When in Darling.

An old paint tub is pushed in my direction. She puts a pink pillow on it and asks if I want to sit.

Of course I do.

The television is snowing 7de Laan images and is sound tracked by the neighbour’s dogs and the baby talking gaga-language in the bedroom. We’re giggling about the lame acting in the Laan and wondering when Emma will finally leave the show. Because she should. Her and the rest of the cast. Or maybe just the scriptwriter?

Ons praat land en sand.

So I found myself in Darling. On a Sunday. Where the scorching heat sends the pregnant, neighbourhood cat into the doorframe of the house I’m sitting in. Dried blood on her nose, and although she looks tired, she looks tough — like Jean Valjean in the opening scenes of Les Misérables. But she’s a female obviously. And a cat, so maybe I took the analogy too far.

As my feet trace the cement on the floor where the tiles used to be, I sip on my red wine and then we talk and talk and then I’m sipping on the Black Label corts that we bought from the shebeen next door and we sip until there’s no more. Shannon tunes us that white people drink slowly and I can’t argue when I see his empty cup. But next time, he says we should just bring more wine and then we make a potjie — like julle vir potjiekos? Nee, dan moet julle kom.

So two bottles of wine will not be enough.

They’re working on the house they say; when we visit again they will have saved up for furniture. The three bedrooms are new, last year all 6 of them slept in one room and now they just laugh about it, like do you remember those days.

So when I found myself in Darling in a house where the only thing that is uncapped is the beer bottle at my feet, I felt relieved.

There was no need to Instagram anything, I didn’t want to check-in anywhere on Facebook and my Whatsapp conversations suddenly didn’t seem all that important. Because in that moment, I felt the texture of the cup in my hands, I smelled the Sunday potato salad in Susan’s plate on the ground in front of me, and I listened with intrigue when Shannon’s wife told me with beaming pride about how her little daughter won First Princess in the school fashion show.

In Afrikaans we would call Shannon’s family, mens se mense. But Boer Soek ‘n Vrou completely ruined that phrase for me.

See, they had no reason to welcome back one young student that they’ve only known per chance for a week in August. But they did, and they welcomed the extra too. They shared their Sunday with us and shared their wisdom, their cups, their smiles, their family and their hospitality.

I’m basically sure that my own neighbours won’t even invite me in for anything.

Good thing I found myself in Darling, on a Sunday, with people that the Apartheid government would have banned me from.

Good thing that segregation is dead.

Atleast between us.