That was the way it was

Ruth HartleyConflict, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe1 Comment

My last blog post was about children of violence. Today I write about how I am also a child of violence and its impact on my family and children.   War was always around me but as a child, I didn’t know that. My parents were scarred by it – a normal human reaction after all. As a schoolgirl, I […]

The Children of Violence

Ruth HartleySouthern AfricaLeave a Comment

Martha Quest The sky is clean, the moon twisted and the temperature zero. Outdoors I would freeze and die. Here in my study, I think of Doris Lessing and the five novels that make up Children of Violence. When I read the first book, Martha Quest, I had the frightening sense that Lessing was writing me into existence and I […]

Journeys of courage and imagination

Ruth HartleyDisplacementLeave a Comment

African people in the Americas Two years ago we visited Belize and Livingston in Guatemala and encountered Garifuna people for the first time. I was interested to learn how the Garifuna came to live in Central America and still retained the culture of their African heritage, while it seems to me that so many Afro-Americans who endured centuries of slavery […]