Windhoek
Namibian author Elsie Shinedima launches her first book ‘What You Seek is Within You’ today at the National Youth Council.
The book, which has young people as its target market, focuses on topics such as self-worth, peer pressure and realising your own potential, to mention just a few. The book traces the life journey of a teenage girl, who is the main character in the book, raised by a single guardian (her grandmother), who taught her well in terms of standards, morals and self-respect.
She was expected to uphold these values and display it in her life as a young person. However, that was not the case, as she loses her stride. She fails to do as expected of her and uses the fact that she comes from a broken home and has no sense of belonging (she didn’t know who her parents were) trigger her miserable mistakes.
Peer pressure, using drugs and selling herself kicked in the day her nightmare friendship with Credit Senzo from the block starts.
Credit is a goddess, as she graces the whole society with her pulchritudinous self (a person of breathtaking, heartbreaking beauty). All her peers, including Patience admire her very much and anybody who shares a word with Credit is considered lucky.
As a way of trying to fit in Patience becomes friends with Credit, who is very liberal in her ways and passes on her bad influence. Credit has relationships with a married man, (Uncle Bae) and is not shy of sugar daddies.
This girl can hit the jack board with the money she gets from them and can’t care less about her future, let alone school.
Without giving away the ending, it should suffice to say the book contains much humor and waves of imagery and has to be read to find out about the future of Credit and Patience, as well as other characters.
The book is a fountain of inspiration and urges young people to drink in as much as they can from this fountain of widsom.
‘What you seek is within you’ is designed to help others find their own inner inspiration and emphasises that one needs to be strong when the inevitable curveballs come our way. The book is available for N$120.