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We Need New Names

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About the book (written by NoViolet Bulawayo)
'To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in – who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?’

Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn’t all bad, though. There’s mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices.

They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live.

For Darling, that dream will come true. But, like the thousands of people all over the world trying to forge new lives far from home, Darling finds this new paradise brings its own set of challenges – for her and also for those she’s left behind.

Thanks to the publishers, we have an extract of the book below.

We are on our way to Budapest: Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina and me.

We are going even though we are not allowed to cross Mzilikazi Road, even though Bastard is supposed to be watching his little sister Fraction, even though Mother would kill me dead if she found out; we are just going.

There are guavas to steal in Budapest, and right now I’d rather die for guavas.

We didn’t eat this morning and my stomach feels like somebody just took a shovel and dug everything out.

Getting out of Paradise is not so hard since the mothers are busy with hair and talk, which is the only thing they ever do. They just glance at us when we file past the shacks and then look away.

We don’t have to worry about the men under the jacaranda either since their eyes never lift from the draughts. It’s only the little kids who see us and try to follow, but Bastard just wallops the naked one at the front with a fist on his big head and they all turn back.

When we hit the bush we are already flying, scream-singing like the wheels in our voices will make us go faster. Sbho leads:Who discovered the way to India?

And the rest of us rejoin,Vasco da Gama! Vasco da Gama! Vasco da Gama! Bastard is at the front because he won country-game today and he thinks that makes him our president or something, and then myself and Godknows, Stina, Sbho, and finally Chipo, who used to outrun everybody in all of Paradise but not anymore because somebody made her pregnant.

After crossing Mzilikazi we cut through another bush, zip right along Hope Street for a while before we cruise past the big stadium with the glimmering benches we’ll never sit on, and finally we hit Budapest.

We have to stop once, though, for Chipo to sit down because of her stomach; sometimes when it gets painful she has to rest it.

When is she going to have the baby anyway? Bastard says. Bastard doesn’t like it when we have to stop doing things because of Chipo’s stomach.

He even tried to get us not to play with her altogether.

She’ll have it one day, I say, speaking for Chipo because she doesn’t talk anymore. She is not mute-mute; it’s just that when her stomach started showing, she stopped talking.

But she still plays with us and does everything else, and if she really, really needs to say something she’ll use her hands.

What’s one day? On Thursday? Tomorrow? Next week?

Can’t you see her stomach is still small? The baby has to grow. A baby grows outside of the stomach, not inside. That’s the whole reason they are born. So they grow into adults.

Well, it’s not time yet. That’s why it’s still in a stomach.

Is it a boy or girl?

It’s a boy. The first baby is supposed to be a boy. But you’re a girl, big head, and you’re a first-born.

I said supposed, didn’t I?

Just shut your kaka mouth, you, it’s not even your stomach. I think it’s a girl. I put my hands on it all the time and I’ve never felt it kick, not even once.

Yes, boys kick and punch and butt their heads. That’s all they are good at.

Does she want a boy?

No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.

Where exactly does a baby come out of?

The same place it goes into the stomach. How exactly does it get into the stomach? First, Jesus’s mother has to put it in there.

No, not Jesus’s mother. A man has to put it in there, my cousin Musa told me.Well, she was really telling Enia, and I was there so I heard.

Then who put it inside her?

This extract was published with permission from Random House Struik.

Visit Kalahari.com to purchase a copy of We Need New Names.

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