The Gender-BendersI met the executive head of the mystery service provider in the course of 1998. She was seventy-two years old, a first-generation immigrant from England. Some called her Poppy. To her employees she was Mama.
She came from council flat poverty in England, but lived in relative opulence in an eastern suburb of Pretoria after her father had made money from rural shops for tribal people. It was of course she who gave me the story about Marina, the underwater lake dweller. Later, when we got to know one another better.
She was a smallish but shapely senior lady with long wavy, probably dyed, blonde hair, with a considerable bounce, just like her voice.
She opened her front door leaning into the crooked handle of a stylish yellowwood walking stick with metal studs and rings
