ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Makhaya Maseko, the protagonist, who is a classic example of the on-the-road-again character, moves from space to space, from geography to geography until he finds a home in exile. He finds exile as a ground of ice on which he skates his individual figure. Also, the other characters in the text are migrants from different walks of life, and many of them are refugees from various places and spaces within the region of Southern Africa. They are mostly runaways from the tragedies of life, looking for a newer and better life in a trans-cultural community called Golema Mmidi. They are made to be loyal to the future, not to the past—so they are progressively focused on the possibilities of survival in Botswana, as a new site of dwelling. Therefore, exile, to them, is not a strange confinement, but a familiar room in a solidly fenced house, particularly for those who, in real life, never wish to return to their original homeland—owing to the assumption that exilic consciousness does not disappear with geography because the memory of it persists in the psychic thinking of exiles throughout their lift-times.
