Letwina Fushai has lived in luxury in an unstable African country, and she has been among the working poor in one of the richest countries in the world.

She went from a well-paid job as a research economist in Zimbabwe to mopping floors at a 7-11 convenience store in the U.S., and now she’s ready to make her next transition — to published author — with a little help from crowdfunding, according to a report in TheSkanner.

Together with her daughter, Chido Dhliwayo, and local Portland publisher Inkwater Press, Fushai is launching a kickstarter campaign to publish “Bhindy: Her African Dream.” The book is inspired by Fushai’s life, and tells her story through the tradition of African folklore.

Fushai worked in Zimbabwe for the U.N. and United Agency for International Development. Her work involved analyzing the informal, untaxed economy. She trained entrepreneurs working “under the table” to help them become more mainstream — the poorest of the poor, she said — at a time when Zimbabwe’s inflation rate was growing by billions of percent.

She had maids and gardeners at her home in Zimbabwe and managed 30-to-40 people in her office.

Fushai also experienced the poverty of the American immigrant experience, leaving Zimbabwe because she feared the dangerous political climate, TheSkanner reports.

Arriving in the U.S., she found herself a pauper, she said. “You have to do everything yourself.”

She found work as a care giver for elderly patients. In Zimbabwe, the elderly stay with their families, adding to Fushai’s culture shock.

Being welcomed into people’s homes during the intimate time of aging and dying was a life-changing experience, Fushai said. “It humbled me and then I thought of a more purposeful way of living — giving back to the society, when I had always enjoyed these luxuries.”

In the book, Fushai ties these two worlds together; according to TheSkanner.

TheCrowdfundingCentre describes Fushai as “a bubbly, sharp-tongued Zimbabwean woman currently based in Portland,” and the book as “an unfiltered, no-holds-barred conversation of the African and American cross-cultural experiences through the eyes of Bhindy, a well-educated African mother of two who relocates to America at the age of 50.”

Check out Fushai’s Kickstarter video here.