Describe a person you enjoy talking to

The person who I enjoy talking to the most is my friend Sipho. We were roommates at university in Johannesburg for three years, but after we graduated he moved to Cape Town for a job, so now we live very far from each other.

We talk about everything. Of course football, because he supports Orlando Pirates and I support Kaizer Chiefs, so we are always arguing. But we also talk about books, politics and our plans of the future. Sometimes we discuss about really stupid things, for example last month we argued for one hour if a hot dog is a sandwich.

Every Sunday night we make a long conversation on the phone, normally one hour or more. During the week we send voice notes to each other, sometimes they are five minutes long, which is a bit crazy.

I enjoy talking to him because he is a really good listener. When I tell him something, he asks questions and he remember small details from weeks before. Also he is not afraid to disagree with me, but he never makes it personal. For example, when I wanted to quit my job last year, everybody told me it's a great idea, but Sipho asked me very difficult questions and in the end I changed my mind. After our conversations I always feel more clearer in my head.

I'd have to say my friend Sipho. We shared a flat for three years while we were studying in Johannesburg, and after graduation he took a job in Cape Town, so these days we're about fourteen hundred kilometres apart.

We talk about pretty much everything. Football takes up a worrying amount of time, because he's a Pirates fan and I support Chiefs, so there's always something to wind each other up about. But we'll also get into books we're reading, what's going on in the politics, and where we both want to be in five years. And every so often we'll spend an entire evening on something completely pointless; last month we argued for nearly an hour about whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich.

We've got a standing arrangement to call every Sunday night, and those calls rarely last less than an hour. In between, we fire voice notes back and forth, some of them so long they're basically podcasts.

The reason I enjoy talking to him is that he actually listens. He'll bring up something I mentioned weeks before, which makes you feel that what you say matters. He's also not afraid to disagree. Last year, when I was about to resign from my job on impulse, everyone else said 'go for it', whereas Sipho kept asking awkward questions until I realised I was running away from a bad manager rather than towards anything better. I came off that call with a completely different plan. That's the thing; I always hang up seeing things a bit more clearly.

Without a doubt it's my friend Sipho. We shared a cramped flat in Johannesburg all the way through university, and when he landed a job in Cape Town after graduating, I was worried we'd drift apart. If anything, the opposite happened.

Our conversations range all over the place. A ridiculous proportion is football, since he's a die-hard Pirates supporter and I'm a Chiefs man, which gives us endless ammunition. But we'll just as easily drift into whatever we're reading, the state of the country, or where we each see ourselves in a few years. And now and then we'll pour an entire evening into something utterly trivial; we once spent almost an hour debating whether a hot dog qualifies as a sandwich, and neither of us has backed down since.

There's an unwritten rule that we speak every Sunday night, and those calls seldom wrap up in under an hour. During the week we keep up a running exchange of voice notes, some of which go on so long they'd qualify as podcasts.

What makes talking to him such a pleasure is that he genuinely listens, which is rarer than it should be. He'll pick up on a throwaway comment I made a fortnight earlier and ask how it turned out. He's also prepared to tell me what I don't want to hear. When I was on the verge of quitting my job on a whim last year, everyone else cheered me on, but Sipho gently kept probing until I admitted I was escaping a difficult manager rather than heading for anything better. I always come away from our calls thinking more clearly than when I picked up the phone.