Can You Hear The Teacups Spill? (eBook)

'Can You Hear the Teacups Spill?' is Georgia McGovern's first book and tells the story of her grandfather, Frank McGovern, and his journey from rural west Ireland to southern Africa. Adventures with wild animals, incredible characters, revolutionaries, and spies are revealed in the style of an Anna Deavere Smith Oral History.

Georgia McGovern is a student at Claremont-McKenna College in southern California and this work was made possible through the award of an Appel Fellowship. Georgia, a student athlete, is a double major in Literature and Film Studies as well as excelling on the volleyball court.

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This Oral History describes the adventures of a young man who moves from the west of Ireland to colonial Southern Africa. During his times a police officer in the north-west of Northern Rhodesia he finds himself in the middle of events with international consequences. Across the nearby border there is the largest uranium mine in the world and this region has just declared independence from the Belgian colonial power. His reporting alerts MI6 and the CIA to the presence of a 'ghost army' of mercenaries training across the border in Portuguese controlled territory and later he uncovers plans to create a white supremacist state crossing borders from Rhodesia, the Congo, Zambia and Portuguese South-West Africa. He earns the nickname of 'Rhino' having protected a local village from a Rhino and his run-ins with poachers, witch doctors, and freedom fighters are all heard in his own words. Hear about what it was like to be an Irishman working for the British Colonial power. Following independence he helped the first President, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, as Zambia transitioned from colonial rule in matters of security. Lusaka was a hotbed of political intrigue at the time. The ANC were based in the Zambian Capital and the white-controlled governments in Rhodesia and South Africa were determined to cause trouble for the fledgling nation. The KGB were trying to generate a significant footprint in Southern Africa and the Chinese were building a railway in the Eastern part of the country.