It is searingly hot. And he has nothing to do. Nothing! He broods, chin on cupped hands. He has not seen Sindiso since arriving a week ago. They hadn’t stayed long in Mozambique, with its cows and its huts and its green mountains. Now they are in Angola, in a training camp for the soldiers, Sindiso has explained. This camp is in a scrubby landscape, with thorn trees and dust as far as the eye can see. There is a house on a hill in the center of it: an old farmhouse. Joshua sleeps in a little room at the back, a storeroom with a high window next to the maid’s room, where Mama Bongani lives. She gives him mielie-pap in the mornings. As far as he can see, she is as busy as his mother used to be, looking after the men. She has to cook and clean and wash. She looks tired. When he tries to talk to her, she shoos him away gently, as if he were a persistent puppy. This morning she asks him to help. “Here, take these, Joshua,” she says. “They are too heavy for me.” It is early in the camp, and she has done the daily wash.
