Author: gvaswart@gmail.com
The Carpet King
The first we saw of the Carpet King was a cloud of dust coming along the road to the farm. My mother was sitting on the stoep, picking stones out of the dried beans in a big enamel bowl on her lap. “That’s not the Extension Officer,” she said, screwing up her eyes at the […]
Post Natal Depression – Don’t Ignore it
“Some days I had to walk out of the room and leave Sarah to cry, in case I picked her up and threw her across the room.” Candy was talking about her experience with Post Natal Depression which had lasted for six months after her baby was born. “I found it difficult to bond with […]
Hong Kong Haircut
There are three ways of having your hair cut in Hong Kong. You can make an appointment with Mr Larry in his glass and chrome hair studio on the thirty- fifth floor overlooking Victoria harbour. He comes highly recommended by several of the British wives you’ve met, who just love him. Here, at the first […]
By Barge and Bike in China
It’s just after daybreak on the River Li in Guangxi, Southern China, and we’re pushing our bikes onto a squat river barge that will take Pete and me down this brown, slow-flowing river to the ancient village of Xing Ping. We hoist the bikes on the roof and take our places on the deck which […]
Baboon Minders of Scarborough
Drive an hour south of Cape Town, to the tip of the Peninsula, and you’ll find Scarborough, a random scattering of houses and shacks perched between the wild, thundering waves of the Atlantic and the steep mountains of Slangkop and Red Hill. Gale force north-westers, icy rain and flooded dirt roads are a feature of […]
Top Chef, Negotiable
Mavis Mwete closed her reader with a sigh of relief and heaved her considerable bulk from the desk at the Adult Education centre. All her fellow students found these desks too small, as they shared them with the children of St Theresa’s Primary School, but for Mavis and her legs, these night classes were close to […]
Mommy’s Boy
Randal shifted his great bulk from one haunch to the other and took another suck on his beer can. The little campstool was digging uncomfortably into his thighs, adding to the irritation of the whining mosquitoes and the oppressive heat of the African bush. “Hot, isn’t it?” Martin took a long sip of his iced […]
Hidden Assets
One night, when I was ten, my father came home from work carrying a tortoise under his arm. With difficulty. It was the biggest tortoise I’d ever seen. He placed it on the kitchen table and the seven of us watched as it slowly pushed out its ancient head and surveyed its surroundings. Then, faster […]