African Village

In "African Village", a 3 x 60 minute primetime Channel 4 series, the Nestor family spends ten weeks living and working as part of a clan homestead in Swaziland. The father of the family, Rob, will not only be required to join other clan members as a migrant worker to support the family, he will also be initiated as a warrior. As a trained nurse, his wife Lyn, will be expected to get involved with the local clinic as well as establish a chicken business. Their children Daniel, aged 13, Chloe, aged 8, and Callum aged 4, will go the local school, a 9-kilometre walk away. The Nestors will be expected to follow the customs of the homestead, giving plenty of potential for misunderstandings, mistakes and even conflict. Initially they will have to be subserviant to the other clan members as they learn to cook and farm using the traditional methods used by the Shongwe clan. The book is not only an account of the Nestor's time on the homestead, from both their own and their hosts' point of view, it is also a book about life as lived by 440 million people in rural Africa, with Swaziland - a country proud to have retained its identity and way of life.