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Strangers in a faraway land
‘Once upon a time of fear and sorrow, the children of my village were woken suddenly in the night. We heard screaming and shouting. Our world turned upside down. Lightning and thunder came from the ground and fire came from the sky… We crossed a river to a faraway land. The grass was green and the leaves of the maize whispered our arrival…’ Deborah’s short story Strangers in a Faraway Land was selected for inclusion in the Heartlines Stories that Talk 2 collection for children aged 8-13 years in 2010. It is a fable about seeking refuge and about the experience of empathy and othering in exile. This story, like…
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Siyaphi – where are we going?
‘We lost homes… We lost graves… We lost our harvest… We lost grazing land… We lost ourselves.’ Limehill residents recalling the forced removals of 1968 Imagine being 11 years old and going home from school on Friday, repeating over in your head the message that you must give your mother: ‘Ma, the teacher says on Monday we must be … This 2018 publication was the product of research to revisit the impact of apartheid forced removals on a community that won back their land but have not recovered the livelihoods or the identity they lost 50 years ago. The research was a partnership between a university and the community of…
