After she left, I never recovered. I kept returning to the bottle and I could not stop. Lifting my arm with a bottle in hand became a daily norm for me, and I drank like my life depended on it. On some days, I would wake up in the middle of a street with a bottle in my hand and continue drinking.

At that point, I could not afford the apartment I was renting and I had to downgrade. I was working as a garden boy for some rich white man. I had gone from working in one of South Africa’s biggest companies, to picking dog faeces in someone else’s lawn. I had reached the lowest point in my life.

Sometimes, while I was in a public transport on my way home, I saw people who looked like her. I missed her, and I missed her smile, her eyes, and her whole character. It’s crazy how one realises they loved someone once they have left. I heard that she got married to some rich guy, and I bet he treated her better than I did. He probably called her every hour of the day, and told her she was beautiful and that he loved her, things I failed to do.

Every day was a new day for me to get drunk, and I would go to mamu’Yandichaza to drink until I had forgotten that I was alone; until I had forgotten that I had messed up the only thing that I had cared about. The bottle was where I found my comfort, and it was the only thing I wanted to comfort me. I had stopped sending money home, and, ultimately, I stopped taking their calls too. My life had reached a stand still. I lived alone, never said much, and I just drank until I was unable to walk. Some days, I would even urinate in my pants, then I would wake up the next day, change my underwear and wear a different trouser and go to work.

Every time my boss complained about the smell, I would blame the dog. I did not care about my personal hygiene, and the only time I was genuinely happy was when I was at mamu’Yandichaza, drinking my life away.

When I was at mamu’Yandichaza, I always had conversations with Joe, who was one of the regulars there. He would tell me about his cheating wife, who had slept with every guy in our township. The latest one that she had slept with was a well-known HIV patient. Joe was worried that he had also contracted HIV from his wife, and that was the reason why he came to the shebeen every day. He went there in order to avoid talking to his wife, but since she was the only one who was bringing money in the house, he could not just leave. Where would he get the money to drink the HIV away?

I sympathized with Joe, but where did he think the money was coming from? He and his wife were not working, but each day he would come from mamu’Yandichaza and find a plate waiting for him. What kind of man lets his wife provide for him? I had forgotten that I had done the same thing as well, though. My girlfriend was paying the rent and feeding me while we were together. I guess Joe and I were more alike than I thought.

Another character that was a regular at mamu’Yandichaza was Zoleka. She was a nice lady, but the world was not good to her. We did not speak much, she and I, but I somehow knew the things that were going on in her life.

Zoleka was not married, but she’d had two children from her previous marriage. She had been married to some city boy who was a teacher. Everything was perfect, and they’d had a beautiful house and their first born, which was a girl. Their second child was a boy, and the father felt that it was enough. He had told Zoleka to close her womb. He wanted her to close the only part that gave her the ability to give life, and he required her to close the part that brought new, precious life into the world.

The husband wanted Zoleka to give away her womanhood and she obliged. She loved her husband and gave him all he asked for, but things fell apart when the husband started having an affair and had a child with another woman. She could not recover from the betrayal, and when they divorced, she married the bottle.

Tell us: Knowing what you know about the characters the man sees regularly at mamu’Yandichaza, what do you think they could all do besides drinking all the time?