The Tati Concessions.

Thanks rod222 and daniel for sharing Tati Concessions material, the six elephant revenue stamps are my all time favourite - unfortunately I don't own any.

When I was a child (during the '60s), my father ran a tannery at Shashe, a small village, near the Shashe River, which most crucially had a railway station. If I remember correctly it was about 24 miles to Francistown which was not much more of a village itself at the time. Its claim to fame was a tarred main road, all 1 mile of it.

For a few years we spent most school holidays at the tannery, there were a few prefab huts for us to live in. For myself and my siblings it was as boring as can be, not much to do but read under a thorn tree or shoot tin cans with a pellet gun. On weekends we would visit the Francestown hotel were the adults would have a beer or two and us children a kola tonic and lemonade (a non-alcoholic drink).

The river itself, is dry most of the year, however, digging a shallow well in the river bed produced more than enough of the enormous amount of water required to supply a tannery.

(Image borrowed from Wikipedia)

I was delighted when I first discovered the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith, they were so very nostalgic.

Clive