I'm a recently retired high school teacher with over thirty five years experience of teaching English, twenty five of those in Botswana and ten in my home country, Zambia. When I left Lusaka in May 1991, after only two years in my new portfolio as a Curriculum Development Specialist, I accepted the exciting adventure, as many other mostly young Zambian educators in their prime did, of teaching in Botswana, the new El dorado of Africa. Within two years of my arrival, I got promoted to Head of English Department at another school where I worked from January 1993 to August 2000 when my contract was not renewed for 'low performance' despite evidence to the contrary. What followed were ten torturous years of surviving the loss of my job. Those ten years are what make up the theme of this book.