5%

Sticking out like sore thumbs in Pretoria’s city centre are Nthabiseng and Thami. Making their way to the city bowl outskirts, he poses a question:

“ Could you have made us any more visible?”

“Stop being such a wuss. It’s fine.”

She wears a long green, black and white skirt with swirling patterns that end just above her ankles. The bright white tips of her Converse takkies make their blue material seem to glisten with novelty. The yellow T-shirt that hugs her arms and loosens up at the torso makes her a visible sunflower in a field of deadening grass. Edging closer to the city’s outskirts. The bright and almost luminous green beanie peaking at the top of her head gives her extra height. Curly hair covering her neck after making its way passed her jaw line, it sways from side to side as she walks studying the cracks in the pavement. She’s a small woman he thinks to himself.

“Stop it.”

She tells him without looking up.

“I can see you watching me out the corner of your eye.”

“Well how would you know? Unless you were doing the same...”

Nthabiseng stops to say something to him, but he continues walking leaving her to be shoulder charged in different directions by the people walking in the crowd. Her eyes finally catch him again. He stands on a corner by a set of robots. Approaching him from behind, her eye catches what his is already recording. Across the street a toddler bawls his eyes out jumping up and down pointing to sweets being sold by a vendor on a wooden box. The woman holding the hand of the toddler has a furrowed brow and impatiently awaits the changing of the traffic light from red to green. The towel wrapped around her abdomen is an indicator that she has an infant on her back. Thami snaps as many shots as he can before moving on as the robot changes colour. Nthabiseng follows him and watches the woman with the children as they walk past her. The child’s screams fill her ears as they pass each other, she can’t help but turn to watch the child’s hurried little steps as the woman leads him through the crowd.

“ Don’t allow yourself to get involved in the emotion of it. Not now detach...”

“Myself. I know.”

Connecting her eyes with his for a moment. He stops. She turns around “It doesn’t mean anything! I just looked at you, get over it!”

“Why you getting so touchy all of a sudden?”

“Can we just get some more pictures?”

“Okay… lets carry on down Bloed.”

She glides on at a rapid pace. He walks behind her and she walks faster. He calls out to her, and she walks even faster. The child’s anguished face and screams haven’t left her yet.

“Nthabiseng! Nthabiseng ema! Die Taxi tsa Willows via kontlhela!”

Immediately stopping. Something’s wrong.