The homelands: South Africa's dumping grounds. Crossing borders in and out of these imaginary countries is another one of apartheid's absurd rituals that have become accepted as just the way things are.

The European feel of the South African cities gives way to Appalachian-like towns and simple villages and the honorable poverty of the Xhosa people. A full moon rises over rondevals that proclaim their independence on the mountain crest as travelers grope their way through the stubborn mist that, just like the sudden pockets of adjacent South Africa, is predictable only to those who have lived their lives here. Driving is a carnival of dodging cows and goats and sojourners on their silent march to nowhere.

Rainy afternoon dreariness is splintered by streams of light that, like long golden fingers, reach through the clouds to touch impoverished red rock hillsides, and the villages that ache from the apartheid that has raided them of their men.

The fingers continue to search until they touch certain women and embrace them, raising them to fierce strengths that would test any warrior's courage. The strength is proclaimed in the song of motherhood of children and nation. The women raise their harmonies of simple compassion and secretive laughter as though this is a joke that, like the mist, an outsider could never really understand.