Mama Maria's Christmas Present

About the Book

The book was inspired by a boy I taught in my teaching career. He had a very active imagination and could imagine himself in many situations then told them as a story as if real. Then he would ask if he needs to go to confession because he had told a lie. I based Jeremiah on this character. I also know about the problem the priests had in this township, at the time of the apartheid regime in South Africa, where even an innocent gathering of black people caused the police to take action and disperse the crowd. I am passionate about my faith and wanted to put something down about it. In South Africa, people used to go about asking for a Christmas box, so I thought this story not only covers the issues but also show how difficulties with poverty and lack of communications then could lead up to years of ignorance like Mama Maria only finding out the true facts about her son’s family, twelve years after the incident of his death.

About the Author

I come from a large family numbering twelve or thirteen. At eighty-six, I am the only one alive of the family today. I qualified as a teacher and have taught across the spectrum from reception class to primary to high school and teacher training. I entered my drama group whilst teaching at Tlakula High School in Springs, South Africa, in a competition run by the British Shakespeare company and won a scholarship to study drama in England. I had been teaching for twenty years then and hoped the government would grant me leave to go and study in England. I got no reply and left to start my course in London. Whilst there, the South African government dismissed me from teaching, so I could not return to my profession nor even my family as the pass, which all Africans were forced to carry then, only allowed me into the urban area where I was born as long as I was employed as a teacher. So I was stranded in England but went on to do a postgraduate diploma in drama at Newcastle University, which was paid for me by Sue McGregor, Nicholas Amer, and Janet Suzman. I am eternally grateful to these people. Unfortunately, I could not go back to South Africa and was given the right to British nationality. Banned and divorced, I left my children in South Africa and remarried to Mr. Terence McGarry and settled in England.