Lisa Lee reflects on her childhood years spent in South Africa.
Photo: Lisa Lee with a group of her classmates in 1998 at St. Mary's DSG, a women's boarding school in Pretoria, South Africa.
“This is how you use a Taser,” my father said calmly, as he held the black flashlight-like device and made the electric shocks come alive in front of my brother and I. “Here, both of you try it. It’ll be underneath my pillow if we need to use it.”
It was the eve before something big was about to happen. In 1994, I was ten years old. Brian, my older brother, twelve. Typically, bedtime meant retreating to our own separate bedrooms, but that night, my reserved immigrant father requested that my brother and I sleep upstairs in the master suite with him. All my father divulged was that if a man was not elected the president of South Africa, then a riot would most likely breakout. Even though we’re Chinese and considered to be “coloreds” in most countries, we needed to be prepared because no one would be safe.
