We Need New Names

'Good, good, now say cheese, say cheese, cheese, cheeeeese'. Whenever foreigners visit the shantytown of Paradise they always ask Darling and her friends Stina, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Bastard to smile - and sometimes even to dance - for the camera. Here are some of the things Darling and her friends have to smile about: playing country-game and Find Bin Laden, stealing guavas, gifts from NGOs, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices, the smell of Lobels bread. And some of the things they don't: living in a shanty, how to get rid of the baby in Chipo's stomach, the bulldozers that flattened their old lives and could come again, the Sickness, losing their fathers/brothers/uncles to the mines and other countries. They dream of the paradises - America, Dubai, Europe - of Angelina Jolie, Oprah, Obama. But, as Darling finds out, these promised lands bring their own problems for children, parents and grandparents looking for a new place to call home.

Some shelf wear and fading.