As far as your book is concerned, let me say at the outset
that I found it really absorbing. I know far too little about the subject of
anthropology to comment on it as an anthropological study – to me it read like a
memoir and a classic ‘heroine’s journey’ rolled into one: You, the narrator of
a pivotal slice of your life, venture into the unknown on an adventure, you
overcome obstacles, your inner process is revealed, you get a greater grasp of
your interiority and you return a more authentic person.
Of course the fascinating ways and world view of the Lenda
are extremely interesting, especially the independence of the women, but by far
my curiosity was piqued by you - so young, so wounded, so hungry to ‘find
yourself’, so psychically ‘open’ due to the fact that you were out of your
comfort zone which allowed suppressed memory and pain to bubble up.
It says a lot of your strength of spirit that you were not
completely submerged by those powerful experiences that came from deep inside.
It was exactly this powerful experience of yourself, which in turn gave you the
tenderness and capacity to get a depth perspective on the Lenda – that is my
conclusion.
I gather from the more academic passages in your book that
your field of study grapples with the inevitable bias that a fieldworker brings
to the subject of study. I think it is precisely your inevitable bias that
makes this account readable for me. I am always more interested in authentic
growth, honesty and the search for meaning in a book than in bland facts –
writing that is well-balanced between heart and head.
So for this reader, the emotional/professional evolution of
you the narrator, and how you describe it against the fascinating and sometimes
disturbing background of that often hopeless setting, caught my attention and
motivated me to keep turning the page.
Andre Eva Bosch
Journalist, Reporter, Writer
Author of “Alive Again”
Won Sanlam Prize for South African Youth Fiction
