Shadows. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

so simple are the lyrics, so seductive the lively strumming of the guitars, so enticing the fat women jiggling, the President’s stern face emblazoned on their bums, working the proletariat to a crescendo for the coming presidential elections, that the jingles have taken on a huge popularity. Particularly with the children. They whistle them. They hum them. They haul them out in their squeaky voices, out of earshot of their parents.

      The children point at us and giggle. “Look! A gogo riding on the back of that man! Like a baby! Look! Hahahaha! Hahahaha!”

      I ignore them.

      The queue for ARVs at the clinic is long. From the surrounding townships, people converge like locusts at harvest time. Some sleep outside the clinic, not because they are sick, but as a means to a financial end. They queue for those who don’t have the means to get there early, charging a fee for “services rendered”.

      The ARV queue moves at the pace of a pregnant woman. It wobbles. It staggers. It groans and gives birth to wretched moans that carry in the wind only to be deposited in the deaf ears of the nurses. Waiting. Waiting. More waiting. There is nothing special about it, it’s everywhere. My generation may wait all their lives. In the end, people will forget what it is they are waiting for.

      The head nurse comes out on the stoep, her hand on her thick waist, wearing an expression that almost pulls the lips out of her face.

      “We have run out of ARVs!”

      Blinded by our rage, we lambast the nurse with all sorts of obscenities that stagger on the precipice of violence and collapse in the groans of our helplessness. She leers from behind the power of her uniform and waits for our protests to wane before repeating, “We have run out of ARVs! Come on Thursday!”

      It’s Monday. It has become a weekly game, this. There’s never enough medication. We threaten to sleep in the clinic, as if the nurse keeps medicine under her skirts. But eventually we go away, and come back another day to try our luck.

      Mama straddles my back.

      “We didn’t get the medicine, Mama. Can you hold on for me till Thursday?”

      Mama groans.

      “Mama?”

      Luther the vagabond wanders past with his Scania. I call out to him. He comes to me, wearing his ridiculous lopsided smile.

      “Help me,” I croak.

      I push his goods to one side and put Mama inside his Scania.

      “Take us to Mpilo Hospital. I will pay you,” I add.

      Luther’s tongue hangs from his mouth. He presses his muscular arms against his Scania and moves at a brisk pace, his buttocks sticking out behind him, visible through the holes in his shorts. At that moment, I envy Luther. I long for the blank expression perpetually worn by his youthful face, for the strength of his aged feet to flee in search of my utopia.

      There are certain thoughts that a man may not entertain. You cannot break down before your mother while she lolls in the Scania of a vagabond. You think: If only. I had a car. I could afford the private hospital, Mater Dei, instead of Mpilo. Wasn’t Mpilo Hospital in the Chronicle the other day? The nurses let one of the patients die. No medication. You think: Fuck this goddam country. Fuck this government. Then you just think: Fuck.

      We trudge past a queue that writhes from a communal water pump near D-square, along Masiyephambili Road. The people stretch into the distance and disappear behind a cluster of houses. The queue sags into all sorts of patterns: elbows sticking out legs dangling heavy buttocks sagging collar bones slipping flesh longing for something to hold on to. But there is nothing, and the bodies droop like wax melting in the heat.

      There is even a queue at the hospital. Eventually, they give Mama a bed in the orthopaedic ward and hand me a list of things to buy:

      Cotton wool

      Injection

      Syringe

      Drip

      I look up. “Even a drip, Sister? Aren’t these things the hospital is supposed to provide?”

      “The hospital can’t afford.”

      “But where will I get these things?”

      She points to a tuck shop across the quad.

      I buy Mama a plate of sadza and chomolia from a caravan; she purses her lips and refuses to eat.

      “Please, Mama.”

      She turns away from me. “Take me home.”

      “No, Mama, you need to see a doctor . . . Nurse! When is the doctor coming?”

      The nurse shrugs.

      “I have been prayed for and I’m going to be fine. By faith I am healed. Now, take me home.”

      “Time for patients to sleep!”

      “I’ll come first thing in the morning, Mama, okay?”

      “Take me home.”

      “Time for patients to sleep!”

      I travel by the light of the moon. It gushes from the heavens, so that the night is as bright as a pale morning. The passionate chants of a Mupostori Faith gathering travel in the air. I recognise them by their white dresses, in the distance, bathed in the moonlight like angels; my angels, Mama’s angels.