The Chronicle
Stanford Chiwanga, Saturday Chronicle News Editor
LORREN KHUMALO, a professional nanny from Zimbabwe has been making headlines worldwide for making Prince Harry and Meghan Markle temporarily abandon royal parenting tricks for the “Zimbabwe style” of wrapping babies in a mud cloth.
Pictures of Lorren, a neonatal nurse from Richmond Surrey, piggybacking Prince Archie have gone viral, turning the Zimbabwean into an internet sensation.
Lorren has become famous after she was featured in the royal couple’s new Netflix show. The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan — part of the Sussexes’ multi-million-dollar deal with Netflix — were streamed last week, with the final three hour-long episodes streaming from Thursday.
Lorren admits that she got a speeding ticket for rushing over to Frogmore CottageThe Sussexes’ six-part show — which forms part of their multimillion-pound deal with Netflix — has become the streaming giant’s most-watched documentary in a premiere week, debuting with 81,55 million hours viewed.
Lorren, who not only took care of Prince Archie but also assisted the besieged couple to keep their heads above water at a time when Meghan was struggling with mental health issues, revealed that she got a speeding ticket on the way to Frogmore Cottage after getting the call to work for the couple.
The nervous nanny said meeting Prince Harry, “who was walking around” barefoot outside Frogmore Cottage, his marital home, put her at ease.
“When I arrived at Frogmore cottage, I see this guy he’s tall, he’s ginger and walking barefoot and I have got these new shoes from Clarks and suddenly whatever I thought or felt the formality just sort of slid and I felt so at ease,” said 46-year-old.
The professional nanny currently works as a neonatal intensive care (NICU) and paediatric nurse at a private maternity hospital the Portland, in Westminster. The Portland hospital is where royal women have given birth for generations and the palace where both Prince Harry and his son Archie were born.
Before working at the private hospital, she was a Senior Nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS foundation trust. In 2011, she switched to The Portland hospital as a paediatric nurse. Again in 2015, Khumalo worked as a Senior Nurse in the Hospice of St John’s Hospital.
After Archie’s birth, Meghan’s mother Doria was at Frogmore Cottage for a month and was present when her daughter brought Archie home from the hospital.
Harry and MeghanThe Duchess said: “My mum stayed for a month solid, and it was great to have her there. But we were in a position where we didn’t have someone to help us with Archie.”
Lorren retold the day she was asked to work for the couple, saying: “I had this phone call and they were like ‘Prince Harry and Meghan want to see you, they want to talk to you about being a nanny to Archie’. I said, ‘Hang on, I need to sit down’. I remember just driving so fast, I got a ticket actually, yes, I did.”
Lorren described how the couple were “really hands-on parents” and they would come in to see baby Archie in the morning, and feed him before the nanny would take over from them and take the newborn out for a stroll.
Pictures of Archie wrapped in a traditional African mudcloth were revealed, a nod to Meghan and Harry’s link to Zimbabwe via Lorren — the pair spent time in Botswana doing charity work before they both embarked on charity missions in Africa. The cotton mudcloth has cultural significance in Africa, and is used as ritual protection and a symbol of status.
Lorren asked the couple if she could wrap Archie in a mudcloth, and Meghan enthusiastically agreed.
Lorren Khumalo, who is Meghan and Harry’s former nanny, asked the couple is she could wrap Archie in a mud cloth like they do in Zimbabwe, the Duchess enthusiastically agreedThe Duchess said: “She said is it OK if I tie him on my back with a mud cloth? Like we do in Zimbabwe? I said, Yes, let’s do that.”
A picture was then shown of Archie wrapped in a yellow and brown cloth nestled against Lorren’s back, the photo was taken in the kitchen at Frogmore Cottage, where a cream Aga wood burner can be seen in the background.
Prince Harry smiled as he described the moment, saying Archie had his arms wrapped around Lorren, fast asleep and Meghan appeared delighted, laughing along with her husband.
Harry widens his arms to show how Archie was hugging Lorren while in his yellow and brown mudclothShe said of nanny Lorren: “She didn’t just take care of Archie she took care of us; she definitely took care of me.”
The pair spoke about their first royal engagement after the birth of their first child, where they took Archie with them on a tour to South Africa when he was just four months old.
Lorren described the tour as “full on” and said: “It was a lot of pressure; the tour was full on. I thought, ‘how are you doing this? And still have a smile on your face, because she did smile.”
The South Africa tour marked the moment Meghan first made a public comment about her own mental health, she admitted things had been “a struggle”.
The Saturday Chronicle extracted information for this article from The Daily Mail and MEAWW.COM
Article Source: The Chronicle