Book 5: Streets Paved with Gold

These two stories are about coming home after many years absence. They are very different types of homecoming.
In the first story, Leta, a young man from the country, returns to his village after several years’ absence in the big city. He has done well and is keen to show off his material wealth to impress the locals. The villagers are duly impressed. Everyone from the big city is assumed to be rich. However, his family and the elders of his clan remind him of his duties and obligations and he returns to the big city having learned a lesson in “Ubuntu”, or the African tradition of sharing your good fortune.
In the second story, we meet Tshepo, a young woman academic, who has a successful international career at an American university. She has been out of the country for many years and plans to spend her sabbatical doing research. To her surprise she finds herself stepping back in time. Nothing at home seems to have changed. It is as if the country is in a time-warp. At the same time, Tshepo does not realize how much she herself has changed. On the first evening, she is hosted by her previous employer. The evening, which could have been an interesting cultural exchange, turns out to be a disaster of incorrect assumptions, misunderstandings and stereotyping.