The Antbear Cabin

Author: Elana Bregin
Publisher: Wobbling Earth
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
In my view, there can be no hard a role on earth than that of a refugee, twice over. One, for having to leave the embattled place of your birth and two, for being unwelcome in your place of refuge. The frying pan, the fire. So it is for young Emmanuel who, with his mother, makes a desperate escape from the DRC only to arrive in the hostile streets of Durban. It’s not an uncommon story, except 

that Emmanuel arrives in South Africa alone.  A child.
This lone young refugee is the protagonist of The Antbear Cabin, the other is Winter, his elderly white-woman ‘rescuer’. Both are outsiders, but what they also have in common is loss. Emmanuel’s loss is not just that of his country but of his whole family, principally his now missing mother.  Although it is not expanded on, Winter’s loss is her son, Taylor. He makes an appearance only through his painting set that Winter bequeaths to Emmanuel. The young man is initially reluctant to be this eccentric woman’s ‘rescue project’ – but things change as the two find common ground, quite literally through nature, and eventually, through shared stories.
Fittingly, this self-published book is dedicated to ‘all the many displaced people of Congo and other conflict zones, in their search for home and wholeness’. But there is an unmistakeably personal undertone to the story. On her website, Elana declares “Most of my writing is based on my own experiential knowledge of what I write. I’ve hunkered down at the Bushmen fires in the Kalahari Desert (Kalahari RainSong); seen firsthand the wild beauty of Congo lakes and forests (The Antbear Cabin)” so you know that she has witnessed, and felt, a large part of what she is talking about, and that she is moved to pass it on. I know now, for instance that amongst other things, the antbear is a good mother – a small but significant detail.
Years ago, around 2004, I had the opportunity to read Kalahari RainSong, the book that Elana co-wrote with Belinda Kruiper wife of the late poet and artist Vetkat Regopstaan Boesman Kruiper. In the author’s note she talks about her ‘own feelings of being different, an outsider’. So to read The Antbear Cabin, is not just to learn some of the cripplingly hard lessons that a refugee suffers on the streets of South Africa, but also some of the writers worldview, wisdom and knowledge.