Kirjahaku

Leyland Rover is an account of Ken Ryeland's tours of the Far East as a service engineer for British Leyland during the early 1970s. After serving an engineering apprenticeship and several years working in Nigeria, Ryeland and his family returned to the UK, where he joined the Rover Company at Solihull. Later he transferred to Rover/Triumph's overseas service department; his job was to see that Leyland's Far East distributors conformed to all operational and engineering standards. The culture and different working practices in the various countries presented many challenges for Ryeland, but he manged to survive being held hostage by the military in Malaysia; interrogated by police in Afghanistan; hospitalised in Thailand and summoned to the palace by the king in Nepal.

Boom Town Legacy is a story about the corrosive effects of corruption on a young man new to the ways of 1960s post-colonial Africa. In 1967 Charlie Robinson is tasked to open a new branch for the company in the swampy delta region of Nibana in West Africa, where oil has recently been discovered. New to the ways of Africa, Charlie struggles to come to terms with the tribalism, nepotism and, above all, the corruption that confronts him on all sides. Despite all the difficulties and setbacks, he eventually succeeds and the business thrives, but civil war looms and soon all Charlie's efforts are undone by a single incident. He survives the devastation and ponders on his future when an opportunity to make himself comfortably rich suddenly presents itself. Having put together a plan, Charlie embarks on a long journey through Africa to cover his tracks. He eventually ends up in Europe where he uses the secrecy imbedded in the banking system to his advantage. After some months he returns to a different part of Africa and eventually makes his way to Ian Smith's rebel Rhodesia, where he hopes to settle down to a quiet, anonymous and newly married life as a tobacco farmer. However, an incident at his farm initiates a period of extreme pressure on Charlie and as tragedy strikes his life disintegrates and his past begins to catch up with him.

In April 1967, a young British engineer arrives in Nigeria to take up his new job. The country is seven years into a volatile independence and Ken Ryeland struggles to come to terms with the culture shock and the endemic tribalism that pervades every level of society. On being transferred to Enugu, capital of the troubled Eastern Region, he is further challenged when the Regional Military Government rebels against the Federal Military Government in Lagos. An act of secession quickly follows and the short-lived Republic of Biafra is born. Almost immediately the new republic is plunged into a bloody and bitter war of survival with the Lagos Government and Ryeland finds himself trapped in the rebel enclave as Federal troops close in for the kill. The Up-Country Man is a personal account of the events leading to secession and conditions inside Biafra during the early days of the Nigerian civil war. (Third Edition)