African Ways

Author(s): Valerie Poore

Location(s): KwaZulu-Natal (Natal)

Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs

Era(s): 1980s

This is the story of a young woman’s first encounters with rural South Africa. Coming from the all-mod-cons society of Britain at the beginning of the 1980s, the author is literally transplanted to a farm in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in what is now Kwazulu Natal. Once there, she finds her feet in the ways of Africa with the help of a charming, elderly Dutch couple, an appealing but wily African farm hand, his practical and motherly daughter and a wise and fascinating neighbour who has a fund of local knowledge. Set in the closing years of Apartheid, these stories are not about politics or the injustices of the system.They are tales about the people and a different kind of life, which include living without electricity, hand-milking cows, drought, veld fires and mad-cap adventures into the unknown. They are also stories told with deep affection and respect, and above all a liberal dose of tongue-in-cheek humour.

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