I’ve finished my work in the bedrooms and bathrooms. I have to get it done while the guests are out on the early morning game drive, or having their breakfast afterwards. Now it’s time for me to clear the breakfast tables and set them for lunch. Back at home in the village, some people were jealous when I got this job on the Thandaza Game Reserve. OK, I understand. These are difficult times, and I got lucky. But that doesn’t mean I have to like my job.

When I reach the raised wooden deck, one of the tables is occupied. The three big men of Thandaza and that new boy, Theo Ngcongo, are having some sort of meeting. That boy, young man, whatever, come here to play at being a ranger. He’s my age, eighteen, straight out of school, but they’ve given him a gun, and a bakkie to drive.

“Hey, Lubela.” Behind the bar, Jaha is checking his supplies, holding bottles up to the light. “You hear? Poachers again. Another rhino.”

“We need to find out who’s letting them know where to find the animals,” Bram Rieker is saying.

“What about the staff here?” Dean Shelford says. I could have predicted he would, from the way he treats us.

Bram and Mphakati Shakwane shake their heads. Theo watches and listens.

“We haven’t hired anyone new lately,” Bram says.

“New or not, you can’t trust any of them. An offer of big money …”

“The staff isn’t your concern,” Mphakati says quietly. “But anything you see in the course of your duties as a ranger – anything unusual at all – we need to know.”

“We might have to cut back on guided walking safaris,” Mphakati comes in. “We need to keep monitoring our rhino, and at present I’m the only proper tracker on Thandaza, as opposed to you rangers.”

No, you are not.

In my head, the words are loud and clear. But if I said them out loud, they’d sound soft, and trembly, if I let myself be angry.

I’m clearing the table nearest the edge of the deck. I pause and look down through the tree tops to the river below. A crocodile lies motionless on the edge of the sunny far side.

Dean Shelford is talking again. I think he sounds vicious.

“It’s stupid to deprive guests of the chance to walk in the bush.”

“Mphakati only said ‘might’,” Bram snaps.

I don’t blame him for being angry. Dean is always rude like that. He doesn’t seem to care that Bram and Mphakati are his bosses.

Their meeting ends. Bram and Dean go striding away, each furious about different things.

I see Mphakati about to leave, and I rush over to him.

“Mr Shakwane?”

Bram likes us to call him by his first name, but Mphakati has never invited us to use his. However, I refuse to call him ‘sir’ like Theo does in his hero-worshipping way.

“Yes?”

“I heard what you were saying.” My voice lets me down, my words a soft flurry. “About the walking safaris … I can track, Mr Shakwane, I promise you I can. Try me out–”

A big sigh stops me. He’s heard this story before. He doesn’t want to hear it again.

“Stop wasting my time,” he tells me, in his voice that’s like gravel. “Tracking is no job for a girl.”

He walks away. I stay where I am. I shouldn’t feel rage. I knew what his answer would be. Damn him. That’s the mildest thing I’m thinking. My rage is a crashing, rushing thing, like the water dashing itself against the boulders down in the river, only the river is cold, and this is boiling hot.

“Hi, Lubela.”

It’s Theo. I’ve heard him asking Mphakati to help him with XiTsonga, so I suppose that’s why he always speaks to me in English – my English being one of the reasons I got this job.

“Hello.”

My voice is a traitor and won’t let me sound as grumpy as I want, so I scowl and push out my bottom lip. It doesn’t work. He’s not discouraged.

“What’s wrong?” he wants to know.

“Nothing.” That’s always a good sulky answer, but I can’t leave it at that, and my frustration comes bursting out of me. “Just Mphakati Shakwane being patriarchal and patronising as usual.”

Two little dents appear between his eyebrows.

“Patriarchal how?”

“He thinks girls can’t be trackers.”

I see Theo is surprised, and that pleases me. Let him find out his hero isn’t perfect.

“I think you’d be an awesome tracker,” he says. “I’ve seen that you go out into the bush on your own when you’re off-duty.”

“Yes well, your precious ‘sir’ won’t even give me a trial to find out how awesome I am.”

“I suppose he’s like … traditional, in his thinking?” he suggests.

“Right, make excuses for him.”

“Do you feel safe in the bush, on foot, with no weapon?” he changes the subject.

“I always have a knife in my pocket, but maybe my wits are my weapon,” I say.

“You mean like bush-craft or something?”

“Or something.”

Now he’ll make some comment about stupidity or over-confidence, I think.

“That’s awesome.” It’s like expecting a fist in the face and getting a kiss. “Is it like a gift? Something you were born with?”

“I grew up around here. That village just outside the boundary fence.”

“Cool.”

“Right.” I’m sarcastic, wondering if he’s ever set foot in a rural village.

“This going into the bush … what’s it about?”

“It’s just something I do. I like it, all right? Being out, feeling the bush around me, seeing stuff.”

“Me too.”

“In your bakkie,” I mock.

“No, like you. Walking. Feeling it.”

With his rifle and the training he’s getting from Mphakati and Bram, he’s probably confident in the bush. But there’s no way he’s part of it, like my brother and me and some of the others in the village. He doesn’t belong.

He’s not bad-looking, I realise, as I judge him. Not exactly handsome either, but he has a face that’s somehow serious and friendly at the same time, if that makes sense. His hair is shaved very short, maybe because of the heat here. He’s wearing a pale-khaki ranger’s uniform with the Thandaza badge on one sleeve.

“Maybe if you spoke to Mr Rieker?” he says. “About being a tracker?”

“I did, but he said Mphakati makes all decisions to do with tracking and trackers.”

“Makes sense, him being such an awesome tracker.”

“Is that your favourite word? Awesome?”

He looks a bit embarrassed, but is not really upset, because he smiles at me.

“It’s a good word for the things and people here, and it’s just, you know, I admire him.”

I shrug. “Why shouldn’t you? It’s only women and girls who should stay out of the bush according to Mphakati, not pampered boys playing ‘ranger-ranger’.”

“Pampered?” He sounds shocked.

“Aren’t you?” I wish I didn’t have this soft, blurry voice, because it always spoils the effect when I’m trying to be harsh or taunting. “Getting a bakkie and a gun, and the men taking you out in the bush, training you.”

“And Dean Shelford on my case.” He laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. “Or else forgetting, or simply disappearing, when it’s his turn to instruct me.”

“Sounds like Dean.” I roll my eyes and Theo laughs. For these few seconds it feels as if we’re friends. We share something. In one way it would make sense for us to be friends. We’re the only eighteen-year-olds on Thandaza, way younger than everyone else. Even Dean must be seven or eight years older.

Then I look down at my own pale, olive-green uniform. I should be wearing khaki like this boy, like Mphakati and Bram and Dean. Not a domestic worker’s uniform that doubles as a waitress’s whenever they need someone extra here on the deck, or inside the camp restaurant.

We’re from different worlds.

***

Tell us what you think: Is Lubela right that workplace status means she and Theo can’t be friends?