Exerpt from "On the Laundry Floor", coming soon to a bookshop near you...

I remember romping as a child. I remember dying as a child.

I remember feeling the beauty of life, though not appreciating it then. There were friends. There was my family. There were lots of things waiting for me to do them, and, I suppose, more things waiting to do me. I used to ask a lot of questions and say a lot of nonsense.

Then they silenced me. I can’t talk to people freely anymore but they say there was a time I never stopped yapping.

You know the storybook cliché of the child chasing butterflies or the child looking up in awe on seeing his first rainbow? Well, once upon a childhood that little person was me. I think my first running steps were spent on seeing if I could run faster than all those insects, butterflies included, could fly. And sometimes, like all happy infants, I would just stop and start laughing all by myself.

Then they took my laughter away.

The month was May, barely a month before my seventh birthday, when my family moved to Bulawayo. That was the beginning of winter. Mummy says it was so cold that tears formed in your eyes if you as much as opened them when you went outside. Netsai, our house maid agreed to come along with us to Bulawayo.

Yes, that was the beginning of winter. In more ways than one.