Walking into a classroom at the Women’s Prison Consider yourselves walking down a long murky, concrete corridor in the middle of winter, where the cold damp seeps into your bones, so chilling that the mere attempt of colourful butterflies, plump ‘botticelli’ ladies sitting at tables and green-painted foliage, drawn on these dank walls by people […]

5 Weeks after Isolation This corona virus period is an interesting one. I’ve been fascinated by the way we communicate with each other. Of course there’s a strong online and Whatsapp presence, people sending sillies, and funnies, that’s to be expected, I guess, because we’ve all learnt to communicate in small byte sized measurements and […]

First Meeting At Correctional Services Sun City – April 9th 2014 I was nervous, but I knew my way around a bit better this time. Yes, the route to Sun City was not so far away from Jozi … in fact it’s quite simple to get here! I knew the security battle this time so was […]

I am learning so much about human nature during this course. Needless to say probably as much about myself as my students. A fellow colleague and thriller writer, Margie Orford compiled a manuscript many years ago called, Fifteen Men. She had been through a similar process to myself, working with prisoners in Groot Drakenstein. Sadly, the […]

This praise below came from students in my Class of 2014. These testimonials have been transcribed exactly as written with all the spelling or grammatical errors.Considering that for most of them English is a second language I am blown away by their commitment to the project and their responses. I’m extremely happy with what they have learnt! And moreover […]

This video with the ‘girl in the red dress’, gives a chilling account of how the corona virus has effected all of us in 2020. There are times in this magnificent planet of ours when magic happens.This is one of those times, when this woman’s ingenuity, courage, and brevity of the human spirit soars in […]

Extraordinary Day – October 2013 The function was to be held at the Correctional Facility for Offenders at Meredale Corrections Facility – commonly known as Sun City – can’t imagine why?? The purpose of the function was to bring the concept of Brand Joburg to the public, or interested parties. Brand Joburg is a gateway project to […]

2014 was a big year for Greenlight District Project. It was the Pilot year for this innovative and extraordinarily inspirational project. At the Certificate bearing ceremony there were festivities, prison bands, singing, and general festivities. The offenders did all the decor themselves, organised the whole thing, even frames for the certificates themselves. It had taken me […]

I read their Christmas stories with interest. It was amazing for me to see how expressive they were particularly about food! I’m guessing that is a big gap in their lives, mum’s pot-roast, or fending the braai meat with dad, or Dave or john or Paul. This is a description of one of the meals […]