The original version of this media is available upon request.
To access the original file please click here to get in touch with our team
IN ALBIES WORDS: So that's me at Mrs Tischauer’s - ‘Auntie’, we called her - in a kindergarten in Sea Point suburb, based on Montessori principles. My hair is already turning dark. ‘Auntie’ was a refugee from Germany whose husband had died in a Nazi concentration camp. As World War II progressed, she moved to a farmhouse in Klapmuts near Paarl, because she feared that Japanese submarines would come and shell Sea Point. So, for safety, she moved to Klapmuts. And I used to go out there, and I can still remember I would take the train, and then there'd be a cart pulled by a pony or donkey, and I would lie in the back, and I'd hear klopklopklopklop, you know their hooves beating, and I'd see the trees as the cart went through. And I’m just remembering now, the occasion when, decades later, I was sick with hepatitis in Berkley, California, I'm lying flat on my back in the back of a car, seeing the lampposts flash by, and repeating that emotion.
