Mud Between Your Toes with Peter Wood

Two Truths At A Braai

In our latest episode we have a chat with Hong-Konger Peter Wood. Peter Wood was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1962. He grew up on a wild, remote farm called M’sitwe in the Lomagundi area of the country, spending the best part of his childhood running barefoot through the untamed bushveld with his brother and sister Duncan and Mandy. It was an untamed part of the world and the children were often gone from dusk to dawn, exploring the 13,000-acre property, climbing rocky kopjes, caving and camping along the rivers. Despite a civil war that ravaged the land until the end of white rule in 1980, these were salad days and many of Peters’ and his familys’ adventures are described in Mud Between Your Toes. However, Wood had a secret. He was gay. During his high school days at Prince Edward School he diligently wrote diaries, which formed the basis for his debut memoir, Mud Between Your Toes. The diaries clearly illustrate the struggle between what is normal and that of a harsh world, in which friends and relatives are murdered in ambushes and the line between black and white was drawn in blood. After completing one year in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, he left the country of his birth and moved to London, then on to Hong Kong where he now lives. He has been granted Chinese nationality and a Hong Kong passport, but still considers himself African to the core. Peter Wood is, arguably, the only white, gay, Afro-Chinese man in Asia. Wood's unique upbringing, as well as his identification as a gay white African, ultimately inspired him to write his memoir, Mud Between Your Toes: A Rhodesian Farm. He also has a popular podcast series of the same name available on all major podcast platforms. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/two-truths-at-a-braai/message