Gags, Quirks and Facts
This is an unusual little book. In a South Africa in economic trouble with daily power outages and a 60% youth unemployment rate, we might think there’s not much to smile about. Don’t you believe it!
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This is an unusual little book. In a South Africa in economic trouble with daily power outages and a 60% youth unemployment rate, we might think there’s not much to smile about. Don’t you believe it!
‘Okay....the decision has been made’ I advise Kim, my wife of 25 years. ‘I am now going to buy a farm, leave my law firm and pursue the country life. ‘This decision’, I continue, ‘is now final and irrevocable. I have considered the issue, weighed up the pros and cons and am now confident that this warrants no more consideration.’
‘Good’ says Kim unconvincingly, not even bothering to look up from the book she is reading.
And so it began.
A lot can happen when a comfortable American lifestyle is purposely disrupted. The author was a middle-aged, conservative, Christian, Midwestern mom who embarked on an unexpected journey when she questioned her faith, left suburbia and moved across the world in search of a transformative spirituality.
When Esther Alm and her husband settled in Bulwer in the South African province of KwaZulu Natal in 1980 they immediately began to explore their environment. They had spent holidays in the area before - and had already climbed Mahwaqa (Bulwer mountain) several times. Esther writes: 'From those early days right up to my last climb in 2010, I kept dated records of what we saw and experienced. When I looked at these records again, I could calculate that I had climbed to the summit of the mountain over 600 times in the nearly 30 years I lived in Bulwer.'
Imagine, for a moment, the cross-section of a highrise building. Imagine the people inside. Imagine their lives, their highs and lows, what divides them, and what unites them.
The prize-winning short stories, flash fiction and micro stories in this anthology examine how ordinary people are affected by extraordinary events, and how extraordinary people shape their ordinary world.
This book charts a remarkable woman’s engagement with deep rural communities in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province – and in particular with the high numbers of brain-damaged children left stranded in huts all over the foothills of the great Drakensberg Mountains.
The author was just like many other children who grew up with nothing and felt that the world was against them.
Hearing hurtful words like, ’you will be nothing in life’, made him realise how cruel the world could be. But in response he kept these powerful words in mind:
HOPE
DETERMINATION
A WILL TO SUCCEED
Greg Margolis (founder of NYPD Security) was for decades intimately involved in dealing with ‘random victims’ of crime or conflict, whether the victim was an individual, a family or even someone close to the victim(s), in many instances if they could, they often chose to leave the country ‒ this included the vast majority of Greg's extended family.
But Greg embodied the antithesis of a victim mentality – and chose to stay in SA, founding a non-profit security company in the late 90's, which then later expanded and evolved into a commercial security service provider in Johannesburg.