Weeding the Flowerbeds

Weeding the Flowerbeds is Sarah Mkhonza’s memoir of the years she spent in the early 1970’s at a private boarding school located on a Christian mission in Eswatini (known as Swaziland until 2018). Bulelo, as she is known in the book, and her two friends, Makhosi and Sisile, persevere in academics but chafe under the rules set by the hierarchical administration at Manzini Nazarene High School. They also struggle to determine the role that Christianity—which is imposed on them through daily worship services—will play in their lives on their own terms.