03 Dec 2024

Orphaned, a life experience memoir of Lebopo Bulayani, was launched in Gaborone recently. 

In the 98-page book, Bulayani recounts her experiences as a little orphan girl in Mochudi after her mother died.

 Bulayani, who is a married mother of two sons, narrates how life threw her lemons after her mother’s passing and how she learnt to grow emotionally when she found herself at a loss of many things that her mother, Cherry Motshegwe who passed on in 1997 at the age of 35, used to provide. 

The teary, Bulayani explained that she had to deal with challenges such as bullying, loss of more people such as her grandfather in 2009 and uncle in 2013 that left her helpless. 

Bulayani tries by all means to bring her mothers’ memories back with each chapter as a way of teaching orphaned children how to deal with grief and hold fast to the hope of not walking the loss path alone.

 Bulayani narrates how she wishes she had a father who could take care of her and her siblings as in her mind, her father would have brought some comfort and eased the challenges they faced. She narrates that she hated having to go to Mochudi main kgotla with a wheelbarrow to collect her family’s rationed food from the Social and Community Development (S&CD) office, recounting her embarrassment, the bullying and the mockery that she suffered at the hands of the classmates upon seeing her pushing the wheelbarrow. 

Publisher and managing director of Poeticblood Publishers, Dr Lame Pusetso said receiving raw work meant dealing with emotions and reliving one’s own grief.

 She said grief stayed with someone for the longest time, making it difficult to navigate through life, especially where there is no support system.

 Dr Pusetso stressed the importance of having a family around when growing up because families helped children, especially girls, build future relationships. Ends