Waiting their turn for lights to go on

family and to send Sbusiso to pre-school.

Her husband once had a steady job, doing construction work in Lenasia, building the type of home he could only dream of for his family. But one night, robbers struck the construction workers and stole all his money and the week’s groceries he’d bought. The robbers broke both his arms and doctors used metal pins to fix them, but he’ll never be able to do construction work again. He occasionally finds odd jobs, which is what he is doing today. But he feels lost, she says, and drinks heavily, often screaming at her in fits of drunken rage.

Nyulu blows a neon pink bubble with the gum she’s chewing, and then tells the story of her parents’ deaths. Her father, a heavy smoker and drinker, died in 2008, on Nyulu’s eighth birthday. Her mother died in 2015, but had not spoken to Nyulu in years. One afternoon when Nyulu was 13, she was home alone with her stepfather, and he propositioned her for sex. He said he would buy her shoes. She panicked, said no, and later told her mother what happened. Her mother called her a liar, and kicked her out.

Nyulu was desperate to find a place to go, and turned to the then-26-year-old man who worked with her stepfather. When he would cut the grass in her front yard, she would talk to him, and developed a crush. So when her mother kicked her out, she asked him if she could move in.

Exactly twice her age, her now-husband said yes, and they had a child a few years later.

“He helped me when I was so desperate and hopeless, so I’ll do anything for him,” Nyulu says.

After her mother’s death in 2015, she took in her then eight and 10-year-old sisters as her own. She calls them her daughters.

The sun is close to setting, so Nyulu starts working on a fire. She puts wood in a metal bucket and lights matches, but the blocks won’t catch. She begins burning plastic shopping bags, coating the wood. She strips apart a piece of cardboard to feed the still-tiny fire, which nips at her skirt as she tends to it. Nyulu boils water to cook dinner, borrowing more paraffin from a neighbour. She pours porridge into the water, using the little light streaming in from the front door to aim.

She adds her fourth plastic bag to the fire, and sends Buhle out to ask the neighbours if they have more.

Sesi checks the porridge, coughing as she inspects her forthcoming dinner.

Buhle retur ns with nine more shopping bags, which promptly go into the fire. Nyulu wields a shovel with a blade larger than her head, swinging it like an axe to break up the wood and make it more flammable.

The newly-chopped wood immediately goes up in flames, and neighbouring children come to huddle around the blazing fire, no longer shivering as they sing and giggle and play with China.

It’s only about 6pm, but the entire street has become dark and cold. Nyulu says it’s close to the time of night that “nyaope boys” come and raid the shacks, stealing anything they can. She says the dark makes it impossible to see them coming.

But if you look past the shacks and squint a little, you can see the horizon line glowing with the lights from inside the houses of Lenasia. Soon, Meriting will glow too.