Kid Moses

by Mark R. Thornton

  “Hey, child, what are you doing here? Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What happened to your feet?”

  “I need a lift.”

  “Where? Yes, well, get in, child. We’ll take you. What’s wrong with your feet? Where are you coming from?”

  Moses approached the car with caution. The woman opened her door and Moses squeezed in next to her. Her children watched silently from the back, and the man just watched it all from the side.

  “Don’t you be scared, child. I’m Mama Tesha.”

  The woman looked more closely at Moses, at his feet, his shirt.

  “What happened? Tell me, where you need to go?”

  Moses did not answer the woman, just looked at her. She was massive and her bottom filled most of the front seat, her husband just a thin stick beside her. Her eyebrows were stern, but her skin and lips looked soft. She held a black handbag on her lap and was wearing a nice dress, which squeezed in her wide bottom and breasts.

  They reached the main road and drove until they reached a town. They stopped by a small shop and the husband turned off the engine. The children jumped out of the car and the husband opened his door and stepped out. Mama Tesha stayed in the car with Moses.

  “So tell me, child. I don’t know where you want to go to.”

  She looked down at Moses, who stayed silent.

  “Okay, where do you live?”

  “Dar.”

  “Dar es Salaam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dar! What are you doing way out here? How did you get here?” Moses told the woman about the lorry, the old grey Peugeot, the man, the house and the liquor and Kioso. He told her about running through the forest and then sleeping by the road. Mama Tesha thought for a while, and clicked her tongue. Then she took Moses by the hand and walked down the dirt road to the town’s small police station.

  The police building was low and had an iron-sheet roof. It had once been whitewashed, but was now stained with birdshit and age. On the walls inside, there was a framed photograph of the president and a few yellowed papers tacked to a board. A policeman sat at a chipped wooden desk with a couple of drawers left open. On the desk was a rubber stamp, an inkpad and some loose papers, and behind him more papers were stacked and covered in gecko droppings. Mama Tesha and Moses approached.

  At first, Moses was silent—he didn’t like police. To him, they were just like the young men at the market and no better. But Mama Tesha made him feel safe, and after some time he spoke, telling the man in his white police uniform the same story he had told her, where the house was, and what had happened there. The policeman sucked food from his teeth and wrote notes slowly. Other policemen came out of other rooms, and they all chatted back and forth.

  The men took Mama Tesha aside and talked to her for a short while. Then they leaned down and told Moses that they knew the man he was talking about, and where he lived. They told him that he should wait at the police station with the woman, and that they would go to the man’s house to find Kioso.

  Much later, they came back. The police had found the man’s house, but no car and no man and no boy. Once again they spoke to Mama Tesha. Then they all stood in front of Moses and explained to him that Mama Tesha had been visiting family on the nearby farms, but was now travelling back to Dar where she lived. They said that he should drive back there with her, and that he would be safe. They told him that when they found Kioso, they would call her. One policeman leaned forward and held a piece of paper out in front of him for Moses to see.

  “See? We wrote this mama’s telephone number on this slip of paper.” He nodded in Mama Tesha’s direction. He pointed at the paper and looked at Moses. “We will keep this number, and when we find your friend, we will telephone her, and she will tell you. Don’t worry. We will find your friend.”

  Moses climbed in the car with the woman and her family, and they drove off back down the road to Dar es Salaam. And as they left the station, the policemen rose to go and drink tea, and the slip of paper slid to the floor and under the desk and to a place where things remain for a long time.

  Chapter 2

  Moses stayed that night in Dar in the home of Mama Tesha and her family. He didn’t sleep. He just lay there, listening to the sounds of the sleeping: the woman snoring and her husband and the many children breathing throughout the small house.

  He had seen kids disappear, even get killed a few times. He had seen other people die, had seen a car accident with a man and three women pulled out, laid out dead on the road with their heads broken and things spilling out of them.

  He had lost other friends like Kioso. There were other streetboys he had known better, for even longer, who had disappeared. But this was different. It wasn’t about things that happened around him. And it was in that other place out there, with that white man, that lorry they jumped onto, and him running away, leaving Kioso. He never used to cry about things like that. He used to cry about his father, but nobody else. But he cried though that night in the woman’s house.

  He understood the arrangement with the police. He should wait for them to telephone the woman and tell her about Kioso coming back. But he didn’t want to stay at the woman’s house, and he didn’t think why. He just stole some food from the cupboard and a pair of old sandals that belonged to one of her children, and went out the door.

  He walked for a long time that night. His feet were still sore, but he managed to walk all the way across the city to the harbour. He avoided the other people and cars moving about. The avenue was quiet and warm, and he passed some skinny prostitutes who asked, laughing, if he wanted to taste something sweet. At last he turned into the harbour road and crept across to the ship hull, crawled inside, lay down and slept.

  He slept long and hard that night, not moving at all. The plank under his back was the same it had always been, the creaking boards he squeezed through were the same too, and there were even old fruit peels and bits of rubbish from when he, Kioso, and the other boys had slept there some time before. And Kioso’s name was still scratched into the wood, as were the names of all the other kids who had ever stayed there. Ali, Mika, Heriel, Kioso, Moses.

  It was late when Moses woke the next morning, and it was already hot by the time he emerged from the ship hull. He walked to the market past the old homeless men, the orange vendor with the clubfeet, who waved a finger at him, and Prosper, who eyed him as he went along.

  He made his way through the market, past the fruit stalls, the meat stalls, the beans and spices and rice, the cooking pots and sarongs, past the sisal mats and the women selling powders of medicine in old Konyagi bottles. He gazed at the young men selling radios and cassettes and fancy new things, but kept going.

  Moses walked all the way back across town to Mama Tesha’s house. He asked her if she had heard from the police, and she asked him if he had seen her daughter’s sandals. Then she looked down at them on Moses’s feet, and laughed. But she stopped laughing, and told Moses, her hand on his shoulder, that she hadn’t heard anything yet. And Moses walked back to the harbour. No Kioso. Still gone up in the forest.

  The next day he went back again, and again, no luck, no call, no Kioso. And the next day, the same. For weeks, it became a sort of routine for him: wake up in the morning, walk to the market, beg for change, steal some food along the way, walk across town to Mama Tesha’s house, ask about Kioso, walk back, sleep in the ship hull. He didn’t wander at night any more.

  In the city, people went to certain places at the same time every day. They rested or ate in the same places at the same hour. Shops opened and closed the same way every day, except Saturdays and Sundays. Some things were different: the fish didn’t always arrive in the market, and sometimes when the moon was gone, the Muslims called the month Ramadan and refused to eat in the daylight. And even that was a routine.

  But the concept of routine had never before existed for Moses. When something happened, it happened, and when an opportunity came up, he took it. Otherwise, he slept un
der trees, sniffed glue now and then, smoked a joint or cigarette if somebody gave it to him, watched the world as it went on around him, and wanted things. Things: money, watches, cars, food, stuff. But since he had returned to Dar, he had developed this routine of waiting for Kioso.

  He also didn’t hang around with the other streetkids as much as he used to, except when they all went to beg on the street, and when they slept together in the ship hull. One night, the others asked him about Kioso, and he told them. They listened and ate what food they had, and went to sleep thinking about another boy gone from the street.

  One day, though, this routine took a twist. Moses walked through the market and started to make his way to Mama Tesha’s house. He passed the orange vendor with the clubfeet and snatched a piece of fruit for his journey, just like he did almost every day.

  But this time, the man grabbed him. Just like the old white man taking Kioso’s arm, this old man had his.

  “Now I got you!” The old man laughed.

  At first, Moses was surprised at how quickly the man moved for a cripple. He was puzzled, not scared, as the man kept laughing.

  “You think I never could see you coming, boy? You think I’m just an old cripple sitting here, not knowing what’s going on around me? Look around, little child! See all these people selling things, stealing things, running this way and that. Why do you think I’m still around? Because I watch everything and know it all too. That’s right.”

  Moses just stared at the man and listened. The man laughed again, keeping his grip on Moses’s arm, pointing and waving with the other hand as he continued his lecture.

  “And you don’t think I could have one of these boys around here take you for a beating, because you steal my fruit every day? You know that I know everybody in this market? I know everybody, everywhere. Every single last one of them, from the beggars to the thieves to the big men coming down in their fancy Mercedes-Benzes, even little panyas like you.

  “I was here before they even built this big thing here, and that over there—when there was just that mosque over the street, that duka there, and just a line of us with our stands selling our things. Nothing else, and not you either, you kids running all over.”

  The man kept laughing as if he’d been playing a game for a long time and had just won. Moses still said nothing, standing awkward and dumb in the old man’s grasp.

  “I want you to sit down here, child. I won’t hurt you.”

  Moses sat on a crate by the old man.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Moses.”

  “Why do you keep stealing my fruit?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Why do you never steal anyone else’s fruit? Like Hadija over there. Or any of those other people. In fact, you’re my best customer, except you never pay for any of it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, no. You tell me. Why do you steal only my fruit?”

  Moses looked around, then told the truth. “You are old. You can’t run. You got clubfeet.”

  “Does that make my fruit sweeter? It must be that I have the best fruit. You just say it’s the best because I’m old and got clubfeet.”

  Moses looked at the man.

  “Got clubfeet, but I caught you now, didn’t I?”

  The old man erupted into laughter once again, and Moses also started a hesitant laugh. The old man gave him an orange and took one off the stand for himself. They peeled their fruit and started to eat.

  “That is sweet! The sweetest orange in the whole market, says this boy Moses right here!” the old man shouted out to the marketplace. Some of the other vendors started to look and point and chuckle at the old man.

  “Listen, child. If you want fruit—even the sweetest fruit—you can have it. As much as you want, as much as your little panya mouth can hold. But you help me. Be here in the morning, early. I may be able to catch little rats like you by the arm, but I can’t lift those sacks off the truck, and the boy who was working for me left. I’ll give you food and some change. But you got to work, and you got to stay away from those older boys, and you got to stay out of the big roads. You’ll just get yourself killed.”

  “How much money will you give me?”

  “Now listen to you talking like a businessman. I’ll give you something. You don’t be picky, child.”

  “Okay. I can do that. I can be here.”

  “Good then. Early.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I have to go somewhere, but I will be here tomorrow.”

  “All right, then. See you tomorrow, Moses.”

  Moses grabbed an orange from the stand and headed off to Mama Tesha’s house before it got dark.

  Moses showed up for work the next day, and helped the old man unload his fruit. And the old man gave him food and a decent bit of change. So Moses got a new routine. He spent his mornings working and his afternoons checking with Mama Tesha, but no word came of Kioso.

  He thought again of his father and farms, but these ideas seemed even further away. What did seem real and recent was Kioso. He was still in his head. When someone yelled at him or a car hooted loudly, or when he saw fights at the market, he thought of Kioso. That one image stuck in his head: Kioso hanging motionless and limp in the man’s grasp, as he ran away.

  He had relived his run through the forest many times over the weeks and months since his return to Dar, and always the same things popped into his head: looking down at his foot with no sandal and walking across the field of dead maize stalks in the small light of night. Other times, though, he would sit and think of Kioso’s body.

  Guilt and worthlessness still lived strong in Moses’s stomach. He had never been responsible for anything or anyone in his life, but for those two days, he had the job of taking care of Kioso. Maybe because Kioso was small. Or because Moses had been on the streets for longer. Either way, it had happened that way. And Moses had left him.

  Over the months that Moses worked for the orange vendor, he saw the bully-crook Prosper most days. Prosper didn’t seem to grow up like the more successful crooks in town did. He had his big days—like when he showed up with some stolen radios. And he had his friends around him to tell him things were cool. He even had some new clothes, fancy shoes from America, sunglasses and all. But he was starting to lose something.

  As Moses spent more time at the market, he watched the mighty Prosper, who had so often haunted his occasional visits to the market, degenerate into a lazy kid too old for petty theft. And his friends started to leave him. One left for a real job down by the docks. Moses saw another one hawking plastic things by the road, and he no longer looked like trouble. Another landed in jail for a few nights before going back to Kenya. And they were replaced by two or three younger, more stupid assistants, who spent more time admiring girls and new watches than finding ways to get money.

  And every day Prosper watched Moses at work with the orange vendor. He watched him laugh at the old man’s stories. He watched him listen to the old man, laughing as he waved his hands about as if to compensate for the lameness of his legs. He watched Moses and the market itself. He saw new big men coming. He saw the idiots hanging around him. He saw things change, people growing older and taller than him. He felt like they were all moving forward on a train and he was just standing in the same place.

  Even some of the guys who used to be at his side had something now. He would scoff at them in public, mock their pathetic jobs, ask them if they felt big selling those plastic things by the road. He’d laugh out loud at them, but he couldn’t shake the vacant feeling in his body. Even that streetkid with the orange vendor, he thought, had some money now. Something, at least.

  Moses also watched the people: the other streetkids, the men delivering things in trucks, the taxi drivers, the young men like Prosper hanging around. Moses knew that Prosper was eyeing him, and Moses kept his distance.

  “I need to go early today,” Moses asked the old man one
day. “That okay? I’ll pack up first.”

  “What? Are you already tired of my stories, boy?”

  “Just need to go.”

  “Go on, then.”

  It was hot. Moses walked to the other side of the street in the shade, where the younger guys sold the cool things, and where Hussein with the skinny head and the Muslim cap sold cassettes.

  “Hi, Hussein.”

  “Eh, vipi Moses! Come here, little man. Listen to this.”

  Moses went around to the back of Hussein’s small shack and stepped inside. Music was blaring from a big radio, and cassettes were packed tight into every bit of space. There were some soda bottles on the floor and cigarettes and an ashtray, and Hussein smiling like he always did.

  “Here, listen to this, little man. This is something real good.”

  Hussein turned the volume dial up slowly, grinning and shaking his head.

  “Man, this is the new thing. Radi Bundala again. ‘The Master.’ This is his new song. Listen here, kid. C’mon and move like you’re in one of those discos on Mkwepu Street. Dancing with some nice big pretty woman. Like this, little man.”

  “I can dance, man. Radi’s cool.”

  Moses just sat and moved his head to the music, the Master calling out, watching Hussein shake his skinny legs, his skinny head and flop his arms up and down his sides. Moses rested his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees and listened.

  Ujamaa, sisters!

  Together, brothers!

  We walk!

  We fight!

  Together, brothers

  We unite!

  “That’s loud. Cool, kabisa.”

  Hussein lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke.

  “I need to go.”

  “You’ll miss the next song. It’s good,” said Hussein, blowing more smoke at the ceiling. “That’s the one they’re playing on the radio all the time now. The Master’s doing a concert at the stadium in a few months. It will be cool. I’m going.”

  Moses stepped out of Hussein’s stall, heading towards the big road to get to Mama Tesha’s house, singing the song in his head. He imagined the band playing their instruments, Radi singing, the guitars and the drums. And all the people watching, dancing, filling the stadium.