On the neon-lit dance floor of Beefcakes, a Sudanese man named Mahmoud, who is six foot four and smells of Shisa nyama and coconut oil, tells me that his father was murdered by the Janjaweed militia and that I have a really nice ass. I feel conscious of how thin I have become. I wonder if Mahmoud can feel my ribs as he rubs his hands across my torso. What was left of my stipend from The Mission has run dry and for weeks I have been walking around Cape Town like an omen. The ligaments of my spine crane with effort each night in my hostel, pointing my nose north toward the smell of fresh Chakalaka, which rises up from the kitchen of the good mother downstairs, who keeps her windows open, so at the very least I will have some hope to fill my empty belly.
I sleep on the iron cot of a hostel that goes for ten rand a night. Klaus, the Afrikaans man at the front desk, who watches porn publicly and without concern, told me on the day that I arrived that his rate was the best deal I would find in town and I knew somehow that he was not lying. I wonder now though, in the darkness, if I have made a mistake in coming here.
If I should have just let Pastor Adam take the things he wanted from me. Running away was so reckless. I had no idea where to go. I still have no idea where to go, but I had my back to the wall and I did the only thing that made sense in the moment.
You would probably do the same. Getting to Gaborone had taken days. The journey was arduous and felt endless. People had given me strange looks along the way. I hope desperately that nobody recognized me on the bus from Gaborone to Johannesburg. I was so afraid to look at the papers and tried my best to just keep moving south. To keep my head down. In Bloemfontein, I threw away my missionary uniform and purchased fresh trousers and a button up.
Would people be looking for me? And for how long? I am a nobody. I say that to myself. Again and again. Hoping to make it true. When I finally arrived in Cape Town, I had just a hundred dollars. How much had that been in rand? In any case, it is all gone now. Maybe Pastor Adam will tell everyone I stole his money. Or maybe he will just say I disappeared. Died somewhere in the bush.
