The Shared Tap in Bandalungwa

In the parcelle there is one tap. It stands in the middle of the yard, a metal pipe with a brass handle, and everything in the compound happens around it. Washing basins. Children with yellow jerrycans. Mama Nsimba rinsing cassava leaves for pondu. Early morning the queue is long and noisy, and the rumba from the bar on the corner has not yet started.

Mama Bijou and Mama Nsimba have lived on opposite sides of that yard for nine years. They have watched each other's children grow. They have shared charcoal when one ran out. Until the water bill came in July.

It was much higher than usual. Mama Bijou said, loudly and in front of everyone, that it was because Mama Nsimba's son washes taxis in the yard. Mama Nsimba said worse things back. Things about Bijou's late husband. Things you cannot unsay. Children were listening. The whole parcelle went quiet.

Since then, four months of silence. They time their trips to the tap so they do not meet. Their children, who used to play together, have been told not to. The bill was paid, eventually, split by the landlord. But nobody felt better.

Mama Bijou is the one telling this story, so it is fair to say she was hurt. What Nsimba said about her husband was cruel. But in the evenings, when she sat alone under the mango tree, she also remembered what she had said first, and how loudly.

In November the women's group at her church was studying Ephesians. The leader asked each woman to read a verse aloud. Mama Bijou got chapter four, verse thirty-two. She read it in Lingala, and her voice caught halfway: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Even as God has forgiven you. Not because the other person deserves it. Not after they apologise first. Because you yourself have been forgiven so much. She sat down and did not speak for the rest of the meeting.

The next morning she got up before the queue. When Mama Nsimba came out with her basin, Bijou was already standing by the tap. She did not make a speech. She said, “Mbote, ndeko.” Hello, my sister. Then she said, “I spoke badly about your son in July. In front of everyone. I am sorry.”

Nsimba looked at her for a long moment. She did not apologise back. Not that day. She only said, “Matondo,” thank you, and filled her basin, and went inside. Bijou felt foolish. She also felt lighter.

It took weeks. There was no big reconciliation. But one Saturday, Nsimba's daughter came across the yard with a plate of pondu and said her mother had cooked too much. Bijou sent back a bowl of beans. The children play together again. The words about her husband have still never been taken back, and some days that still stings. But the tap is just a tap again, and the yard is loud again in the mornings, the way a yard should be.