Enriching the Rainbow…

Most people don't live in mansions; those are

great houses for the very rich. Lucky people

have houses with clean water, without bad smells,

and with walls that keep out of the sound

of neighbours shouting. Unlucky people have

only shanties to live in- houses made out of

bits of old metal or cardboard or paper.

   And some people only have dreams…

Cardboard mansions is a story from the book “Changing their Skies: Stories from Africa” about an Indian family living in South Africa under poor living conditions. The main character, Dadi-Ma, wants to take her grandson away from all of this in order to give him the opportunities she did not have in life.


This story was written by Farida Karodia who is a recognized South African novelist and short-story writer born in 1942. Farida was forced to leave the country in 1969 and decided to live in Canada for a few years where she started writing novels, when she returned to her country she started writing about the post apartheid living conditions of South Africans, specially about minorities.

Her books have captured the Minorities life experiences produced by a poverty environment such as health problems, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. The interesting fact is the author goes beyond the social boundaries of ´gender, race, class´ by creating white, black and Asian, male and female, rich and poor protagonists whom she allows to speak as narrators.

I decided to post about her after we read “The Rubbish Dump” from Steve Chimombo, I realized there was another short story, written by Farida that showed another aspect of South Africans life conditions, I think it is important for us to read as much as we can about this topic told by people that has been through these experiences and not just as a piece of information, besides we are not used to read about this very often.

This video, “Enriching the Rainbow” tells the story of the 150 year old history of Indians in South Africa, how they got there and how they live now, it isvery interesting and it is something that we have not discussed in classes so I really hope you can take a look at it.