Chapter Two
The Formative Years
I grew up without a dad, in one of the seediest, poorest neighborhoods in Durban. I lived with my mom in a leaky shack. She was a prostitute who brought home a different man every night. She took drugs and drank alcohol as if it were water. I suppose, in her own strange, bizarre way, she really did love me, or so she told me. I remember my mother always yelling at me, and insisting I should be grateful she hadn’t aborted me before birth. Honestly, there were many times when I wished she had, to put me out of my misery…like when I’d go for days without eating any food.
Nevertheless, I was crushed when she died of a drug overdose the year after I started high school. As a result,
