By Seleoe Nonyane
Mimi Machakaire is a young Zimbabwean littérateur who resides in Lesotho; she recently published a book titled ‘The Land of Koala Bears’.
The book was released at the of March first as an e-book copy and then hard copies became available end of April.
She said ‘The Land of Koala Bears’ was inspired by her trip to Australia where she had visited her cousin who was getting married; she was so enchanted she reckons it was one of the most beautiful places she has ever visited.
The book is a collection of short stories about the places that she has travelled to and the things that she encountered while visiting those countries, as well as the people she met in the past in these different places who are still part of her life to this day.
“In Australia I got to see animals such as koala bears and kangaroos. It is something that you do not see every day.
“So the book is based on my travel diaries. This is a series of my travel experiences. The ups and downs and the challenges of travelling, just everything that I went through from hopping from country to country.
“It is about guidelines of some of the things that people may expect from visiting these places. It emphasizes that some countries are looking for visa applications and the documents they may need and how much money they need to pay for certain things,” she explained.
Machakaire said the other chapters in the book are about her experiences from visiting Southern African countries like Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
She believes she owes a lot to travelling and is grateful to God because without travelling she would have not accomplished what she has today.
She has since sold 20 copies, 10 in her home country and the other 10 in Lesotho; there are eight copies left at the moment.
The author told theReporter that this was a self-publishing project that was done through the help of Epitome Press.
Her travelling experiences began at a tender age due to the field of work her parents were into.
“I did not grow up in one place. I was born in Zimbabwe because my mom is a doctor and my dad was a diplomat at the time so for a long time I travelled a lot with them up until I was three years old when we lived in England for a year and then went back to Zimbabwe. I have lived in other places as well.
“I spent seven years in Botswana and five years in Namibia and then I came to Lesotho where I have lived for about another five to six years. I was in my 20s by then.”
Her journey began when she discovered that she enjoyed reading from a tender age.
She recalled that she would read almost everything and later got her hands on Harry Potter which is the book that actually got her into writing in the first place. The book was written by J.K Rowling, who is her greatest inspiration.
“The more I read the more it encouraged me to want to write my own stories and later on I started to want to write other peoples stories and I have come up with a lot of ideas and topics over the years. So, it has been a great journey for me because I have been published in a lot of places,” she said.
She said she would write everyday in class until she got older and found the time to write whatever that was on her mind and scribble something down and let it turn into magic.
And it was only later when she figured out the different types of stories. She could now differentiate between a novel, a short story and a poem.
She later went on to study literature and there she learned the different styles and genres that she had already written as a child.
She has accomplished quite a few since embarking on this literature journey.
She has a series on Writer Space Africa called Mental Health for Creatives and another one in a magazine called African Literature. There are other platforms that have some of her work like Writers International Network Zimbabwe; they have a column there called The Youth Perspective.
