For Martha

I've not been writing much about the personal experiences, struggles, connections and trails I've been having working in Kennedy Road, Lacey Road and Crossmoor.

I'm spending a huge amount of time these days, especially in Kennedy Road, dealing with emergencies around health and poverty. But it's also been a lovely time of quiet moments in the night around candle-light sharing silence and stories, the family dramas, the laughter and the daily annoyances. The growing pains of some of the youth, and the inching along through a difficult system to get grants, education, health care. Some things have been hard to write about here - it seems easier to write about formal politics than the intimacies of the struggle for bare life, sickness, and sadness.

But there are stories to tell.

Easter weekend was a hard one. On Good Friday we lost Martha Mthembu. Mother to 6. Thirty years old. Only one month younger than I am.

I will dearly miss her, but we will dignify and glorify her memory through the absolutely divine children she left behind and who I am, I must admit, quite smitten with.

For them, for now.