Breaking bread

He spots me on the way back up High Street, and is by my elbow before I have seen him coming.

You'll buy me dinner tomorrow night, he says.

I stop and take a few steps back.

You can't tell me to buy you dinner, I frown.

Yes, he says, nodding emphatically. Otherwise I won't eat.

And yes of course he can, this boy who sleeps on the street, because otherwise he won't eat. But it's complicated, it's always complicated. Why him and not any of the other hungry boys? If it's one Saturday dinner, then will it start being every Saturday dinner?

I have met the boy before, with a girl who lives in my residence. I come to her with a suggestion, because somehow this boy is a joint issue with us, part of the larger problem of poverty that we're trying to solve in our heads. We will offer to take him to eat with us at the dining hall every Sunday, on the condition that we see him at school during the week.

When another one of the girls from our floor hears she frowns a little.

Are you sure it's the right thing to do? she asks.

No, I say. But it's not one of the very wrong things.

I tick our hard-won lessons off on my fingers. One, it's not food during the week. If he goes to school he'll get three meals a day during the week. Giving food during the week takes away a crucial incentive to go to school. Two, it's not money. Money goes on glue, and drugs aren't allowed at school, so they get withdrawals and leave early.

It's taken a lot of learning to get even this far. A lot of mistakes.

Last week we took sweets to school. It seemed simple: they would never usually have them, and we had the money to buy them. But it was wrong from the moment I arrived.

What's in the bag, they wanted to know, clamouring around, poking at it, hands out. It changed everything; we stop being people, we are just the thing they want. They wheedle and beg and push each other out of the way, and it feels like all we had done was undone in a few minutes.

Even when we finally leave it isn't over. One of the kids who doesn't go to school spies the bag and follows us down the road, begging and pleading. Go to school, we tell him. We have an argument in the street, but I prefer the arguments to the begging - arguments are real. We learn to be tough, to stick to our position. No money, no food during the week, no concessions to anyone who is not at school.

Sometimes we end up back at square one. A boy we promised to get bread for has disappeared when we get back, and we spend twenty minutes looking for him with no luck. We question whether we give for our own conscience, or for their good. We tell ourselves it's not supposed to be easy. We wonder.

And then sometimes, when you're not looking, it is easy.

Yesterday a boy asked to finish my milk, and I say yes, because the question was sincere and direct and the milk is healthy, and we smile at each other and it's good, suddenly.

Today I had bought a loaf of banana bread, still hot from the oven, and a nine-year-old who introduces himself later as Zenethembu points at it, asking for some. We find a stoep out of the light drizzle and I break off a chunk for him and some for the girl from my residence, and we sit and talk and munch away.

And it comes to me then that the part of it that seems right is not the giving, but the sharing. I remember the biblical encouragement to break bread with your fellow man, and that is what seems most apt at that moment, huddled together watching the rain and sharing what we have.