Ludwe & Hlompho

Red hair. Not auburn, not copper. Traffic-light red, moving through a lecture hall full of dark heads on our first morning at CUT.

I asked to borrow a putty rubber I didn't need. She handed it over without looking up from her page. That was Hlompho.

She came from Kimberley, where the heat sits on you and there's a hole in the ground where the diamonds used to be. I came from East London, where the wind tastes of salt and the Buffalo River runs into the sea. Bloemfontein sat between us like neutral ground. Both of us were far from home. Neither of us said so.

We shared a drawing board for three years. She told me I press too hard. I told her to stop apologising for the charcoal she left on my sleeve. When the power went we worked by candlelight in the studio, fixative sharp in the cold, both of us stalling because going back to res meant that walk across campus in a Free State winter that gets into your bones.

She taught me Sesotho over two-minute noodles. Ke a u rata. I taught her isiXhosa. She practised the X against her teeth for a week until she could say my surname the way my mother says it, and when she got it right she laughed so loudly the security guard came to check on us. Her mother started making sure there was meat for the Xhosa boy. My gogo learned to say Hlompho with a soft H.

Two families, two languages, one taxi rank, and years of bus trips between Kimberley and East London. Her hair has been many colours since. Black, honey, braids down her back. I still look for red first. I find her anyway.