At first she doesn’t understand me and I have to repeat the question. Shaking her head, she wipes her round face with a large colourful handkerchief and exclaims, “My boy, there are more than twenty thousand people living in Masiphumelele, perhaps even thirty thousand! And many of them are constantly on the move between here and eMpuma-koloni … it’s quite impossible to know everyone. There are some families by the name of Matakane, I think, but whether she’s one of them, I really couldn’t tell you.”
Well, that’s not a good start, I think to myself. Twenty or thirty thousand people! That’s like looking for one particular ant in a whole colony of ants. But I don’t say anything because of not wanting to discourage Nomtha, and I thank the woman anyway: “No problem, we’ll find her.”
We can’t
