It used to be, in my grandmother’s time,

that a baby’s birth drew an audience

of aunts and cousins and sisters

gathered to watch new life emerge

And then when the baby grew,

he would learn to ask his

friends to never leave his side

“Ungikhaphe”, he would say

whenever his mother sent him to the river

My mother told me the tale

of the day she married my father

and how the whole village showed up to give her

away And like all the generations of women before

her,

she did not start the journey alone

“Ungikhaphe”, she said to her
sister

And the two went together

And one day I will tell the story

Of all the times when I broke the village creed

And journeyed in the solitude and loneliness

To whoever asks me, I will defend myself

And say I was never alone

I knelt to the ancestors and said to them

 SIBONGUMUSA NCUBE was a transfer student from Zimbabwe.