Sunlight bathes the quiet suburban life in the southernmost part of Africa.  The midday heat makes you move slowly through the park. You look at the sky and see the birds above the mountain and you try your best not to take an omen. It is hard not to feel a stitch of longing for the old ways and life as you once knew it. But when Sunday bowling and teatime melancholia turns into a light shimmering you know it is time to be on your way.  And as the sun is getting low and the daylight is slipping away the lines between this and that starts to get blurred. You really should be getting home. Driving along the freeway you pass the informal settlements that could just as well belong to another world.  But they don’t. They have been around as long as you can remember. The receding light evaporates quickly behind treetops and equal measures of fear and hope fills you up from the inside. You think of your daughter and your grand children. And you pray that their house will be safe from lions.  There is a sound outside your window, you swallow your breath but it is impossible to judge whether it is wind or man made. Lions sleep in the daytime but you never know what can happen as darkness falls. It is when evening turns into night that you are at your most vulnerable, separated from your loved ones and the darkest hours still ahead.