Noko opened the big bay windows in the sitting room at his parent’s home, feeling like he was suffocating. The room felt stifling, he needed some fresh air. Shaking his head, he wondered if he was going deaf, after being told that he needed to father his brother a child.

“I don’t think I understand properly what you are asking me,” Noko said, turning away from the breezy afternoon and the view of his village of Mahube that hadn’t changed much since he was a boy.

His childhood home had been extended into one of the biggest houses in the village and his family was well known. Noko’s great-grandfather was the first to settle there and his grandfather was the first person who left the village to work for the white men in the farms. Years later, he started growing his own crops, grain and turned it into a business that now his father has taken over.

“Nare is unable to have children otherwise this family should have had an heir already, you should help him,” Aunt Naomi suggested. It was two of his aunts, one uncle and aunt from Boledi’s house. His parents weren’t present. His father was always away – busy. If he wasn’t travelling to buy livestock, he was busy working his land. He had extended the farming business, and his brother Nare had joined him by adding livestock.

Noko wanted to believe that his mother knew nothing about the meeting but he knew that the relatives wouldn’t be having their clandestine meeting at his house without their ‘consent’.

He couldn’t believe his mother would willingly agree to such a thing. Noko knew that his father might not have been told because he couldn’t imagine him approving of all this madness.

Nare was once married to Boledi’s sister Mabotse, who died three years ago while giving birth to their first-born child, Naledi. Mabotse was a beautiful woman and every man in the village and neighbouring villages wanted her for a wife. Mabotse was one of those women that mothers warned their sons about – beautiful but dangerous. She was a woman who would use her beauty to get a man to do just about anything for her. Neither Noko nor Nare had any defence against her like so many.

Nare was even worse because he was the shy type when it came to women but Mabotse had set her sights on him a long time ago. Although, it was rumoured before she died that the child she gave birth to wasn’t even Nare’s. His family had taken in the child and raised her.

Religion and tradition went hand in hand in the small village of Mahube. Mabotse and Boledi’s father were the village priests. The father agreed readily for their children to marry.

“What does Boledi say about this? We are not auctioning a cow here after all,” he said in a deep voice.

“Speak with respect young man, this isn’t the city where you can speak as you please with disrespect to your elders,” Malome Mateu, Boledi’s uncle admonished quietly. “This is a serious family matter.” he stated, drinking his tea with a wince as if he would have wished for something much stronger than a cup of tea.

“What you are all proposing is insane, malome. I mean what if you were asked to father some of your sibling’s children, how would you feel?” Noko demanded and watched as Mateu turned purple in the face and looked away, before he softly said, “This isn’t about me, it is about your family’s legacy.”

Tell us: What do you think of Nare’s character from the few words he’s already said?