I attending a primary school in the area before leaving for Johannesburg to stay with an aunt who at the time did not have any children and therefore needed a little one in the house to send now and then to the shop, to go and buy bread and milk and that sort of thing.

I went to a primary school in Soweto where Zulu was the first language. It was pretty tough as my home language had been Xhosa. Then in the late 1980’s due to riots and clashes between different political parties my aunt felt it was not safe any to stay in Soweto any longer, so we moved to Hillbrow in downtown Johannesburg. We stayed there for a year or so and I was now attending the Open School, taking English as my first language.

We stayed in Hillbrow for approximately a year and a half before moving to a site she had bought in Midrand, between Johannesburg and Pretoria. We stayed there for a year before I decided I wanted to move to the seaside city of Cape Town, to be with my half brother and another aunt who had just returned from exile in the USA.

I now attended an English medium school in Milnerton area on the “West Coast”. We were very few black kids, probably no more than five in my class, but it was fun. I had friends who wanted to visit me in the Cape Flats, but I guess their parents would not let them and I could not visit them either as I had a long distance to cover. I had a monthly train ticket that I could not waste.

Then, after two years or so, me and my brother left for boarding school in Kokstad for two years and then eventually reunited with our father again when he was transferred to East London. He wanted us to come and live with him. I graduated from school in East London and then enrolled at East London College for a Tourism Diploma, inspired by my Aunt in Cape Town.

She was the first black female to start a tour operating business in Cape Town. During my holidays I would visit her and acquire practical skill and exposure into the travel industry. When I completed my Tourism Diploma I moved back to the Cape to be with her and assist her whilst I looked for employment. At first I could not find a regular job. I got involved with Tsoga Environmental Resource Centre in Langa, working on voluntarily basis doing site guiding.

I fell in love with tour guiding really and decided to go back to school and complete a tour guiding course, and the rest as they say is history.

One might also notice that I have not spoken about my mother. That’s because I was brought up on my father’s side of the family. My mother was working as a domestic worker at my father’s home in the Eastern Cape and later moved to Johannesburg. I have vivid memories of her as she came to visit whilst I was still young and later she ended her visits. I am currently trying to re-establish contact with her.

I left the Eastern Cape for Cape Town in 2000. After a variety of jobs, I eventually worked as a site guide on Robben Island. It was here that I realised that I loved working with people and sharing the story of my country with foreign visitors.

Thereafter I studied to become a tour guide. Since then I have worked for a variety of tour operators, including Footsteps to Freedom as a city guide and on Table Mountain National Park’s Hoerikwaggo Trail.

Starting Camissa together with Khonaye and Garth has been the realisation of a lifelong goal... to be an owner my own business. To be in control of my own destiny.