The first part of my journey was no problem. When the minibus taxi drew up at the big taxi ranks in Gugs, I asked the driver if he could tell me where NY 112 was. He said: ‘Lula – that’s easy! Just follow this road to the next traffic lights. Then turn to the right and walk another ten minutes. NY 112 is on your left-hand side. . .’

I was carrying only a small bag but had taken all the important stuff with me. Even my latest school report and my toothbrush.

A short walk later, I spotted the NY 112. Close to the corner, there was a spaza shop selling loaves of bread, cigarettes, sweets, cold drinks and other things. I went in and asked the old lady behind the counter whether she knew Mr Maloni.

‘Ngubani igama – what’s the name?’

I repeated my father’s surname. But she had no idea who he was. ‘Andimazi – I don’t know him…’ she said.

Maybe she was new to the area? I walked on further down the road, stopping people at random: ‘Mr Maloni? Do you know him? He’s my father.’

I started to get really despondent when I reached the end of NY 112 and still nobody had given me the answer I needed to my question. Had he perhaps died? Had he moved somewhere else? Please, God, please…

I was on the point of giving up when one of the elderly neighbours of the spaza shop waved to me to come back to him: ‘Did you say Maloni? Funny name! Yes, there was a guy living here. But he moved from here long ago. His sister is still around, though. Do you see the shack on the other side of the road? The greenish one? That’s where she still stays with his kids…’ His kids? So he had another family here? But why had he moved on again?

Nervously I crossed the road. The door was open and I saw a boy and girl of about ten and twelve years old watching TV inside. At the back of the house a woman was hanging her washing.

I greeted her and asked: ‘Do you know the Maloni family?’ Drying her hands on her skirt, she came towards me.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking surprised. ‘I am Mr Maloni’s sister and he is the father of these children. Who are you?’

‘I am his son, his second born.’

She looked at me in amazement for a second. ‘I can see that you are my brother’s son,’ she said.

She invited me to come in.

In the house I was introduced to the boy, called Andile, and the younger girl, called Noma. ‘This is Mbu, your half brother,’ she said to the children.

Andile made some space for me on the sofa: ‘Do you want to watch Generations with us?’

I sat down, but I could not focus on the soapy. I was too busy asking the woman questions about my father: ‘Why does he not stay with his children? Where is he now?’ And, finally: ‘Did he ever mention me?’

The woman, my new auntie, gave me honest answers: ‘He was fighting too much with his girlfriend, the mother of these two, you know. When he got an RDP house in Blikkiesdorp recently he moved there alone and left the kids with me. At least he sends money sometimes, when he has a job. . . but you know, it’s the old trouble. He is just drinking too much.’

‘And did he ever say anything about me or my brother Mavusi?’

‘No, not really. He only mentioned once that he has children somewhere in the Eastern Cape…’

After everything she’d told me, I didn’t know what to do. I sat watching TV with Andile for hours without seeing anything of what was on the screen. Andile had switched to a soccer game, but I did not even notice who was playing. I felt like I was paralysed. I could not even pray anymore.

When it grew dark, Andile’s aunt said to me: ‘Why don’t you stay with us tonight? Andile will be going to pick up some things from his father tomorrow and he can show you where he stays in Blikkiesdorp.. .’

Blikkiesdorp was an Afrikaans name for the new settlement in Delft where the government had erected more than a thousand matchbox houses for poor people. A blik is a tin can…and that is how most of the houses looked. All alike, hundreds and hundreds of them.

I did not sleep much that night. I heard the snoring of my auntie and her two children. I thought about my coming visit to my father’s new place in the morning, and was glad that Andile was going with me. I knew that I would never find this man, my father, in Blikkiesdorp without him.

We left early the next day. Andile’s kind auntie gave both of us money for the minibus taxi.

Tell us what you think: How would you feel if you were Mbu in the story?