Letters from Wankie - 9781568251653

Letters from Wankie is a unique, true story based on the collection of some 500 air letters the author, British-born Patricia Friedberg, wrote home to England in the mid-1950s, during the first two years of her marriage to her South African physician husband. After learning his promised position in Johannesburg had already been filled, the newlyweds moved to the remote mining town of Wankie in the far northwest corner of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where he was employed as a colliery doctor. More than 50 years later, after her mother passed away, Patricia found among her mother's papers the bundle of air letters neatly tied and safely stored. Reading through the collection it was evident that the letters contained an incredible, historical account of life during the colonial years as seen through the eyes and writings of a young woman, twenty years of age, who was, unbelievably — even to herself — employed as Clerk of the Court at the Native Commissioner's Office. Despite the enormous cultural differences the young Londoner faced — the challenging and often shocking tribal practices and Native law — she carried on, overcoming obstacles with spunk and grit and a saving sense of humor. Patricia Friedberg abhored the thinly veiled apartheid treatment of the Natives and early on predicted the subsequent unrest.