adminA ZIMBABWEAN nurse is the heroine who saved the son of Prince Harry, Archie, when he narrowly escaped a fire in his bedroom during the Sussexes’ tour of South Africa.
Archie is SEVENTH in the line of succession to the British throne.
His mother, Meghan Markel, yesterday spoke of her frustration that she immediately had to do another official engagement.
The Duchess of Sussex has been talking about how her son’s Zimbabwean nanny saved him from being involved in a nursery fire on a trip to South Africa in 2019.
Markle, speaking during an interview on her new podcast Archetypes with Serena Williams about the pressures of being a mother, describes how she was expected to carry on performing in public after learning about the accident.
She says that she had just arrived in South Africa and had to go straight to an engagement while her son, Archie, was being looked after by his “amazing nanny, Lauren” (she does not mention her surname) – who she says is from Zimbabwe.
Lauren was supposed to put him down for a nap but just before she tied him on her back and left the nursery to get a snack.
The Duchess implied that she had to maintain the appearance of everything being fine and get on with the job, when all she wanted to do was be with Archie.
But Meghan spoke of the stress the ordeal had on her as a new mother, telling the podcast: ‘In that amount of time that [the nanny] went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire. There was no smoke detector.
“Someone happened to just smell smoke down the hallway, went in, fire extinguished. He was supposed to be sleeping in there.”
The former Suits star told how they had dropped their young son at the housing unit they were staying in for a sleep straight after arriving on their official tour, with Meghan and Harry leaving to carry out a visit to the Nyanga township, where the Duchess delivered a speech.
The 41-year-old stressed the need for more “understanding of the human moments behind the scenes.”
“There was this moment where I’m standing on a tree stump and I’m giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say there’s been a fire at the residence.
“What?
“There’s been a fire in the baby’s room.
“As a mother, you go, ‘Oh, my God, what?’ Everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken. And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement.
“I said, ‘this doesn’t make any sense. Can you just tell people what happened?’ And I think the focus ends up being on how it looks instead of how it feels.
“And part of the humanising and the breaking through of these labels and these archetypes and these boxes that we’re put into is having some understanding on the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have any awareness of and to give each other a break. Because we did – we had to leave our baby.”
Later the same day, the couple had visited Cape Town’s historic District Six neighbourhood, met residents in its Homecoming Centre and heard from people who were forcibly removed to a township during the Apartheid era, with the Sussexes also carrying out an impromptu walkabout.
The terrifying incident was unearthed in the first episode of Meghan’s Archetypes podcast, available on Spotify.
Meghan and Harry’s African tour took place in the autumn of 2019, just months before they quit as senior working royals.
During the trip, the US born former Suits star filmed an interview with ITV in which she told of her struggles with royal life, and how she had tried to cope with the pressures by putting on a ‘‘stiff upper lip’’.
In the podcast, which discussed the double standards women face when they are labelled ‘ambitious’, Meghan tells her close friend and tennis superstar Serena Williams: “I don’t remember ever personally feeling the negative connotation behind the word ambitious until I started dating my now husband.”
Williams reveals Harry helped her with her decision to retire from tennis long before it was announced, spending around an hour discussing the issue with her.
Meghan, who stepped away from the monarchy with the Queen’s grandson for a new life in California, says to Williams: “I think, you know, I think both of us, or the three of us, really know that sometimes the right decision isn’t the easiest decision.” – H-Metro Reporter/Daily Mail/BBC.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter