Limpopo Rivers: The Romantic Story of a Girl from Africa
Description
This is a story with as many twists and turns as the great Limpopo River itself.
Limpopo Rivers is an unusual name for a girl, but ‘Popo’, as she is normally called, also has an unorthodox upbringing. Tragically her mother, Jayne, had died shortly after her birth so while her father, Tom Rivers, is busy working on his kapenta rig on Lake Kariba in Zambia, she and her brother, Zambezi, are mostly left in the care of their nanny, Mudiwa, and the family cook, Chamakomo, who also happens to be a practicing witch doctor with the gift of prophesy.
As Popo grows up happily in their little shack by the lake she longs to know more about her mother. Tom has told his children about the unusual circumstances in which he met Jayne on the shores of the beautiful Lake Turkana in Kenya. Jayne had told him there was a huge rift between her and her parents and that her father was a monster. When she married Tom she was immediately disinherited and she never had any more contact with her parents. But Tom knows little about Jayne before she met him.
When Popo and her brother leave school, Zambezi is happy to stay and help his father on the kapenta rig, but Popo longs to spread her wings and go on a journey of discovery, so when out of the blue she gets an invitation to visit her mother’s snobbish cousin in Kenya she jumps at the chance.
She learns a little of her mother’s history from the cousin, and also something of a devastating tragedy that had befallen the family, but she has still not been able to find out why there was a rift between Jayne and her parents.
While she is in Kenya she is given an invitation to visit her grandparents in England. When she telephones her father in Zambia to say that she intends accepting their invitation he is horrified, and tells her in no uncertain words that she is a fool and she is doing the wrong thing. He is adamant that Jayne’s parents don’t deserve to meet her as they had never taken any interest in their grandchildren while they were growing up, and he reminds her that her mother always maintained that Robert was a monster. However, Popo does not heed his warning as she feels it is the only way to find out more about her mother’s history, and she flies to England to meet them.
When she gets there she finds her grandparents reluctant to talk about the rift but some surprising things come to light in her mother’s past, things that she just had not expected. Then when by chance she bumps into one of Jayne’s old boyfriends all the startling facts about the rift are made clear. Popo wonders if she has been gullible and she has to make a hard decision about her grandfather.
Eventually Popo becomes quite settled in England and is sure that she is going to spend the rest of her life there, but a series of dreadful events turn her life upside down. Finding herself in a truly horrific situation, she lets her mind drift back to her idyllic childhood in an attempt to distract herself from the agony she is in. Suddenly she remembers a story that Chamakomo had told her which she now realises is a prophetic message. It is when she recalls the ending of the story that she knows what she has to do to avoid catastrophe.
Limpopo Rivers is an unusual name for a girl, but ‘Popo’, as she is normally called, also has an unorthodox upbringing. Tragically her mother, Jayne, had died shortly after her birth so while her father, Tom Rivers, is busy working on his kapenta rig on Lake Kariba in Zambia, she and her brother, Zambezi, are mostly left in the care of their nanny, Mudiwa, and the family cook, Chamakomo, who also happens to be a practicing witch doctor with the gift of prophesy.
As Popo grows up happily in their little shack by the lake she longs to know more about her mother. Tom has told his children about the unusual circumstances in which he met Jayne on the shores of the beautiful Lake Turkana in Kenya. Jayne had told him there was a huge rift between her and her parents and that her father was a monster. When she married Tom she was immediately disinherited and she never had any more contact with her parents. But Tom knows little about Jayne before she met him.
When Popo and her brother leave school, Zambezi is happy to stay and help his father on the kapenta rig, but Popo longs to spread her wings and go on a journey of discovery, so when out of the blue she gets an invitation to visit her mother’s snobbish cousin in Kenya she jumps at the chance.
She learns a little of her mother’s history from the cousin, and also something of a devastating tragedy that had befallen the family, but she has still not been able to find out why there was a rift between Jayne and her parents.
While she is in Kenya she is given an invitation to visit her grandparents in England. When she telephones her father in Zambia to say that she intends accepting their invitation he is horrified, and tells her in no uncertain words that she is a fool and she is doing the wrong thing. He is adamant that Jayne’s parents don’t deserve to meet her as they had never taken any interest in their grandchildren while they were growing up, and he reminds her that her mother always maintained that Robert was a monster. However, Popo does not heed his warning as she feels it is the only way to find out more about her mother’s history, and she flies to England to meet them.
When she gets there she finds her grandparents reluctant to talk about the rift but some surprising things come to light in her mother’s past, things that she just had not expected. Then when by chance she bumps into one of Jayne’s old boyfriends all the startling facts about the rift are made clear. Popo wonders if she has been gullible and she has to make a hard decision about her grandfather.
Eventually Popo becomes quite settled in England and is sure that she is going to spend the rest of her life there, but a series of dreadful events turn her life upside down. Finding herself in a truly horrific situation, she lets her mind drift back to her idyllic childhood in an attempt to distract herself from the agony she is in. Suddenly she remembers a story that Chamakomo had told her which she now realises is a prophetic message. It is when she recalls the ending of the story that she knows what she has to do to avoid catastrophe.
