I moved to the city with $60 and my mother's blessing. That was three years ago.

When I told my mother I was going to Joburg, she did not cry. She did not try to stop me. She went into the kitchen. She came back with a folded 500-rand note and a plastic bag containing two cooked eggs, a peanut butter sandwich, and a small pot of vaseline. She said: 'You will come home if you need to. You will not come home before you need to.'

That was three years ago. I was fifteen. I had been offered a place at a school in Sandton that costs more, per term, than my mother makes in a year. A stranger in Johannesburg — a former teacher of my aunt's — had agreed to house me. My mother had never met her. My mother sent me anyway.

She did not send me with money. She sent me with a sentence. The sentence has held up better.

“

She did not send me with money. She sent me with a sentence. The sentence has held up better.

— Nomvula Dlamini

I have not been home in nine months. I miss my mother's food. I miss the smell of the road after the rain in KwaZulu-Natal. I miss the specific, non-negotiable way my grandmother says my name. But I do not miss the version of me that would have stayed. That girl was very kind. She would have been a very kind adult. She would not have been this one.

When people ask me if it was worth it, I do not know what to say. I think the honest answer is: ask me at thirty. My mother is waiting. She has not asked. She, alone among adults, seems to know that the question is not urgent. The girl is doing the work. The girl will report back.