Laminated desert This is a story that belongs to a nation full of beauty as much as injustices. In the hopes that more people will begin to think that the social difference coexisting within a country can truly be defeated in our hearts.

We drove for about 40 minutes out of the white concrete terraced houses of Edgemead, a Northern suburb of CapeTown. The left of my car window was replaced by the sight of the Table Mountain majestically surveilling the city from afar. Suddenly, a metallic grey blanket covered the land and took my attention off from the natural frame.

“Where is the church?” I asked once we parked the car in the middle of a conglomerate of huts, my guide simply pointed her finger to a hoard of metal foils piled one on top of the other shaping in what looked like an ample dome. The entrance was a hole in a foil covered by a curtain obtained from a jute sack, a bare car wheel was laying beside it as a skeleton of a gazelle in the midst of the Savannah.

We entered into the circular laminated tent, there were no windows but the sun rays could still sneak into the church from the cracks between the laminates.
It was the first time that I attend a traditional Xhosa mass. The service lasted for 3 hours: 180 minutes of listening to the devotees clicking their tongues,of chants and of constant wondering about what was going on and what they were saying.

During the middle of the service, a little Bantu girl walked into the metallic tent, and as soon as she saw me, she came to seat next to me and began to whisper words in my ear I could not understand.

Approaching the African midday, the metal church was getting suffocating but fortunately the mass ended.
Her eyes continued to inspect me carefully.
“Imitha is her name, it means ray of sunshine” interrupted the Pastor.

The Xhosa preacher also explained to me that Imitha never saw a white person before. Bantu children raised in a township are unlikely to meet many foreigners as they live confined between the metal ferns of this laminated desert.

I met Imitha a few years ago, when my “stranger” skin did not scare her but intrigued her, when her hair was long up to her bony shoulders, and her eyes sparkled like her life was a carousel. Although, I still find myself wondering every now and then, how she may look like today, hoping that the steel reality did not affect her earthy heart and her eyes did not turn grey.