This episode Manchán speaks to Pauline South Africa. Pauline is from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and ‘grew up relatively poor, but happy. I remember my dad let us watch a python eat a dik-dik (small deer) and for seven days we returned to watch it as it lay there digesting. We only ate wild meat when we were growing up. My young brother started to hunt when he was four years old.’

She moved to South Africa and now has five children and nine grandchildren. They lived outside Johannesburg. ‘It was extremely dangerous. My husband was in twelve armed robberies, and we experienced four attempted high-jackings.’

She believes the Irish don’t understand how violent South Africa really is. ‘Horrible things happened to us there, especially to my daughter. It wasn’t easy at my age to make this transition to Ireland, it was the hardest things we ever did, but now, I think, it was the best.’

Home Stories was funded by Creative Ireland alongside the county councils of Laois and Westmeath.