dusk

Dusk. I drive carefully. I need to get home before dark. A girl walks along the side of the road in an orange velours tracksuit. The street leading up to the house looks as if it's been shelled. There are craters like fishponds, only deeper. The lights are on in Mr Gigi's garage-turned-hair-salon. He's 90-something. Still cutting. Inside the house, it's dark. Only the television glows bright red. Probably Zimbabwe's popular soap Studio 263 is showing. Or is that later in the evening? I rattle the padlock against the locked gate. "I didn't even have enough money to buy Kim a drink for school," she says. "Those boys, they don't send us anything."