Unable to find jobs after completing high school in a small mining town in Zimbabwe, friends Nkala and Jacob Banda saw their only hope in neighbouring South Africa.
Without passports and oblivious to the dangers that lay ahead, the pair left home pretending they were going to look for firewood and set off to the southern border town of Beitbridge.
But Banda failed to make it to the other side of the border. He drowned in the crocodile-infested Limpopo River. And for Nkala, life in South Africa turned out to be much more difficult than he had anticipated.
"We had no passports because we could not afford the cost of a passport as well as bus fare to the nearest city where there are passport offices," said Nkala, raised in the small mining town of Kwekwe.
He remembers his hometown fondly but said it was "so small one cannot sneeze without the entire community hearing and chorusing 'bless you'." He calls his country the Unstable State of Zimbabwe (USZ), and a place where "funerals were being postponed because there was no petrol at the gas stations.
"We both know it was dangerous and illegal, but being in Zimbabwe was dangerous," he said. While still mourning the loss of his childhood friend, Nkala landed a job as a tomato picker on a farm in South Africa's Limpopo province, earning a mere pittance.
Undeterred he set off for Cape Town through Johannesburg where he went for months knocking on one gate after another looking for a job while in the evening he slept rough outside a park.
There he would often see residents walking their dogs. In his wretched circumstances he even wished he was one of the well-kept dogs with their shiny healthy coats.... And now he relives his experience on a daily basis in his play.
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