zodwa: the one that stands alone

I have always been the only woman on a building site....the rest have been men. The first real building site , in terms of major construction,  I worked on was the one at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg. A large open sky shopping mall. When I started out there I was 4 months pregnant with my daughter, Siyandza. I used to pull up in my white beetle, my full body fitting blue overall and a compulsary hard hat. I was the only woman.....Zodwa was the name the guys gave me. The one that stands alone. I would climb up and down scaffolding because in those early stages of building there were no stairs...they weren't constructed yet. I would go up down between 3 floors. Crazy stuff.
Then I went to give birth, the 9th of October.  It was in 2001 when Bin Laden became a household name, we all knew about him and he was all over the newspapers....Siyandza was born and when I came back to work a month later, [yes they make them tough in Africa], the guys called her Bin Laden....in fact her name is truly beautiful and is siSwati and means we are growing as a nation, as a people.