FROM SHAMROCK TO SPRINGBOK

Christine was born into a dysfunctional Protestant family in 1951 in Bangor, Northern Ireland. At the height of the 'Troubles' in 1969, after completing her basic education, she worked for a year in bomb-riddled Belfast before deciding to emigrate to South Africa, a country tyrannised by the Apartheid government and simmering with racial tension. Christine arrived in South Africa as a naive nineteen-year-old, saddened by having to leave Ireland and blissfully unaware that she was entering a country not without its own 'Troubles'. This is the extraordinary story of an ordinary person who lived through the political storms of two countries, whose dysfunctional family left her with emotional demons to conquer, who was a single mother to her daughter, and who faced such unexpected situations that one only usually reads about them in books. Christine still lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is in regular touch with her family in Northern Ireland. She now has a granddaughter. She is an avid gardener and grows many of her own vegetables. She loves yoga, a practice she has kept up for many years and she feels close to.