My family owns an amazing set of old books about Zimbabwe, and I read a few whenever I am home. Here’s another one. It is an autobiography and tells about a crazy life. I think some of it may be a bit made up, but even if we take off like 50% it’s still crazy.
She is in a convent school in South Africa at fifteen when she meets a man at the rugby. She has a cup of tea with him, he proposes, and she ACCEPTS. She runs away and marries him – HE IS 23! She is so young that he has to explain to her what is going on when she gets her period. She almost immediately gets pregnant. Her husband dies in a rugby match. Her family takes her back in and she has a dreadful birth. Her breasts are so full and painful that she volunteers to feeds babies other than her own, and when there are no more babies to feed FEEDS PUPPIES.
She moves to Bulawayo when it is just a few shacks, and eventually becomes a nurse, receiving an award for her work during the Boer War. She is then swept up in what we would today call the first Chimurenga.
Autobiographies are almost a mix of fact and fiction and I understand from the internet that this one leans a little heavily in the second direction. Apparently the husband did not die but in fact abandoned her for western Australia. I can see where you would need to lie about this in the late nineteenth century. But why would you put in the puppies unless it is true?! The Bulawayo bits and the nursing bits are true. I have my doubts about the midnight escape from Lobengula’s forces. But still damn, if its only 50% fact, what a life!