Rammopa’s book addresses girl child’s social challenges
Boitumelo Khutsafalo | Monday November 9, 2026 09:15
She saw that girls were facing several challenges of abuse, isolation, sexual immorality, poverty and jealousy amongst others. Sadly, all these issues were swept under the carpet simply because many people were afraid to become witnesses. This prompted Rammopa to pick up a pen and a piece of a paper, started writing about it, firstly as a venting diary before she developed it into a book, titled ‘Loeto la Mosetsana Le Dikhutswe Tse Dingwe’. The book explores some of the difficulties faced by young girls in Botswana. It delves into issues affecting young girls, including the dangers of sexual immorality, jealousy, and other social challenges that can shape their lives and influence their future. Through this new publication, Rammopa brings important social issues into the spotlight, encouraging readers to reflect on the realities confronting young girls in society.
The author explains that the book is a powerful tool to make conversations between children and parents easier with topics of sexual purity, sexual abuse, lust, greed easily communicated by using characters. “My journey as an author started long time ago. As a child growing up I have always loved reading and writing. I loved Setswana language so much because I understood it and I believed it was a bonus to improve my school report. Every day after school I made sure I went to the library to collect a newspaper so that I could read and interpret it to my late grandmother.
“As grew older I started becoming more observant about my environment and I noticed a big challenge on my environment. Girls were facing challenges of abuse, isolation, sexual immorality, poverty and jealousy but all these issues were swept under the carpet simply because most people were afraid to become witness,” Rammopa told Arts & Culture in an interview this week. She adds: “The book started as a venting diary where I took a note book and started writing, lamenting on such issues and over the years I started using more mature language.
I used the skill in Setswana to write all the social challenges affecting girls in story forms. “The aim of this book is to show each person that every individual is battling something secretly and young girls and women suffer the most. There are challenges they face and sacrifices they make that affect their destinies and feature.” Rammopa says through the book, she is trying to demonstrate that being a girl does not mean you have less value. “Defiled, molested, isolated, being looked down upon does not mean there is something wrong with you.” She also said all the topics in the book attempt to show social challenges that affect young girls from a young age and even when they become women.
The writer highlighted that one of the stories in the book, “Motho o jewa loleme” shows that young girls and women experience hardships in relationships as they might fall into the wrong hands. “We see a character of Ogone who trusted Tshwetso to be her partner. Tshwetso long asked Ogone out for almost five years and when she finally agreed to be in a relationship with him he breaks her heart by pursuing other girls. “Her heart gets broken, she becomes depressed and suicidal before she could meet a different man for another relationship. The past trauma and betrayal follows her into the new relationship and destiny is affected.” Rammopa says after reading the book, young girls and women will realise that there is always a way out of trouble and out of the dry season. She noted that the stories from the book will help them relate with the characters used and try to apply the same solutions on their own lives.
“It will help in issues of decision-making, developing confidence, remaining hopeful and reaching out for help.” Rammopa said one of the challenges she faced with the book was losing some pages where she had written some parts of the stories in depth. Another challenge she was confronted with was that writing and working on creativity takes time as one gets to sit and put the ideas into reality, also having to cross check if they really make sense.
Another thing she said was that sometimes she would have to pause other personal things aside in order to get done with the stories. The book is already up for sale at Botswana Book Centre in the Main Mall, Gaborone. The book is also sold directly from the author at P200 per copy.