In 1968, as a 21-year-old geology graduate unable to work as a woman geologist, Patricia McCurry volunteered to go to Nigeria – a recently independent post-colonial country being torn apart by civil war – to help develop a new university geology department. During her time there she challenged the established prejudice against women geologists by embarking on a huge field mapping project, for which ground-breaking work she is still celebrated in Nigeria today. This book is her eye-witness account of those years, interspersing personal recollections with factual geological information, cultural and historical details and humorous anecdotes, and reflecting her thoughts, experiences and observations of a unique time in the development of Nigeria.