Page 177 - Real English 2024 Book 8

A GOOD DEED COMES ROUND

I helped with the polio vaccine for the children. I had a tray of
sugar lumps and would give one to each person. Behind me came a

health assistant with a bottle of vaccine. He would squeeze a drop
of the bright pink solution into each lump. Then I’d call for ‘tongues
out’ and march down the line, checking that the children had all
swallowed.
My biggest problem was to prevent them from coming round For almost ten
again to get a second sugar lump. years humans never

Those were the days of relative peace. But as I came into ventured into the
7
manhood in the 1970s, the war for black majority rule escalated in vast minefield near
Rhodesia. Our district with its long border with Mozambique was the mountains at all.
8
devastated. Nearly every farm was attacked. For almost ten years
humans never ventured into the vast minefield near the mountains
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at all.
I left for England. I tried to forget Africa, to dismiss my
homeland, now renamed Zimbabwe, as a place with too many
brutal, violent memories, a place of death.
I took up journalism, and began working for the London Sunday 7.
Times. In 1986 the paper assigned me to South Africa, where the increased rapidly
destroyed; laid waste
8.
black townships were in flames on a daily basis. It was from my base an area of land where
9.
in Johannesburg that I ventured back to Mozambique for the first mines (bombs placed
time since my childhood. underground) are hidden

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