American author to visit Botswana

| Wednesday January 15, 2014 15:34

According to one of Slaughter’s hosts, Archaeologist and Heritage manager at Botswana National Museum and Monuments Phillip Segadika, the author’s visit will be momentous.

“Slaughter is the one person who saw the Bonnington Farm and actually lived in it while it was still fully functional so her visit would be the revival of the soul of the farm,” said Segadika in an interview with Showbiz.

Segadika further said Slaughter’s visit will help the museum put together the missing pieces of the puzzle that is the Bonnington Farm upon which sits one of the country’s grandest hotels, the Grand Palm.  The farm, which has silos, is regarded as one of the country’s national monuments.

He also said that during her visit, Slaughter is expected to share her experiences of colonial Botswana with her fans.

“Slaughter lived at the Village in ‘Gaberones’ as a little girl in the last years of the protectorate period.  She uses her memories to romanticise this period and setting.  She writes about her colonial experiences from a personal and sociological perspective. In particular, she stayed several times with the Le Cordeurs at the Bonnington Farm when her parents were out of the country,” said Segadika adding that her description of life and the environs of the Bonnington Farm is a major subject of her books.

According to Segadika, one of the scenes that Slaughter captured in Before The Knife is when the patriarch of the Le Cordeur family mercilessly hit a farm-worker known as Johannes who just stood still perhaps fearing the worst if he protested.  It is in the same book that the author shared the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her father.

Segadika pointed out that interestingly, Slaughter wrote a number of books before she penned her memoirs, Before The Knife, which some critics describe as ‘painful’.

During her visit, Slaughter is expected to give a lecture at the University of Botswana, give a public talk at the Gaborone International Convention Centre and visit several sites in the city including the Bonnington Farm, the Three Chiefs Monument, El Negro’s grave and the Grand Palm ponds.She is also expected to have a greet and meet session with Bonnington JSS students who are also taking part in an essay writing competition that goes with the American author’s visit.