The cover of this book suggests a comedy and lightness to the contents. This is not so. The theme of the story, which is set in Swaziland, is the effects of AIDS on the average African family. It is about loss, sorrow, misinformation, hardship and yet the overriding responses of love, family values, duty and relationships.
The hero is Benedict, a 10 year-old Tanzanian boy, whose parents are 'late'. Together with his siblings and cousins, he has been adopted by his grandparents who ought to have retired, but have left their old home and travelled south so that his Baba could take up a new position which paid more. Raising children costs money, as everyone knows. So we read of life in Swaziland through the eyes of Benedict, a boy older than his years.
Here is an extract featuring Mavis, a housemaid:
"Nobody could see how beautiful the basket really was unless they came to look while all the stones that Madam kept inside it were in the sink. The stones were many and a duster couldn't clean them nice-nice, they needed washing. Eish, the stones had too many colours, many more colours than all the wool that Mavis could buy in Mbabane. Each one was about the size of the top part of Mavis's thumb, and not one of them had any piece that was sharp or square...
"They were tumbled, Madam had said, there was a special tumbling machine that made them keep falling and rubbing against each other until their sharp edges became smooth and round, it was what happened to stones at the sea. Mavis had never been to the sea, it was far away in Mozambique. When life pushes you around and knocks you, Madam had told Olga, it makes you smooth and special like these stones so that you can shine and everybody can see how beautiful you are." (p. 204f)
No comments:
Post a Comment