this thing in the house that cried
and shat and got fed, but when
you’re nine years older than your
sibling, their arrival doesn’t change
much for you. I wasn’t changing
diapers; I was out playing arcade
games at the shop, running around
the neighborhood.
The main thing that marked
Andrew’s birth for me was our first
trip to meet Abel’s family during
the Christmas holidays. They lived
in Tzaneen, a town in Gazankulu,
what had been the Tsonga
homeland under apartheid. Tzaneen
has a tropical climate, hot and
humid. The white farms nearby