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!
One day I suddenly thought, “My goodness, where’s Gareth?” So, I started looking. Last I heard, he was working with the British Army in Iraq, doing long stints: I tracked him down to prison cell in Kuwait. He had been used as a drug mule, nabbed and sentenced to death by hanging. His death was commuted to life and then further reduced to 15 years. When I located him, he had already been inside for four years. Thereafter I sent him a letter, every month, for 67 consecutive months. My Letters to Kuwait, were received by Gareth on his hidden device: news and comment on life in South Africa, my reflections on humanity and our world.
Many thousands of South African children are brought up by their grandmothers. This is one of the many manifestations of an unstable and distraught society, where the mother to child bond is too often broken, causing pain and a deep-seated sense of loss to both parties. Each Gogo-raised child’s story is different, but the general theme is the same: it deals with abandonment, with only qualified acceptance, but most of all with the simple absence of a real mother presence. The title of Vanessa Neo Mathope’s book – Orphaned, with Living Parents – tells it all. A monstrous imbalance has occurred, and the consequences run deep.
Evelyn walked towards the cluster of flame lilies, each one a cup of flickering scarlet edged with trickling gold, growing up from the deep, rich, red African soil. She bent down gently stretched her arms around them, just able to touch her fingers
together, and breathed in deeply. The smell of green … only here on this land.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s three young people, whose life experiences and personalities couldn’t be more different, and each of whom carry deep emotional scars travel to Tanzania.