Faded Flowers
by Sally Ronchetti
Two women similarly strong in nature, but from different worlds find themselves sharing the same horrific experience. We learn what leads to a heartbroken Emily who returns to London from a disastrous year in America The late rectors daughter from Cornwall who is now approaching 40 with no home and no formal education is a bit older and wiser since she left Cornwall, now she has nothing to lose. She takes up the mantle of suffering of innocent women and children of a war of her own country’s making. Belittled and mocked at her endeavours, she fights to improve the conditions of the innocent dying in the British concentration camps in South Africa.
In South Africa, we learn how Alice Van Zyl becomes a refugee in Klerksdorp camp, her father brother and husband are missing, the farm and everything they possess burnt, killed or commandeered for food by the British army following Kitchener’s scorched earth policy.
She exists day to day in the mud soaked camp, hot by day freezing by night. Sharing the thin bell tent with another family. The meagre rations soon mean heartbreak, hunger and disease. Alice’s constant fight for survival changes her; she does things she never thought she'd have to do just to feed her children.
Emily sees the deprivation first hand and has to find strength and courage from within as she fights for what she believes is right. Thwarted and fought at every angle at home to make the reality of the suffering known she perseveres often risking her own reputation and even life among the war frenzied jingoistic people that prevails everywhere in England. By sheer dogged determination Emily’s efforts begin the change the public’s perception of what is happening in South Africa.
Whilst men are warring over gold and diamonds. One woman fights for survival while other fights FOR that woman’s survival. Kitchener didn’t call Emily Hobhouse 'That bloody woman' for no reason.
Part 2/Book 2….1902 - The war is over, Alice, a changed woman is released into the charred wilderness with one tent and one months food rations... what happens next? Where will they go? How will they survive in inhospitable wasteland of war? Emily's work is not over yet.
This is their story.
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