Although born in South Africa, Cicely’s formative years were spent in Kenya where her grandparents were settler-farmers, and in Uganda where her father worked at Makerere University pioneering the tranquilization of large animals. Her mother wrote two books on early mission history and, as a trained artist, taught her children to observe nature with care and reverence. A childhood amid the landscapes, peoples and animals of Africa gave Cicely a longing to celebrate them in words.
Her grandfather did anthropological research on the Kipsigis people, close cousins of the Maasai. Although he died when Cicely was young, she later discovered his books on East African tribes and gained a deeper understanding of the people she had grown up among.
The family left Uganda in the 1960’s and her father came to Wits University in Johannesburg. Cicely took a degree at Wits, married the Afrikaans author, As van Straten, and had three sons. As news of chaos and bloodshed in Uganda grew in the 1970’s, she realized she’d never be able to go back to her East African home and tried to capture for her children something of its beauty and variety. She wrote Fesito goes to Market and Kaninu’s Secret, now collated into The Great Snake of Kalungu.
A fantasy addict, she took to writing African fantasy and, using a Maasai ethos, wrote Tajewo and the Sacred Mountain. This proved popular, was translated into indigenous languages and was followed by Quest for the Sacred Stone. A 3rd in the series, written and looking for a publisher is The Lion King and the Eagle Prince, set in Ethiopia. These quest-adventure stories are interwoven with African folklore, beliefs and legends.
Cicely writes mostly for young adults. Her novel Flowers of the Thorn was set in a Kenya boarding school during the Mau Mau period. Owing to her experiences in Uganda, she was approached to write the story of Huberta, a lone hippo who traveled 1000 kms down the South African coast in the 1920’s and hit headlines across the world. The faction, Huberta’s Journey won a White Raven award in 1988.
Realizing that millions of children in South African townships have lost their story heritage, she did a Master’s Degree at Pretoria University: The Fairytale as Paradigm of Inner Transformation: a Comparative Study of European and Southern African Fairytales. This enabled her to find Southern African prototypes of classic European fairytales and to recommend indigenous tales to teachers which were age-appropriate and relevant to local children. She has presented papers such as South African Children need South African Fairytales. (Rand Daily Mail Seminar, 1988): Can Fairytales help? (International Conference on Children’s Literature: Other Worlds, Other Lives. UNISA, 1995) and The Magic Space (Seminar at UNISA, 1996).
Cicely is currently completing The Wings of Eredu, a long pan-African fantasy, inspired by the landscapes, myths and folklore of Africa combining the spiritual quest of the initiate’s journey and its rites of passage with a celebration of our endangered creation. Her dream is to see a lasting renewal of African fantasy for the children of Africa that can also be shared with the children of the world.
