A SWAZI friend, who was a ministerial chauffeur and ran his own breakaway church, hated trees. He would not countenance their presence near him due to a mixture of family, religious and ancient cultural beliefs.

My own experience has been quite the opposite. Trekking through a sleet storm in upper Glen Affric as a student, the skies cleared, Mam Sodhail towered above with autumn snow on its sunlit summit – and a solitary rowan tree, its red berries blindingly vivid, brought me to an astonished and admiring halt. It’s been uphill ever since.

Pines have been part of our life in several parts of Africa, whispering and singing in the breeze. Whenever the night-time coolness begins, we are outside, checking on the Milky Way and the Southern Cross, then enjoying the Moon seen through the pitch-black silhouette of a pine’s branches.

Small teak plantations are common on our road between Kampala and Gulu, probably originally brought by indentured labourers from India working on the railway line from Mombasa to Nairobi in the 1890s, and now sought after for furniture.

The thorny acacia fever tree and the less stark eucalyptus are always around us. The former’s resin I first encountered near Khartoum where gum Arabic was used as a food preservative and my sister-in-law burned it as part of incense. Its use as an effective adhesive was city-wide. Its downside is that it attracts yellow weaver birds which proceed to build scores of their nests hanging upside down from its branches. Where there are nests with noisy, hungry chicks, there will also be snakes.

Beside one of our weaver colonies was a magnificent pink bougainvillea – with a pair of well-fed boomslangs in residence. These shy snakes (unless you’re a weaver bird chick) are sinuous, with an attractive green skin, but their venom is unusual in that it may take a day or so after the bite before your blood stops clotting and you begin to haemorrhage from many areas. There is an effective anti-venom but it is made in South Africa, and has to be flown to site.

For British people, possibly the best-known tree sap is from the maple tree. My uncle Alex in Canada kindly organised a tasting session one winter. He threw boiling raw maple syrup in ladlefuls onto the deep snow of his Toronto garden, the result being coils of chewy, rich delight. However, like all Canadians separated from their central heating, I noticed he consumed glassfuls of eggnog out of doors and eschewed the maple’s charm.

At our former home in Nimule, the dozen or more tall and robust mango trees sheltered us from dust and sudden destructive winds, and comforted several relatives buried among them. The neem tree or Indian lilac stood in pride of place in the centre of our small clachan, a source of shade and sustenance. Its flowers and tender shoots make a passable soup while its leaves, fried in sesame oil with tamarind to counter any bitterness, are toothsome. Its oil is useful in warding off the ever-determined termites but of debatable use as a medicine.

A month ago we decided to honour a friend’s 80th birthday by presenting him with a pair of naartjie saplings. My wife, a gardener, estimated the tangerine-like fruit would be there after about four years if they followed her instructions for soil preparation before and after planting; he would thus have a fair chance of seeing and tasting the fruit.

I have every confidence in her judgment. Not long ago she chose an indigenous mahogany after consultation with her cousin, Carlos, and planted it on our farm. We had agreed we would both like to be buried on a rise with a view towards the Nile, attracting a bit of a breeze as well as shade. Better to invest in a hardy sapling now than anticipate future birthday presents – as a Geordie colleague advised: “Be careful not to give anyone over the age of 70 a long-playing record for their birthday.”

Dr David Vost studied medicine at Glasgow University and is currently working at a hospital in Swaziland. He and his family live on a small farm in Northern Uganda near the Albert Nile. davidvostsz@gmail.com