So I celebrated my 21st birthday on the 1st of December, for the first time. I was the 5th of eight children, four boys and four girls. - Nora Schimming-Chase

As has been and still is the practice in our black communities, we were not the only ones. My cousins, the sons of my maternal aunts, Mamma Goka and Mamma Grete, as well as the son of my uncle Rudolf, my aunt Huldà Kamboi Ngatjikare and a distant cousin Ismael Tjombe formed part of the nuclear family. Apart from us, my parents brought two young boys, Filemon and Josef to help in the house.

My wonderful mother, Charlotte Schimming, my role model, who taught her daughters to always recognize their own work never to feel inferior to anybody be they white or male.

I grew up in this large family with the good and the bad and yet looking back seventy plus years, the good memories are clear in my mind whereas the bad ones seem to have disappeared into oblivion.