Who I am
I've always loved writing and planned to write my autobiography many years ago. But, each time I settled down to it, I was catapulted into a new adventure and had to put it off until I settled down again. I arrived in England from South Africa in 1999, to a small market town called Wisbech, near Cambridge.
In 2003, I joined a writers' circle where we were given "homework" in the way of writing a piece to read out to the other members the following week, on the subject we had discussed in class. I found that I was incapable of writing fiction, so I began to produce short stories describing my life growing up amongst the Zulu tribe on our remote farm in South Africa. My fellow writers loved my stories and our tutor, a gentle man who had retired from Cambridge, suggested that I continue to write these short stories and then turn them into a book and publish them.
And so I began. After approximately thirteen years of hard work and with an enormous amount of help from my editors, Peter Buchan and David Jones, it has come to fruition.
I called the book "White Zulu" because it's how I see myself. Actually, the original White Zulu was my grandfather, Allan Ross, Dad's father, who originally bought the land and built the origins of our homestead there. He spoke Zulu so perfectly that they called him "uMuntu umHlope" (The White Zulu), simply because when he was speaking to them in the pitch dark, they couldn't differentiate between him and one of their own.
The 5000 acres of pristine countryside ares till in my family, and although I don't get out to South Africa to enjoy it now, my two sons who live here in the UK take every opportunity they can to go out and spend a couple of weeks trout fishing, and generally enjoying bush walks and swimming in the Umgeni River, which rises on the farm, and runs the entire length of the valley. My sisters have built a holiday home right in the bush, on the edge of the river, in which they all take turns going up to stay in.
I wrote White Zulu because I felt that I had such an unusual upbringing and also wanted to share the incredible, unique beauty of the ranch, our family home, stretching over a time span of one hundred years. I feel that anybody who picks up this book will quickly become engrossed in the antics of the troop of baboons which plagued my mother, my dysfunctional family, my moody parents, and the magic of a glimpse into the minds of the Zulu tribe living there sixty years ago.
I feel this book will appeal to teenagers right through to the elderly. The book has a lot of humour running through it, especially when the baboons are around, trashing my mother's garden. It gives detailed insight into rural South Africa, as well as the history of that country. It would also appeal to anyone who enjoys African wildlife, bird life and Flora.
White Zulu reveals a young girl growing into womanhood, which in those times was completely different to the way it is now. It reveals how Dickensian a girls' boarding school could be in the 1960s, particularly in South Africa.
The book also gives an overview of how apartheid affected my country, and in particular how different life on the rural homesteads and farms was compared to other areas. Finally, the book reveals Mozambique in the very early 1970s, before that brutal and bloody forty-year civil war broke out and ruined the country, particularly Paradise Island, which was used for target practice for Rocket Propelled Grenades by the government forces.
In 2003, I joined a writers' circle where we were given "homework" in the way of writing a piece to read out to the other members the following week, on the subject we had discussed in class. I found that I was incapable of writing fiction, so I began to produce short stories describing my life growing up amongst the Zulu tribe on our remote farm in South Africa. My fellow writers loved my stories and our tutor, a gentle man who had retired from Cambridge, suggested that I continue to write these short stories and then turn them into a book and publish them.
And so I began. After approximately thirteen years of hard work and with an enormous amount of help from my editors, Peter Buchan and David Jones, it has come to fruition.
I called the book "White Zulu" because it's how I see myself. Actually, the original White Zulu was my grandfather, Allan Ross, Dad's father, who originally bought the land and built the origins of our homestead there. He spoke Zulu so perfectly that they called him "uMuntu umHlope" (The White Zulu), simply because when he was speaking to them in the pitch dark, they couldn't differentiate between him and one of their own.
The 5000 acres of pristine countryside ares till in my family, and although I don't get out to South Africa to enjoy it now, my two sons who live here in the UK take every opportunity they can to go out and spend a couple of weeks trout fishing, and generally enjoying bush walks and swimming in the Umgeni River, which rises on the farm, and runs the entire length of the valley. My sisters have built a holiday home right in the bush, on the edge of the river, in which they all take turns going up to stay in.
I wrote White Zulu because I felt that I had such an unusual upbringing and also wanted to share the incredible, unique beauty of the ranch, our family home, stretching over a time span of one hundred years. I feel that anybody who picks up this book will quickly become engrossed in the antics of the troop of baboons which plagued my mother, my dysfunctional family, my moody parents, and the magic of a glimpse into the minds of the Zulu tribe living there sixty years ago.
I feel this book will appeal to teenagers right through to the elderly. The book has a lot of humour running through it, especially when the baboons are around, trashing my mother's garden. It gives detailed insight into rural South Africa, as well as the history of that country. It would also appeal to anyone who enjoys African wildlife, bird life and Flora.
White Zulu reveals a young girl growing into womanhood, which in those times was completely different to the way it is now. It reveals how Dickensian a girls' boarding school could be in the 1960s, particularly in South Africa.
The book also gives an overview of how apartheid affected my country, and in particular how different life on the rural homesteads and farms was compared to other areas. Finally, the book reveals Mozambique in the very early 1970s, before that brutal and bloody forty-year civil war broke out and ruined the country, particularly Paradise Island, which was used for target practice for Rocket Propelled Grenades by the government forces.