The Botswanan childhood of Monei Ntuka is shaped by stories from her mother, father, and grandmother as well as from the colonizers and the Christian church in this novel about the tensions between modernization and tradition in postcolonial Africa.
Unity Dow is the first woman in Botswana to be appointed High Court judge. Dow has a long record as a human rights attorney, co-founding the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project and is a member of International Women's Rights Watch an advocacy organisation. In 1995 Dow challenged the government over the 1982 Citizenship Act, under which Botswana women married to foreigners could not pass on their nationality to their children, though Botswana men married to foreigners could. This led to passage of a legislation that gave women the right to pass on their nationality to their children.