I'm Mike Silberbauer

Mike was born in Cape Town in 1945 and started his travels in a carry-cot. This was when the family travelled to his mother’s home in Switzerland, on board a troop ship that was returning Italian POWs to their homeland.
His pre-school years were spent in Switzerland. Later the family moved to Guildford in England where he started school.
The family then moved to Kenya for 5 years where he finished Primary school and started High School.
He arrived back in South Africa at the age of 15, a total foreigner in his homeland. A year as a boarder at Paul Roos Gymnasium and some very fine family friends helped with his initiation into South African life of the 1960’s.
Growing up with a ‘Foreign’ Mother in a post-war, still food-rationed England, and then a very Colonial Kenya, has been a rich source of cross-cultural perceptions, attitudes and misunderstandings.
These experiences were rounded off by adjusting to life in South Africa where English-speaking folk were the minority group in a country governed by Afrikaans speakers.
Then followed the new South Africa of the Rainbow Nation with sunny skies and now he shares a South Africa and World, both with very perplexing skies.
His business career involved Industrial Relations and General Management in a Franchise Business that reinforced all these experiences.
He is now retired and savouring ‘Village Life’ with his wife Colleen in St Francis Bay in the Eastern Cape.
This life includes visits to and from good friends, two bouyant sons, two delightful daughters-in-law and four magic grandchildren.
He has now reached his anecdotage and has started writing! His books include “Secrets of a Walking Stick” and “Cattage in St Francis”.