Ndong.

The ocher jacket and orange hat on this t-shirt are just fabric; what Ndong truly inherits from his father shows less. Nzé lives apart, in a place he built himself, and only shows up in the dry season: he stays a few weeks and leaves again. Once a year, father and son go out together for shoe-last wood, a whole morning there and back, with barely thirty sentences between them. Each of them lives, in his own way, the same life. And neither has ever said it out loud.

On this t-shirt you're wearing Ndong face on. What the garment doesn't show is who walks through his bedroom door without warning: his little brother, Bekale, went down to Libreville to look for work and is still looking. He turns up at the room in Owendo whenever he wants, with his own set of keys since the first month — nobody refused him, no need to — and leaves just as fast. Ndong has never asked him how long he plans to stay: he knows what it's like to turn up at someone else's place unannounced, and he'd rather keep that to himself.