The unbreakable thread

She sits crosslegged on the grass with the tumbling frangipani flowers behind her. She refers to herself as a bit of a dork, and we drink pear juice and get excited about youth work and drama. It turns out she and I work in the same field, thousands of miles apart-

But young people are the same everwhere, hey, she says.

**********************

I'm out at a school for street children, as they get ready for lunch. The school is housed in an old railway station, on a patch of bare dirt ringed with wire fencing. One of the scuffed classrooms gets cleared of tables, and all the chairs are moved in. A great tin pot of samp and beans is dished out, one plate at a time.

I'm standing by the doorway, swatting away flies and listening to the clatter and scraping of chairlegs in the oppressive heat. A boy in a holed shirt beside me is hopping up and down in agitation, anticipating his turn. He has a paper hat on his head, made from a ruled page of a notebook.

I point at it.

Did you make that?

A cluster of boys start to explain how easy it is, and offer to show me. The hat gets passed into my hands.

In biro there are messages scrawled on it. Nosizwe loves Bulelani, one of them reads.

I think of all the times I've seen the same message on pencilcases and schoolbags and bathroom walls of all the schools I've ever been to.

And I guess she was right.