There were many people at the funeral, maybe seventy or more. My father was not among them. As a blood brother I was allowed to look into the coffin before it was finally closed. Mavusi’s face was so familiar, but at the same time so strange, and very old. He looked like someone of sixty. He was so skinny that you could see every bone in his face and his closed eyes seemed sunken into his skull.

I tried to feel something towards him, but I couldn’t. It was as if he was gone long ago, already. This was not Mavusi anymore. This was just a coffin with a dead body. The soul of Mavusi was long gone to our ancestors… I felt so sad to realise that we wouldn’t ever be united in this life anymore.

***

Gogo greeted me much more kindly than I had expected. ‘Uxolo – sorry, Mbu. I know how much your brother always meant to you.’

‘Enkosi, Gogo – thank you,’ I responded, and took her hand. I hadn’t realised she had even noticed during those years that I was in her house.

As the proceedings of the day went on, I searched ever more urgently for Mrs Naki and her siblings, Ayanda and Andiswa, but none of them was among the guests.

‘Oh, the Naki family,’ Gogo said, when I finally asked. ‘All three of them left for Mthatha a long time ago…’

The news made me very despondent. I felt so lonely when all the others began to eat the rice, cabbage salad and grilled chicken served to the funeral guests that I couldn’t join in. Back in Masi I was always so hungry; here, I couldn’t eat a piece of anything.

Why had my father not come, although there were several relatives from his side at the funeral? Probably, he would also not have come if it was me who had died.

I tried to speak to some of my father’s relatives about him but they didn’t want to talk. Only one uncle befriended me: ‘I am your mother’s brother, and so your blood uncle,’ he said. ‘I am as poor as your parents, but I am not drinking. My name is Vukile…’

‘Uhlala phi, Malume – where do you stay, Uncle?’

‘In an informal settlement near Ottery, in iKapa,’ was his answer.

I had never heard of this settlement before. When I asked him for his cell number, he wrote it for me on a small piece of paper. I kept it safe for many years. It was good to know about him, even though I didn’t phone him. Maybe I would contact him one day…

The next morning we took a bus back to iKapa. Sitting in the rumbling bus for all those hours, watching the scenery pass, I realised how much I had missed Yamkela and Atie.

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