My friend

Sanibonani.

I’ve been experiencing weird times of late. I haven’t exactly been busy with “work” – a trend that probably will continue into the Christmas season – but life has thrown a few curve balls. One of my closest friends and work partners has been extremely ill. I went to visit her with a volunteer buddy, Walker, and she was almost too weak to get out of bed. She wasn’t too weak to tell us stories, however.

She described how some Swazi women have husbands who invite their mistresses into the family home.

“The women, they must cook for their husband and his girlfriend and even bring them the food,” my friend told me. “Even (someone we know) must cook for her husband and his girlfriend and then she must go sleep in the kitchen while they are in bed together.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “What about you? What about your husband?”

“He had a woman he wanted to have sex with. I would not let them have sex here. Then they went to her home to do it. So I got some matches and some paraffin and went there. I told them I would burn their house down. My husband came home.”

“Wow,” I said, laughing. “You are tough!”

“A Swazi woman must be tough, or her husband will have 10 wives.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking and laughing together, and we visited her father-in-law to say hello. When we left, she seemed to be in pretty good spirits.

Over the next few days, her condition worsened. I went to see her again. She had just been to see a sangoma, or traditional healer. The healer had treated her by making an incision in her chest and holding a cow horn up to it. He had pulled something from the horn that he said came from her chest.

“It looked like a piece of meat covered in hair,” she said.

Before they had visited the healer, she and her sister had held the Bible to the sick woman’s face and let it fall open. The verse spoke of vanquishing one’s enemies and surviving.

That day, she was feeling much better. She could even eat a bit – wheat cereal with milk. But she was lean. We sat on the brown overstuffed furniture in her living room, and I looked at the 8-by-11 photo of her on the shelf over the TV.

“Look at me, Nonhlanhla, I was so fit!” she said. “Now a man, he told me I am all bones.”

I left after several hours that Thursday. The next Monday, we sent messages back and forth. She had gone to her mother’s home across the country.

“Unjani?” I asked her how she was.

“Ngiyafa.” I am dying.

I stood at my window, staring at that message, unsure how to reply. She told me to call her a few hours later. When we spoke, she seemed to be saying goodbye.

“I am in grave condition,” she said. I asked whether she was going to the hospital later that day, and she said she was. I told her I hoped they would be able to help her.

“My brother, he will give you your camera.” She had borrowed my point-and-shoot.

“Sisi, that’s not important right now. I hope you feel better.”

It was difficult to hear her. Twenty minutes after the call, I called her back.

“I just want to let you know that you have been a great friend to me here.”

I couldn’t hear her response. I wondered if this would be the last time I’d speak to her. How was I supposed to process that? This woman is a few months younger than me, and she was lying among her family members, awaiting death. The tears came. There was nothing to do but wait. I wondered whether anyone would call me if – when – she died.

The next day I was in town. I messaged her in the morning, and I received no response. Was that it? After my meeting, I called her. My heart was pounding. She answered on the sixth ring.

“Sawubona, sisi, unjani?”

“Kuncono.” Better. She was doing better.

By that weekend, she was with her husband (who works in South Africa) and planning to come back home. As she had told me when she first fell ill: “I’m a fighter.” I’m so glad she is.