a distant, different hinterland and a foreign colony with a turbulent past. We were posted to the American Presbyterian Congo Mission station of Lubondai in the Kasai Province. This station was a small outpost atop a hill including a few missionary households, a hospital, a prominent church, and different schools and housing for Congolese and missionary children.