The Tin Shack

Prolouge

Life meant nothing to me once, not even 1 Rand. The money I worked for could barely help me survive. I've had near-death experiences with no one around to help me. I never seemed to have a family. I was just a girl who lived in a tin shack near the city in South Africa. I had no transportation besides walking, barely enough food to help me through the day, some ragged clothing with holes, and not enough Rand to get my necessities. My life was and is tough. My life was worth niks. I was niks.
The time I recognized my life as precious was long ago, too long ago for me to even remember, save the bits and pieces. That was the time when I had my older brother, Dumi, who would do everything for me. He treated me in a different way from all the other people who even took time to notice me for a second. In fact, he treated me like a white person. Dumi would protect me from the outer world, always saying that the whites didn't know what they were doing. But, now that I think about it, he never said anything bad about the whites he worked for. They seemed kind, very kind, and were always nice to me when I came there, which wasn't often. The whites would offer ice cream to the young me. Allow me to stick around with Dumi, unless he was doing something dangerous, and walk around the crops. The thing I loved most was walking on the South African soil. The way my bare feet felt in the neutrally warm dirt was just... amazing. The blue sky up above me could never be described, and that made me proud of my home Africa.
If I could go back in time, I would change a few things and keep some the same. But how would that help? You predict. Maybe you would be able to tell all the foute I made, and not repeat them. Maybe you know what I felt like? You experienced it before? Who knows, but here is my story.