Fiela's Child Summary
SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1-7 FIELA'S CHILD BY DALENE MATTHEE
1.Elias and Barta Van Rooyen live in the Knysna forest with their four children., Willem, Kristoffel, Lukas and Nina. Elias cuts beams to earn money.
2.One day, their youngest son Lukas goes missing. They search for him for a long time, but in vain. Seven months later, they find parts of a skeleton possibly belonging to a small child.
3.Nine years into the future, we are introduced to Benjamin. He is the ‘hand-child’ of Fiela and Selling Komoetie. However, he never felt that he was different from Fiela’s four other children and was treated with love and respect by his adoptive parents.
4.Fiela and Selling live in Wolwekraal with their five children (Kittie, Dawid, Emma, Tollie and Benjamin). They are a colored family.
5.They make their living by selling ostrich feathers, goat milk, and animal skins, and by tapping aloe and raising chickens.
6.Fiela purchases an ostrich hen for her male ostrich, Kicker. She wants them to mate so she can have more ostrich feathers from their offspring to sell.
7.Two men from the government come over to Fiela’s home to take a census about the number of people in the area.
8.They discover Benjamin and realize that he is a white child in a colored home, something that was considered highly inappropriate in the racially segregated 19th century South Africa.
9.Benjamin was actually 3 years old when Fiela found him crying on her doorstep in the middle of the night. She took him in and cared for him as though he was her own child. Being very young, Benjamin did not remember anything about his life before Wolwekraal and considered Fiela and Selling to be his parents and their children his siblings.
10.The men believe that Benjamin could possibly be Lukas, the long lost son of Elias and Barta Van Rooyen. They demand that he be placed before the magistrate and his (possibly) real parents to know for certain.
11.This leaves Fiela very fearful and miserable, as she does
1.Elias and Barta Van Rooyen live in the Knysna forest with their four children., Willem, Kristoffel, Lukas and Nina. Elias cuts beams to earn money.
2.One day, their youngest son Lukas goes missing. They search for him for a long time, but in vain. Seven months later, they find parts of a skeleton possibly belonging to a small child.
3.Nine years into the future, we are introduced to Benjamin. He is the ‘hand-child’ of Fiela and Selling Komoetie. However, he never felt that he was different from Fiela’s four other children and was treated with love and respect by his adoptive parents.
4.Fiela and Selling live in Wolwekraal with their five children (Kittie, Dawid, Emma, Tollie and Benjamin). They are a colored family.
5.They make their living by selling ostrich feathers, goat milk, and animal skins, and by tapping aloe and raising chickens.
6.Fiela purchases an ostrich hen for her male ostrich, Kicker. She wants them to mate so she can have more ostrich feathers from their offspring to sell.
7.Two men from the government come over to Fiela’s home to take a census about the number of people in the area.
8.They discover Benjamin and realize that he is a white child in a colored home, something that was considered highly inappropriate in the racially segregated 19th century South Africa.
9.Benjamin was actually 3 years old when Fiela found him crying on her doorstep in the middle of the night. She took him in and cared for him as though he was her own child. Being very young, Benjamin did not remember anything about his life before Wolwekraal and considered Fiela and Selling to be his parents and their children his siblings.
10.The men believe that Benjamin could possibly be Lukas, the long lost son of Elias and Barta Van Rooyen. They demand that he be placed before the magistrate and his (possibly) real parents to know for certain.
11.This leaves Fiela very fearful and miserable, as she does