A long time ago, in a different world (no internet, no mobile phones) my mother sponsored the education of a young boy in Africa. His name was Joseck. Really, of course, the money went to his school, not the individual, and benefitted all the children there. However, the letters that were sent from home went directly to Joseck, and he sent his own letters back.
They opened up a way of life to us in quiet Lincolnshire that we had hardly considered. We lived in a much less outward-looking world in those pre-internet days.
Much later, when my own children were small, we sponsored more young people. Once again the letters came and went.
There was something about those letters – they brought their writers to life so well. They often had small drawings in the corners: a squirrel, a bus, some goats on a roof, a face. Sometimes on the thin paper we could detect a faint red smudge of African dust. They often seemed to fizz, with a sort of exuberant joy. I used them when I wrote The Exiles at Home.
That was more than twenty-five years ago. Many things have changed and the home life of my characters was a different world. It was a time when children took themselves to school and back with no adult in charge. There was much less fuss, much less traffic on the roads, and consequently, much more freedom.
There was also much less understanding. Enormous gulfs between Joseck’s world and ours. In those days we learnt about other countries in school, with atlases and Geography lessons – there was very little on TV. Every now and then Blue Peter would whisk us away for a while, or something would be reported on the news, but real life, the ordinary everyday life of people in another country was beyond our knowledge. No one I knew had been further than France – there was no internet and no instant messaging. We wrote letters, and waited slow weeks for replies. No wonder they meant so much to us.
In this new publication of The Exiles at Home, I have been able to smooth out some attitudes that would jar with new readers today. But the story is just the same. Ruth, Naomi, Rachel and Phoebe work as hard as they can (not always in the most sensible ways) for something they believe worth doing – helping out a friend.
Hilary McKay
March 2019