HER last meal was a chicken salad, from Casa Reccio in Hout Bay, followed by an ice-cream wafer and a banana.

This was at 20:00 on Saturday 4 February, four days before this reporter chatted to Bronwen Lankers-Byrne on Chapman’s Peak she is refusing to eat until construction of the R54m office building and toll plaza is stopped.

Nothing but water has since passed her lips.

She lies in the shade of a bush at the building site, where she is camping during the day, with the clanging sound of scaffolding going up.

Meanwhile, Lankers-Byrne says her pounding headache lifted on Wednesday morning.

She is no longer suffering from the nausea and vomiting she experienced during the first few days, but says she is tired and rests a lot.

“I have not been hungry until now,” she says and adds that she is saving a lot of time she would have spent on shopping, cooking, eating and washing up.

“I practise being present,” she explains when asked how she passes the time.

She does not read or listen to music, with the exception of newspaper articles about the plaza.

Lankers-Byrne was a Buddhist nun for two years, during which time she spent three months on a silent retreat in Burma. “I have mental and physical endurance,” she says, adding her resolve is strong.

“I am representing thousands of people,” she says.

Some of these people have rallied behind her. They stop to chat, bring her water, and sign the petition, which has more than 6 000 signatures. Some bring her flowers.

There are lighter moments. When she stands up, her shorts slip down, due to weight loss.

She exchanges friendly banter with the foreman, who wrote “out to lunch” on one of her placards, when she was attending a meeting.

Lankers-Byrne says some people are bemused by her decision, and that she overheard two Table Mountain National Park wardens wonder if she was going to die.

“I have been a free spirit for 10 years,” she explains. She has two grown children and her parents are in their late nineties.

“This, in a nutshell, is what is going on everywhere else,” she says, adding that citizens are getting wrapped up in deals government has made with big business. “It’s a small taste of a bigger issue. They are spending our money on something we don’t want, something we don’t need and then charging us for it. It’s crazy,”

When People’s Post spoke to Lankers-Byrne on Monday 13 February, nine days into her strike, she said she was “feeling very energised” She adds “hordes” have been visiting her and someone even donated a hammock.

To date, she has received no calls from Premier Helen Zille, whom she flagged down while Zille was cycling the pass, nor from Transport MEC Robin Carlisle.