Eric George de Jong was born in Zimbabwe. Aged 60, he has almost got the hang of shaving without
too much blood loss. Which is more than can be said about his abilities with a Leatherman. Eric has
had a busy life in which he has been a policeman, a hotelier, a not so fast food restaurateur, a rock
and roll concert promoter, a movie maker, mostly bad Italian B Grade ones, a bad cabbage farmer, a
cut-flower farmer and exporter, a political activist, a long-distance cyclist and now a writer.
Married to Jenny with three children and three grandchildren, Eric lives on his farm in Zimbabwe. In
a pathetic attempt to stave off old age, Eric tends towards loud music and even louder flower shirts.
He has a quaint belief that if you dress like you are on holiday, sometimes you’ll feel like you are on
holiday. Of late, that belief has been waning badly. Alas.
When not growing flowers or writing, he can normally be found on his mountain bike, pedalling like
crazy but with precious little forward momentum. In 2018, Eric formed the charity The Old Legs Tour
to raise money and awareness for Zimbabweans beleaguered pensioners. Every year his Old Legs
Tour pedal to ridiculously far-away places. On their first Tour, Eric and three middle aged verging on
bloody old friends rode from Harare to Cape Town via Hotazel and the Kalahari Desert. Accused of
slacking for choosing a downhill destination, in 2019 the Old Legs Tour rode from Harare to the top
of Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. And in 2020, the Old Legs Tour will pedal from Harare to Namibia’s
Skeleton Coast via a town called Gokwe, the Victoria Falls and the Caprivi Strip. Eric writes a regular blog called ‘The Third World as seen from the saddle’ and can be followed on Facebook and on www.ericgeorgedejong.com.
Running Dogs and Rose’s Children is Eric’s first book. It is an absorbing, honest and deeply personal
account of a growing family, of love, entrepreneurial success and failure, mental illness, political
exile, and the distressing and often absurd collapse of a beautiful African country.
