In a dark, cold cave, a lonely young woman gives birth to her first child. The world outside waits to share the joy of her first born child who has to be a boy. But not just yet. She can’t show off her baby boy for at least three months after this dirty process, this disgusting process of giving birth. After three days of hard, long excruciating labour, her baby is finally born. She looks over at her newborn with tears of joy, only to realise her baby is a girl. She is overwhelmed, frightened, anxious, confused, lost at the thought of disgrace and shame for giving birth to a female first-born child. The girl grows up mostly with her grandmother who is fearless of what society believes. As elegant and intelligent as she was, her grandmother taught her the skills of hunting, gardening and laws and customs about death and dying, marriages and social relations. All basic needs were available through hard work. Hard work was everything. Sweet potatoes for every meal, grass-skirts for clothes, bush hut for shelter, fresh creek water from miles away, lots of wood for fuel, bush herbs for healing. There were no schools, no roads, no airstrips, no health clinics. But one thing her grandmother instilled in her changed the perceptions of the entire village to this day: "Go to school when you can and work very hard because you will see a bright light beyond this sacred mountain".
