A pot with a secret

In the mid 1960s, my husband and I were young teachers working in East Africa. On a camping trip to the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ [the Rwenzori Mountains] in western Uganda, we bought this pot for a few shillings from a local man on a bicycle. It is made of polished clay with an etched pattern.

During the six years we worked in East Africa, the pot sat on a high shelf next to a kerosene lamp. We lit this lamp every night, which attracted swarms of flying ants and mosquitoes, and the geckos in the roof came down to eat their fill.

In due course we returned to the UK and, almost 50 years after its purchase, giving the pot a polish, I realised there was something inside. In the light of a small torch, I could see the fragile skeleton of a gecko, which must have chased a mosquito into the depths. Catherine Welch