Eighty-year-old women are supposed to stay at home. The neatly dressed grandmother of our collective imagination derives her pleasure from indoor pursuits – cooking, reading, knitting. One thing octogenarian women aren’t supposed to do is embark on a solo five-month journey through Africa,
driving from Cape Town to Cairo in a battered Toyota Conquest.
Julia Albu never set out to be exceptional. Her daily routine slotted neatly into what the world expects from an older woman living in a leafy village near Cape Town. Every morning she would listen to the radio, and one day the discussion turned to then-President Jacob Zuma and his extravagant taste in cars.
“I was incensed,” Albu said. “I phoned in immediately to say I was going to be 80, and my
car, Tracy, was a 20-year-old Toyota and she ran beautifully. We could happily drive to London together, so why Zuma needed all these new cars was beyond me.”
Buoyed by the enthusiastic response she received, Albu pledged on air to drive to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen – and before long, the seeds of what had begun as a joke started germinating.
“My partner had recently died, you see,” Albu said. “It was an exhausting process, and after all
that I thought, ‘My goodness, there really isn’t much of life left’. I feel like I’m 36 from the shoulders up and 146 from the shoulders down, and I wanted the younger me to win for once.”
I feel like I’m 36 from the shoulders up and 146 from the shoulders down, and I wanted the younger me to win for once...
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