David William Lister Read

David William Lister Read (23 April 1922 – 2 July 2015) was an author of autobiographical works which reveal a profound knowledge of Maasai history. He lived the life of a "white Maasai" and could speak their language before his own native English. Born in Nairobi, Read spent his formative years in what is now Tanzania, a country to which he would always return. Read spent his final years in Momella near Arusha in northern Tanzania, where he continued to work on his writing until his death.

Biography Read was born to British parents in Kenya, on 23 April 1922 according to the author's website, and in 1921 according to the biographical note in Waters of the Sanjan. Left on her own with young David, his mother eventually sought a living in Maasailand when Read was seven, there she ran a small hotel and traded with the Maasai. Read spent his next seven years of childhood here, during which time his playmates were the Maasai children. Maasai became his first language, followed by Swahili before English, and he ran wild with his friends learning a lot about the Maasai way of life and associating closely with nature and the wildlife. Totally accepted as a Maasai by the tribe, he took part in meat festivals and other tribal gatherings and ceremonies.

At the age of 14, Read was sent to school in Arusha. His schooling was completed by correspondence course, when he was employed as an apprentice Metallurgist by the Tanganyika Department of Geological Survey.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Kenya Regiment and later trained with the Royal Air Force and served with the King's African Rifles in Abyssinia, Madagascar and Burma. After the War, he commanded the Uganda contingent in the Victory Parade in London and joined the Tanganyika Veterinary Department, where he spent the next six years. During this time, he covered areas that included parts of Maasailand when he was able to renew his former close association with that tribe.

Having eventually acquired a farm of his own on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, also in Maasailand, he went on to become a leading farming figure and prominent landowner in Tanganyika and was Chairman of the Tanganyika Farmers Association from 1973 to 1975. However, after Independence was granted to Tanganyika in 1961, his properties began to be gradually eroded, during which period he was employed part-time by the Anglo American Corporation in Zambia as an Agricultural Consultant. By 1975 the Tanzania Government had acquired the last of his properties and he left Tanzania for Zambia, and then South Africa, where he again tried his hand at farming, an interlude in his life that proved far from happy or satisfactory. Finally in 1979 he returned to Kenya to join Lima Limited as their Agricultural Consultant.

Read was married and had one daughter. He was a leading authority on the people of Eastern Africa, speaking several African dialects, but it was with the Maasai that he spent his formative years, and with whom he is most closely associated with.