The book
Thoughts About Vanessa is a memoir about a connection formed during the YALI Cohort 23 programme in Pretoria, South Africa — the weeks it lasted, the places it touched, and what it left behind.
It is nonfiction, about real people. Vanessa has read the manuscript and approved its publication.
The book is being published here serially, one chapter a week. The final chapters will not be published on this site: the ending arrives by email first, and in the complete book. If you want to read it the way it was meant to be read — in order, to the end — subscribe.
A note from the author
This is a true story. It happened over twenty-one days in 2024, during a leadership fellowship in South Africa, and in the months and years of conversation that followed. The events are real, the messages are real, and the two pieces of writing reproduced later in these pages are Vanessa’s own, shared and included with her permission.
I have told it as honestly as I can, which means I have left in the schemes, the miscalculations, and the moments I would rather forget. Memory is imperfect, and where I could not recall something exactly, I have said so rather than invent it. Some names belong to people who were simply there, and I have tried to treat them kindly. “Vanessa” is the name at the centre of all of it, and whether that turns out to be her real name or a small act of protection, I will leave to her.
It is a short book about a short time. But the three weeks felt like a lifetime, and lifetimes, I have learned, fill more pages than you expect.
The author
Godwill Zulu is a writer, statistician, and health data scientist from Zimbabwe, now studying in Ireland. He was a member of YALI Cohort 23 in Pretoria, where this book begins.
Say hello
The best way to follow the book is the email list — replies go straight to the author.