By midday, Kolobetso had to send her eighteen  year old cousin to the shops for more supplies.  The eight bags of potatoes, the packs  of Russian- sausages and the hot-dog rolls were all gone.  The bottles of mustard and tomato sauce had long been squeezed out.  

  “You better hurry back,” Kolobetso said  to her cousin. She sat on a wooden stool that she kept meaning to replace, her
hips and thighs cascading down its sides. The flesh on her arms made gentle  inconspicuous ripples as she hunched over and rummaged around in her bosom.  First the bosom was patted through the  T-shirt and apron that she was wearing, and then her hand went into her bra,  first lifting one breast after another. Finally her fingers found the parcel  that she was looking for. She lifted it out before returning her breasts to  their rightful places.

 Although an off-white handkerchief lay  scrunched on her lap, sweat ran unchecked down her sun-darkened face as she sat
back to peel notes from the roll of money she had retrieved from her bosom.  Occasionally, the thick fingers darted  upwards and discreetly flicked the sweat away from her eyes and mouth.  Out of the corner of her eye, she  watched the people who were arriving at the park’s only opened entrance. Waves  and waves and people were pouring in, as if they were being dispensed in from  some secret place. 

She placed the money in her cousin’s hands,  watching to see if he would be careful with it. He was a lanky boy, with hunched
over shoulders, who was helping her while he waited to hear if he had qualified  for a government scholarship. 

“You better hurry,” she said again to the  boy.

 “Okay,” he said, tucking the notes into his  left pocket.

“Maybe add some Simba chips, and bags of  sweets for the children.”

“Okay,” he grumbled, walking away.  He was not a boy given to much talking,  when they were at their usual trade spot at the university’s entrance, he spent  most of his time hunched over his cell phone, emerging only to buy more  airtime.

 “And maybe some ice-pops too, it’s going to  get hot.”She called. He turned around and shrugged his shoulders. She watched as  he briefly touched an old woman’s arm.   He must have stepped on her toes, or pushed into her as he turned back,  she thought.
             
More people were coming, and car windows glistened in the sun as far as  the traffic lights at the industrial complex. Kolobetso picked up her  handkerchief and wiped her face with it, leaving white specks on her face.  She had never known that the city of  Gaborone contained this many people, she thought to herself.  She  looked at the women sitting around her.   They were selling the same thing  that she had just been selling: Russian sausages sizzling angrily on portable  stoves powered from tiny gas cylinders, potato chips sank in pans of golden  oil.  Bits of potato peel and bread  crumbs cascaded from her skirt as she stood up.  Next to her, a woman handed change out  to a little boy impatient to start on his hot dog. 
The woman looked up at Kolobetso.

“Are you going home now?” she asked  hopefully.

“With this kind of crowd?   I have already made as much money as I had made in a week,”  Kolobetso said.  

She patted the underside of her breast, where  her notes were hidden inside her bra, and dumped the plastic bag which held her  coins in the ridge created by her two generous breasts. She placed her phone  inside her bra. She turned her grill and her stove  off.

Secretly she was relieved that her  supplies had run out. She was sick  of being a vicarious participant. Of hearing the crackly shouts of “Fire! Fire!”  from a fatigued PA system inside the park. Of the rumours that swam from inside  to her spot with frightening speed: that a boy had turned into a snake and  slithered on the ground in front of the swayed eyes of the masses; that the old  woman whose children had just carried into the park on a stretcher was now up  and dancing. 

Using the bulk of her body, the wideness of  her hips, her sturdy feet and strong arms, she pushed people aside. It took some
  stepping on a few shoes and her ignoring cries of pain pointed in her  direction, but after some minutes Kolobetso was inside Tsholofelo Park.  Hands, elbows, knees nudged into her  body every step she took.  She felt  claustrophic the further and further she went inside the park: she had only  ever seen these many people when the national football team played a game. But  here people were, carving space for themselves under shades of trees, entire  tired families sitting on blankets as if at a picnic.  Wailing babies’s bottoms were patted impatiently, young people were  perched on the fence of the park.

An old woman, her headscarf making a hood  over her face clutched her arm as she squeezed past  her.

 “Who is up there now, ngwanaka, is it the  blind?”The old woman asked. Kolobetso stood on her tip toes until she felt a
spasm of pain going through her feet.  She shrugged her shoulders.   She could not see anything because of the people standing on chairs, and  the children whose brothers and fathers carried on their  shoulders.

She weaved around and around, trying to find  space between the people. Towards the south of the park, a queue had sprung of  people in wheel chairs.  There was  a little boy covered in a bright yellow blanket, and an old man who sat quietly  as his adult children argued behind him.
             
Kolobetso was about to take a turn when she felt a tap on her shoulder. A  beautiful woman was smiling in her face. Despite the heat and the crowd, the  woman looked cool, her slicked back hair, raining down at the back in a  shoulder-length ponytail was in place. Kolobetso looked her up and down, her  spotless white fitted dress down to her beige wedges. The ring glinting around her finger and the expensive looking  handbag.
             
“Dumelang,” Kolobetso said cautiously.
             
“Kolo, hi!” The woman said, and gave her a hug.   Kolobetso furiously racked her brain. A satisfied customer? A church
mate? A friend of a friend?
             
“You don’t remember me, do you?” The woman asked. Kolobetso muffled her  embarrassed laughter with her hands.
             
“How can you forget me when we sat together in Mr. Bareki’s class for  three years?” 

“Heela, Mmamotho?” Now that it had been  prodded along, the recognition was swift.  It was followed by more embarrassment and envy at this sophisticated  Gaborone woman that her former classmate had become.  How far the two had come, and how different their  lives.
             
“How are you?” Kolobetso asked.
             
“Owai, it is as you see, I am here,”Mmamotho  answered.
             
“Oh, come on, look at you, you are married.” 

Mmabatho grimaced as she glanced at her  ring.  Then she smiled at Kolobetso  briefly.     “Yes,”  she said.

“As for some of us, marriage has passed us  by,” Kolobetso said.

“Ah, don’t say  that.”

“It’s true. How many kids do you  have?”

“We don’t have  any.”

 “Why not? You are a married woman, you are  supposed to have kids.”

Mmamotho raised her eyebrows and stretched  her lips into a smile again.  As  the smile faltered, Kolobetso could see the sadness in her eyes.   She instantly regretted her question. She knew a woman who was desperate  for a child, knew the wars in her house, the arguments that punctuated her  bedroom walls, the silent treatments every month when her period came, the guilt  and the silent cries in the bathrooms.  She gave Mmamotho a brief hug, but she did not know what to say. In the
end it was Mmamotho who filled the silence that enclosed them like an island,  even as they stood within the cacophony in the
park.
             
“Go tla siama,” she shrugged. Kolobetso nodded and then excused  herself. Even as she walked on, hoped that yes, things would be fine, things would work out for her friend. But  she wondered, as she did every time she heard the phrase, at the resignation  that permeated her people’ sayings.  The shrugging of shoulders, the resigned  expelling of air in drawn-out sighs, and “go tla siama.” As if that was a  solution for everything.  While  people in other countries said, “make a plan”, they resigned themselves to a  miraculous intervention. 
             
Kolobetso found an opening between two men who were caught up in an  argument. She squeezed herself  through, ignoring the muttered insults of people who she pushed into. A gaggle  of people clung to a large white truck, like wriggling ants trying to burrow  into a piece of bread. From this truck, a stage had been set-up.   Large speakers stood on the stage like sentinels. In between the speakers  was dwarfed an old woman in a red ankle-length dress and auburn wig. A man stood  just behind holding a microphone similar to the one the old woman was  holding.

“Fire!” the old woman shouted into her  microphone. Kolobetso found herself wondering about the strength of the woman’s
voice, after all she looked old and a little  frail.

“Fire!” people shouted. 
 
She muttered some intelligible phrases into  the microphone, her body stood erect, her arms pointing heavenwards. 
People started singing, some with tears streaming down her  face.

  “God is good!”they shouted. Inside her  bra, her phone vibrated. She took it out. “Whr r u?”It was her cousin returned
from the shops. Kolobetso turned  around to go back. All around her people shouted and screamed. Beneath the  fervour in the faces, was the anxiety, the desperation, pushing through.  Looking back, Kolobetso noticed a woman  hanging on one of the doors of the truck. Desperation was written all over her  face.  Her skirts billowed in the  wind – her petticoat showing.  
Kolobetso couldn’t decide- was it a young woman, or an old woman?  She looked on fascinated, waiting for  her to fall, but she hung on, her knuckles protruding with her effort to hold  on.  

Gothataone Moeng is a freelance journalist, aspiring filmmaker,
and writer based in Gaborone, Botswana. She won the 2009 Bessie Head Literary
Prize (short story). In June, 2011, her story, "Singing in the Rain", was featured in the Stories on Stages series of Northen California.