The Brown SeaHer name made me smile: Kamogelo ka Twinkle Motshoane.
What was “twinkle” doing as part of an indigenous African surname? To a European ear this combination with the Tswana nominal prefix “ka” sounded uncanny. It also sounded sweet. Though, “sweet” would be a misleading description of Twinkle and her strange story.
Did I say European ear? Twinkle became known as Twinkle among her black friends as well. They all called her by this English word that her father had inserted because he liked the naughty sound. She contacted me for the same reason as some of the others. To tell her story for the book I was compiling.
We met in the city of palms, the balmy eastward leaning city of Durban. With its Indian curries in the air, where the sun sets first, and rises first too. On the ma
