If you think your problems are insurmountable, then read Popina Khamanda’s book: The smallest Ones

Reviewer: Giyani Baloi
Author: Popina Khamanda
Title: The smallest ones: The two sisters escape from DRC from rebels and their pursuit of freedom
Publisher: Penguin

This is a book that is multi-layered. It’s a book about greed, war, savagery, atrocity, human determination, tenacity, and perseverance in pursuit of freedom.The book reads life, a horror movie told in a fairy tale way. I could not put it down.

The story started at Su-Ubangi Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the rebel group army invaded a village, kidnapped the villagers, and took them to their camp where they could starve them to a point of resorting to eating insects and human flash for survival.They could ask their captives to take off their clothes and have sexual intercourse openly. They raped young girls, some as young as five years old. They could also kill some of the villagers who disobeyed the rules or attempted to escape.They could leave the deceased bodies lying all over to rot, and some hanging on trees as part of the tactics to destroy the spirit of their captives.

That’s where Popina and her sister yaZianna escaped. The tale of their journey after the escape and their long walk for freedom and education in South Africa is captivating and horrifying at the same time. Especially walking very long distances, barefooted, climbing mountains, crossing crocodile infested rivers without food and water. They could get bitten by mosquitos and get sick without medicine or money.

Some of the scenes are quite moving such that you may shade a tear. Another scene that touched me is where they needed transport from Kongolo City to Kinshasa without a bus fare. The bus driver said, he could have sex with Popina in exchange for transport, and Popina was only ten years old then. Her sister yaZianna offered herself rather to try and protect her baby sister. But the bus driver wanted the younger Popina instead.

yaZianna pampered and begged the bus driver and told him that she would do every trick in the book to give him the ‘best’ sex ever. But the bus driver was persistent on Popina until yaZianna relented and gave her baby sister. He rapped her. Just for them to get transport to Kinshasa, then Zambia, Zimbabwe until South Africa where they also got stuck at Park Station until their fellow Congolese man took them to a brothel. He gave them drugs and used them as sex slaves.

Popina escaped once again and left her sister YaZianna behind at the brothel. But the drugs in her body became too much. She eventually fell on some passages while walking where a nurse found her unconscious. That led her to the hospital, then an American missionary, a children’s home in Despatch Cape Town, then school, work, and ultimately university. If you think your problems are insurmountable, then read Popina Khamanda’s book. The smallest ones.