Africa, My Passion
Language: English
Pages: 211
ISBN: 190812945X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In an exquisite personal pilgrimage, Corinne Hofmann, author of the global bestseller The White Masai, delves into the slums of Nairobi to uncover the heart-warming and heart-breaking stories of unforgettable people and places. Joined by her half-Kenyan daughter, Napirai, and traveling Kenya together for the first time, they discover Napirai's roots and finally meet her father and half-siblings. Hofmann then treks 500 miles across the Namibian desert to discover the lives of the nomadic Himba people.
We plod on and on, but the belt of greenery seems no closer. It is, however, becoming easier to pick out individual peaks in the Hartmann Mountains: flat table tops, soft round hills, and steep peaks. We spend the next three days walking in parallel with the mountain range without meeting a single human being. I fix upon a point in the distance and simply head for it, for hours on end. For the first time it feels as if I’m walking in a trance. As I plod along the simple sandy path with an
mother-in-law also used to brew this beer. It was a foul-tasting brown liquid, but it was strong and cheap. She would always get drunk easily and become rather merry. I have to smile at this part of Doreen’s story. ‘So I would sell beer and make good money out of it. I would hide the bottles under the bed because it’s illegal. It’s against the law to make this sort of beer in Kenya and even more so to sell it. But I had no choice. We needed food and money for the older children so they could go
VIPs coming to Nairobi and they don’t want them to see beggars on the streets. If you don’t go, you’ll be put in jail. They are putting up a big tent for you all to live in.” ‘None of us trusted her. We thought, maybe she’s just going to tip us all into some river. Then the lorry came and they told us that if we didn’t get in, we’d be taken off to jail. So we went to Soweto and all lived together with our children in this big tent. But you have to remember, we had all come from the streets: we
passion,’ he tells me with a laugh. Bob and I shake hands with the players, all of whom have some physical or mental disability. You can feel how excited everybody is about the game. On the back of their shirts is the slogan: ‘Give the young disabled a real chance.’ I stand next to the goal with a few other spectators. The keeper keeps jerking backwards and forwards and doesn’t seem to be really following the game. He’s wearing ordinary shoes with a silver stripe down them. It seems he has
idea how proud he is, even though as usual he’s put on a stern and serious face. Shankayon follows close behind us, with her mother some distance after her. I’ve noticed that Lketinga doesn’t seem to talk to her much and didn’t seem keen on a photo of us all together. Even so, he’s given her some money to buy corn meal or maybe something else to eat before she sets off home. Lots of other people follow us, staring. A few run up to me and my ex-husband has to explain things, which he does in his