Colored Hill

Comprising five poems and interspersed with storytelling, 'French Letters' converts South Africa's new challenger from that of apartheid to AIDS.

The first invasion on indigenous Southern Africans came slowly - in the form of colonization. Of course, after months-long journeys and months-long untold frustrations at sea, European seafarers and navigators wanted sex with the Natives when they docked on dry land...

Within just a meager passage of time little Colored children started to dot the landscape. But, by the time these new children of the soil realized that freedom was not their birthright, it was almost too late. That's when the second invasion occurred, in the shape of apartheid. The torture and agony of that turbulent history and the almost lethargic pace of attaining democracy remains quite fresh, but salvation eventually arrived, albeit slowly.

Freedom at last! So free did South Africans become that invasion number three occurred without provocation: AIDS. Though more than two decades old, this most recent invasion is reducing the vibrant South African personality by alarming and dramatic proportions.