Contact Me  
 
P.O.BOX 81135 • GABORONE • BOTSWANA, AFRICA
• FAX: 1(267) 3900939 / (267) 72113706/ (267) 71759029
EMAIL: Jillianmary1975@yahoo.com


Over the last 27 years growing up through the apartheid era, learning to find peace in pain, to walk out my dreams not allowing others to block my path; my life can simply be summed up in Emily Dickinson’s words, “I dwell in possibility.”
Like many South African writers I too found comfort in writing from my own experiences. Thus completing a degree in Mass Communications at Francis Marion University in America suited me as tomato chutney and boerewors compliments South Africa. I grew up in Lenasia dreaming to be a professional tennis player or a newspaper journalist like Robert Redford in “Watergate.” Even though these were impossible dreams my parents never discouraged them, instead instilled a deeper sense of hope in me.
In my senior year of high school I voted for the first time and was also blessed with a tennis scholarship to the above-mentioned university. I was given the key to study almost anything from medicine to art education. After a year of pre-med I changed my major to Communications and it was then that my love for writing unfolded. I found my writing talents had more life in non-fiction pieces, while it took unlikely far-fetched turns in fiction. So when in my junior year I was accepted for an internship with the local newspaper, I jumped at the opportunity to study this style in a hands- on setting.
After graduation and a year of postgraduate studies in International Business, I transferred to a missionary university, the University of the Nations (YWAM) in Hawaii where I completed a course in Discipleship Training. I then went on to intern with the university co-leading a team to Thailand. It was during this time, I found a new love for life. I realised how over the years I did not tap into who I really wanted to be but instead worked towards what was expected of me. During the Discipleship Training course, the field assignment was in Nigeria and Ghana; there in the mist of poverty, corruption and youth ministry I found myself reconnecting with my Africa. For so many years Africa was the place that gave me nothing but a cracked spirit and now it was my home, that in 2002 when I finally returned to South Africa after a four-year absence, I was happy.
It is now more then ever that I see the need for youth ministry and mentoring, for women of Africa to arise and be heard, to give encouragement to others whether in conversation or in literature. As an Indian, female, South African I know that for woman in Africa we still have a long way to walk before we find true recognition in the work-place, in the society, or in the church. But if we follow the hearts of the great woman who have gone before us, we will see the beginnings of hope. Hope is a powerful tool, which can be transcended through who we are as people- humble proud Africans.


But like I said "the need is great…but we need to walk in possibility”


Cheers bye,

Jillian M Sigamoney

{The picture is my DTS Class, April 2001}