Sosh woman tells in new book of how she fell in love with a prison inmate
She met her prison partner over the phone when he had called looking for his sister at her workplace in Centurion.
Self-published Soshanguve author Tshidi Monkoe poured her heart out in a book titled Prison Love, in which she tells of how she fell in love with a prison inmate.
Monkoe said she wrote this book to squash the misconceptions society has about women who get into such relationships.
Monkoe fell in love with a man who was incarcerated only a few months after she left her ex-husband.
She met her prison partner over the phone when he had called looking for his sister at her workplace in Centurion.
“He picked up that I didn’t speak the language that most people speak in Pretoria. He became curious to know who I was and where I was from,” she said.
She told him that she was busy relocating from Vosloorus to Pretoria and then he offered to help her find a place to stay.
“Then he started phoning me daily directly on my landline. He was my breath of fresh air because every morning I would look forward to our five or 10 minutes of fresh air,” he said.
She said he was a “gentleman, intelligent, polite, and helpful considerate and humble”.
“He would ask how I slept or what I ate. He was very interested in me and how I was doing or how my daughter was doing. I didn’t know what he looked like or what he was doing for a living,” she said.
After eight weeks, I asked him when he was going to visit us at my place of work and then he told me that he was in prison.
“I said that if that’s the case, I’ll come and see you. I don’t know why I was so brave to say that because he was shocked – he thought I’d judge him,” he said.
Monkoe said there was no way she could judge him because he was still the same person she spoke to for eight weeks.
She said the man changed once he got out of prison because he had the freedom and time to do other things unlike when he was still in prison.
“He was spoiled for choice and he no longer needs the anti-depressant that he was getting while he was still in prison,” she said.
The book has enjoyed some major success since its release. It has been recommended by the education department as a book to be used in schools around Gauteng.
The book is available from the author on
Facebook & LinkedIn: Tshidi Monkoe; Instagram: tshidi_monkoe
Twitter: @CharismaticTM
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