Themba , livre ebook

Aurora Metro Books - Dijk Lutz Van

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

116 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A hard-hitting, and emotional story set in South Africa, following Themba and his dreams of becoming a famous footballer.Themba grows up dreaming of becoming a football star. One day he leaves the village and travels with his sister to the city in search of their mother. Life is a struggle and Themba has to grow up fast. A lucky break gives him the chance to train as a footballer and play professionally - but Themba has a secret - should he tell the truth about his HIV and risk everything he's ever dreamed of? ~Themba won an IBBY award - Best Book for Young People.Karin Chubb was Shortlisted for the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation for Themba, a unique award celebrating the high quality and diversity of translated fiction for young readers.The book was also made into an award-winning film."Beautifully translated from the original it is a book full of hope and the more young people who read books like this and who come to understand how other young children live, the more this hope will spread."Books, Teens and Magazines"Themba reminds me of my own childhood and youth in a township close to a small village in the Transvaal in South Africa: Like him I wanted to escape poverty, like him I had the hope that our world will be a just world one day - and like him I loved my mother who was working at the time as a maid for a white family. To be very honest: in soccer Themba seems to be simply better than I was."Archbishop Desmond Tutu"READ OF THE MONTH"Pride magazine"an inspirational coming of age drama about a young South African boy's escape from poverty and the pusuit of a dream."Spling onliner"It's a rags to riches story - a story of hope, of dreaming your dreams and achieving them, and it's also a story of friendship"The Sunday Independent"It's a really engaging book, and because Aids is a serious issue, it made us want to carry on reading more about it."Durning Library teenage reading group"Beautifully translated from the original and it is an easy and straightforward read. However, the storyline is tough - poverty, AIDS and death haunt the pages of the book. The reader learns about the hardship of life for many ordinary South Africans (even after Mandela came to power) and the struggle for those families who have a family member suffering from AIDS. The problems they face do not lie solely in a lack of medication and good nutrition; it also lies in the ignorance of their neighbours and friends and a refusal of many to acknowledge the illness and help the ill. However this is not a depressing book - it is a book full of hope and the more young people who read books like this and who come to understand how other young children live, the more this hope will spread."Books, Teens and Magazines

Informations

Publié par	Aurora Metro Books
Date de parution	31 octobre 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781906582494
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0171€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Lutz van Dijk
German-Dutch author Lutz van Dijk (Ph.D) was born in 1955 in Berlin. He was a teacher in Hamburg before joining the staff of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Lutz has been living in Cape Town since 2001, received an honorary professorship for poetry at the University of Oldenburg/Germany in 2009 and is co-founder of HOKISA (Homes for Kids in South Africa, www.hokisa.co.za ) a non-government organisation for children affected by AIDS.
Lutz received the 1997 Youth Literature Prize of Namibia. His novel Stronger than the Storm is read in South African schools in Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa. He received the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in Germany in 2001. His History of the Jews was nominated for the German Youth Literature Prize in 2001 and his History of Africa (published in Germany in 2004) appeared in translations in Southern Africa in 2006. Find out more at www.lutzvandijk.co.za .
‘Believe in yourself .
If you remain positive ,
even when things are not going your way ,
keep believing that you are there for a reason ,
and that your time will come …
I would want people to remember me
as someone who tried to make
a difference in people’s lives.’

Lucas Radebe (born 1969 in Soweto),
long-time Captain of Bafana Bafana ,
the South African National Soccer Team
“THEMBA reminds me of my own childhood and youth in a township close to a small village in the Transvaal in South Africa: Like him I wanted to escape poverty, like him I had the hope that our world will be a just world one day – and like him I loved my mother who was working at the time as a maid for a white family. To be very honest: in soccer Themba seems to be simply better than I was.”

Archbishop Emeritus
Desmond Tutu
THEMBA
A BOY CALLED HOPE
All persons in this novel are fictitious. However, places like Themba’s village or the township of Masiphumelele are to be found in many places, not only in South Africa .
First published in the UK in 2011 by Aurora Metro Books
67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, TW1 4HX.
www.aurorametro.com info@aurorametro.com
Themba: A Boy Called Hope © copyright 2011 Lutz van Dijk
English translation © copyright 2011 Karin Chubb
Front cover image © copyright 2010 Karin Blid Alsbirk
DO Productions www.doproductions.com
Editor: Cheryl Robson
Original title: Themba by Lutz van Dijk © 2006 by cbj Verlag, Muenchen a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, München, Germany
Aurora Metro Books would like to thank Sarah Strupinski, Jack Timney, Martin Gilbert, Simon Smith, Lesley Mackay, Jackie Glasgow, Neil Gregory, Richard Turk, Laurane Marchive, Thomas Skinner, Neha Matkar and Sumedha Mane.
All rights are strictly reserved. For rights enquiries contact the publisher.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Lutz van Dijk asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of the above work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Printed by Ashford Colour Press, Fareham, UK
Ebook conversion by Swift ProSys
ISBN: 978-1-906582-21-0 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-906582-49-4 (Ebook)
THEMBA
A BOY CALLED HOPE
by
LUTZ VAN DIJK
translated by
KARIN CHUBB

AURORA METRO BOOKS
CONTENTS
1. In the shower
2. At night by the river
3. Long ago … Father
4. Survival in Qunu
5. Lions like us
6. Farewell to Mama
7. World Cup in Mthata
8. Blood Red
9. The escape
10. On the road
11. In the township
12. Now or Never
13. The house of the children
14. The decision
15. In front of the camera
AFTERWORD
GLOSSARY
HOKISA
This book is dedicated to Nkosi Johnson (1989–2001) .
Nkosi Johnson was eleven years old when he spoke at the World AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 in front of about 12,000 participants. He shared his life as a boy suffering from AIDS and pleaded for the free availability of antiretroviral medication for all, long before the government was prepared to commit itself to this course of action .
Nkosi died on June 1st 2001, shortly after his twelfth birthday .
Lutz van Dijk
CHAPTER 1
Kwishawa
In the shower
The hard spray of the shower hits my head. Drops scatter. Most of the hot cascade streams over my shoulders, washing soap and foam off my back and belly. My eyes are half closed. The steam smells of chlorine and soap. Deep breaths gradually restore calm. Most of my muscles are still knotted from the effort of the game, a dull ache in my right arm and shoulder, a reminder of the bruises I collected in a fall just after half-time. I don’t think it’s serious.
From the entrance to the team showers I hear Andile call my name. He’s already dressed, but there is excitement in his voice, “Themba, come on, move it! The Boss is waiting for you to say congratulations! And all those jokers from the TV - they won’t get another goal like that in a long time!” And he adds with a friendly grin, “They all want you, only you … Man, have you seen the chicks out there, waiting for autographs at the exit? Today you can have whatever you want, Themba!”
Andile Khumalo is much older than me. He’s got to be around twenty-five. He’s the star mid-fielder for Bafana Bafana 1 , and not in the least jealous. He’s really happy for me. When I joined the national football team four months ago, he pulled me aside after the first or second training session and said in his brotherly way, “ Lumka – watch it, bra ’! They just want to try you out but if it doesn’t all work out real cool then they’ll dump you. That’s usually how it goes. Football isn’t really a game – it’s all about money, lots of hard cash. You’re only worth as much as your last star performance here.”
Andile is from the Eastern Cape, like me. But he is not from the country. He comes from iMonti, or East London as the white people say. iMonti is a coastal town with a big harbour and it’s even got its own airport. Me and Nomtha – the most important person in my life – fled from a poor little village about two hundred kilometres north of iMonti. It’s up in the hills of Qunu, and it’s famous because Nelson Mandela was born there, in the village of Mvezo on the Mbashe River. There is even a museum in his honour.
But that’s about all there is. Most of the roads are still not tarmacked and many people live in huts built of straw and clay. They try to scrape a living from the poor soil along with all the cows, goats and sheep that are grazing there. Andile never stops teasing me about that: “You come from Qunu? Where on earth did you find a place to play football? It’s all hills without a single level field … I suppose you had to change over at half-time, first running up hill to shoot and then running down after the ball, hey?”
“ Kanye-kanye – exactly!” I laugh in reply. If only he knew. But even then I don’t admit that we only had goal posts made from long branches, and that none of us had any shoes, let alone toks .
All that seems like a hundred years ago. My life with Nomtha in our village in Qunu: Barely ten homes, most of them oorontabile , traditional round huts, scattered over four hills and across two valleys. We were born there, Nomtha, my sister, who is two years younger, and me. The first thing I can remember was the scent of my mother’s skin, and the soft, warm blanket in which she tied us to her back. I can remember the feel of strong grass and damp earth under my bare feet; the scary sounds in the night when the storm battered the thatch on the roof – followed by the calm of early morning, when Mama was the first to get up and break dry twigs to start the fire. Nomtha usually woke up after me. I loved watching her sleep, even then; her long dark lashes, her delicate face with full lips and soft cheeks. Nomtha – she is everything to me, my entire family, at least what there is left of my family since we have left Uncle Luthando and Grandfather, and Mama lies dying.
*
I never really knew my father. I was four or at the most five when he vanished in the mines around iGoli, the huge city of Johannesburg. He simply never came back to us, not even at Christmas as he’d always done before then. For a long time we kids didn’t know why that was, and we made up all kinds of reasons: Perhaps he wanted to come back but there was an accident in the mine. Perhaps he found a new woman, and started a new family far away from us. From then on my mother never said another word about my father. It almost seemed as though he’d never existed, and for years we had no idea why he’d abandoned us in that tiny village in Qunu. One thing was certain: We never wanted to have anything more to do with Luthando, our uncle. Never ever again.
*
Nomtha’s proper name is Mthawekhaya which in Xhosa means “She who spreads light in the house”. But when she was little, she couldn’t really pronounce her own name, and so we’ve always called her Nomtha…
She’s probably still sitting somewhere out there in the stadium now while all the people are slowly leaving, although I told her exactly how to find the Press Room. But that’s Nomtha – she doesn’t like rooms full of noisy people, and she makes up her own mind about what is good for her, and what isn’t. She’ll wait for me until it’s all over. No matter what happens. No matter what Andile and all the other players of Bafana Bafana have to say. Whether they let me go on playing in