Colour on My Wings: Chronicles of a Native South African

Shelley Wood GauldMy story spans over five decades--from 1953 the year of my birth to 2006. It begins at a stone house on a hill at Campania--a Zulu trading-post in KwaZulu-Natal--and culminates in Wheat Ridge Colorado in the United States.As a South African teacher and artist my aim has been to educate and paint pictures with words; to seize a myriad of times treasures before they fragment and fade into the silent abyss of the unrecorded past; to capture something of the distinctive histories and characteristics of fellow South Africans; to convey what it means to live as an immigrant in a foreign country; and to share something of my souls spiritual journey. This memoir is far more than a nostalgic flutter down Memory Lane...The original title of this work was Much Bigger than Grownups: Chronicles of a Native South African and it was intended primarily as a family history. Although the overall perspective in Colour on My Wings remains the same it is intended for a more general readership and thus features fewer familial details.Why the title Colour on My Wings: Chronicles of a Native South African? I was once taught that if a butterfly does not struggle to emerge from its cocoon--if you help it out by cutting open its cocoon--it will have no colour on its wings... In the same way is it not true to say that the colours on our wings become increasingly vivid as we struggle through times of hardship and transition?On my eventual return to South Africa after residing in the United States for over seventeen years I became acutely aware of the richness of the colours and the brilliance of the patterns on the wings of fellow-South Africans. Even on a national level I could see that lifes trials had produce a distinctive strength wisdom and grace in our people. This cultural beauty I have come to attribute largely to the national struggle to emerge from the restrictive cocoons of the past before being able to take flight... The current generation of South Africas youth with no direct experience of the acute tensions of the Apartheid era are refreshingly positive and thankfully increasingly aware only of the colour on their own and each others wings.Each chapter paints a picture of a place in which I have resided or worked for an extended period of time and all ten relate specifically to the stipulated time-frames--because major changes have radically altered the social economic and political landscape of South Africa in recent decades. In the interests of continuity general information that is bigger than my personal story has been placed in grey bhansela (bonus) boxes and at the end of the book a section entitled Chapter Notes takes the place of footnotes. These chapter notes are followed by an acknowledgement of my sources of information and the invaluable assistance I received from specific individuals. Afrikaans Zulu French Hebrew Arabic and Indian terms italicized within the chapters are then explained in a glossary; as are South Africanisms and less familiar British-English expressions. Also included in this title are fifty original illustrations as well as meaningful quotes by several key characters in my story.