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Spinach Soup for the Walls

Spinach Soups for the Walls, Finding my spirit in Africa

Lynne Harkes

Here is a message of hope for anyone in despair. When we see our troubles as opportunities for growth, we can turn our lives around.

Lynne Harkes has lived in many wonderful and colourful places. Her husband’s work has found them moving from Nigeria to South America, from the Sultanate of Oman to the jungle of Gabon in West Africa. It was a life of privilege and of expanded personal horizons, and Lynne describes graphically both the warm hospitality and resilience of the native peoples, and the magnificence of the landscape and animal world.

But equally, the intensity of such a nomadic existence magnifies one’s personal challenges, and Lynne found herself retreating into unhappiness and isolation. This beautifully written book is the story of how she fought to rediscover her own spirituality and find a new way of thinking. In the end, she would say, it was simple: we must learn to see the beauty of nature and of our own everyday world, to “recognise the remarkable in the ordinary”.