Dikeledi listened to the whispers and smiled to herself in the dark recesses of her hut. She let the matter move through the village like an errant whirlwind that picked up both wanted and forgotten things. In the third year of what was now spoken of as her abandonment, Dikeledi made a plaintive plea to her community. As they could see, her husband had never, not even once, provided for her, and she had had to live on their charity and goodwill for the embarrassingly long time she had waited for Immanuel to do his duty by her. But he had not. And now she was left with no choice but to look for work herself. She did not want to leave the village and go to the City of Kings. She had made a comfortable and lovely home for herself and her husband, and she did not want to leave it.

As everyone remembered, she had received a good education, and it would make sense for her to go for teachers’ or nurses’ training, but she feared too much time had passed and she would need to relearn so many things she had already forgotten. Would it not be better, did they not all think, if she found a job right here in the village? Perhaps … and this was just occurring to her, so they should please excuse its unformedness as a thought … but perhaps she could collect the post that was delivered to the school and bring it to the residents of the village. It was some distance to and from the school, and often the journey to collect the letters had to be done by the very old or the very young because everyone else was busy, either in the fields tilling sustenance out of the land, or in the city eking a living out of the factories. Would it not be a wonderful thing if the village had its own postman who delivered letters to each homestead?

There were murmurs of approval from the villagers before Chief Cele Mkhize said, ‘But the very word itself is prohibitive. Postman. You cannot do a man’s job.’ There were immediate murmurs supporting the headman’s sagacity. ‘However, it is a brilliant idea and I am surprised I never thought of it,’ Chief Cele Mkhize continued. ‘I will speak to both the postmaster and the schoolmaster and see if such a post can be created forthwith – for a man.’ The chief was not a man without understanding, and so he added, ‘All the other things you say are true; we have all seen them. To rectify your problem, I will write to Immanuel and demand that he do right by you.’