Toroye and the man hunted often. The man had a long bow and arrows like Toroye, and a quiver made of hard leather. On his bow were thick bands of eland hide and baboon fur, which Moses liked and actually thought were beautiful. He admired the bow’s polish, worn from the sweat of the hands that carried it, and from use and ability. It bent in a perfect arc. Initially, the bowstring was too tight for Moses to draw fully, but the man adjusted the tension and taught Moses to use it near the huts, until eventually Moses was able to hit tree-trunks at some distance. The man would always laugh when Moses’s shot was true.
Toroye and the man returned from their hunts sometimes with meat or honey, and sometimes with nothing at all. Once they returned with a lesser kudu. It had an almost bluish coat with stripes, white tear marks on its face, and a high spiral of horns. It was immense, and Toroye brought Moses over and gave him the knife and showed him how to cut out pieces.
But mainly Moses stayed in the hut or near it. He watched the man and woman, what they did, and how she worked. He saw them laugh, and the man would tell stories that would make Toroye giggle, with a child’s laugh. The man talked often. Around the fire each night, the man would tell long stories, with whistles and arms flailing about, and he would sometimes get up and re-enact scenes. Even Moses would laugh sometimes, in spite of not understanding the Ndorobo words.
But in the background of his thoughts, there always remained the horror of what had happened to Boyd, the violence of his death. There was something about the quantities of blood that haunted him. The wetness of blood on the earth. The speed of events. And the panic and his face pressed to the ground as he lay on his belly to escape the bullets. Then Boyd pulling him by the arm to shelter him from the bullets.
As time went on, however, his thoughts evolved from details into questions. Boyd had saved him—a person had actually died for him.
And he thought: Why would he do that?
At times, other Ndorobo men would show up at their camp, and one time, another man and woman. When visitors arrived, the couple would share their food, and everyone would eat. Some stayed a few days, eating their food and sleeping at their fire before moving on, disappearing one morning. And one day, the man and woman told Moses they were moving. Seasons were changing. Rains were coming and it was time to move to another part of the valley. One day they lived in huts, the next day they moved, carrying all that they had, which was little. Moses and Toroye went with them.
At a new location, they built small shelters like the last ones, and Moses again spent a lot of his time inside sleeping. The quick steps that had enabled him to survive at the harbour, and which had brought him to this place, were gone. He was, for the first time in his life, slow.
Moses would watch the woman from his resting place inside the hut. He could see her through the opening of the hut, making flour from baobab fruits, cooking and storing things, doing chores like preparing hides, getting water, tending the fire. He would look at her hair, which was short and uncared for and grey in places, not from age, but from dust and ash. Aside from crazy women on the streets, Moses had never seen a woman with such messy hair. In his experience, a woman’s hair was always a tidy thing, except in the mornings or those times when women were in the beauty salons getting their hair fixed up and made pretty. Or when women would sit on beer crates or stools outside the shops and braid each other’s hair.
Moses thought of Grace and the few nights he had spent in her small room, and of her frizzled hair when she woke up in the morning. He remembered eating tripe soup with her. He was glad he had never stolen anything from her room. She was just a regular young woman when she took off all the prostitute clothes and make-up. Moses thought of the picture in her room, of the family near some farm. Maybe she was just like him, with a father from a farm where people worked in fields and everyone stayed together. And she went to the city to make money. She had a room, yes, but not a whole lot of things—just some clothes, a bed, a cooker, what else? Spending her time standing on street corners. Having to give sex to men. She had more money than he ever did, though. More money than Toroye and the man and the woman. They didn’t have any money. Nowhere and nothing to spend it on out here.
In fact, they were sort of like him. No home—just a pile of sticks—no job, no money. Moving around from place to place, going where the getting was good and life a bit easier. Like him, he thought, just surviving. But not like him, he also thought. Not at all. Somehow, moving around, finding food, surviving in this place—for them, it made sense, it seemed right. They belonged here. He watched the woman sitting under the shade of a tree pounding the fruits into flour, singing a song to herself he couldn’t understand. He looked at her and saw that she was happy. He realised that she did not look like she wanted to be somewhere else. In Dar, everyone looked like they wanted to be somewhere else.
Moses lay on his side to rest. He continued to watch the woman until he fell asleep, and when he dreamed, he dreamed of Grace.
They walked out of her room to go and eat. Then he left her and walked to Mama Tesha’s house to ask about Kioso. He roamed the streets like always, and saw hundreds of young men slouched against a wall. A truck passed by, dragging an exhaust pipe, and the crowd turned to listen to it grating along the road. The driver seemed not to notice or care. The line of youths stretched further than Moses could see. Moses could see their mouths moving, in a constant murmur of unintelligible nonsense like the droning of a boat engine. Then all he could see were their mouths, and they were silent, just hundreds of lips moving up and down like gaping fish mouths. What were they waiting for?
He walked on down the line to where a man sat at a desk with papers. He stamped things and the men waited. The man at the desk wrote things slowly. Moses could see the letters, each one written, a big “S” or “D” in dark ink. The man was short but large and sweating, and had a fishbone sticking out from his pocket. Some of the men in the line were impatient, others held their hands over their heads to block out the sun. Some had blank expressions, as if not wanting to see the line stretching before them, or the slowness of the man at the desk. They all stood there trying for something, but knowing that there was probably no point.
Moses knocked at Mama Tesha’s door and she told him that the police had called her and that they had found Kioso. She led Moses inside by the arm and sat him down and told him that Kioso was dead, that the white man had killed him. She gave Moses a soda with a straw, and he held it, but did not drink. He wanted to know more, but she didn’t tell him anything else, just looked at him with her eyebrows tucked in. She stood up and over him and looked down on him as if to say “You are no good and worthless.”
“Come drink,” said the woman as she crouched at the entrance of the hut. She held a chipped tin cup towards him filled with hot dark red fluid.
“Drink.” She motioned with her hands. Moses sat up and took the cup and blew at the steam and took a small sip. The woman left and tended the fire. Moses thought back to his dream as he drank.
When Moses stepped outside the hut, he vomited, and the woman approved. The drink was good for him, she told him. She said he should not drink water now, but rather sit next to her in the shade. She did not smile much, but her forehead was full of expression. When she spoke or sang, six or seven lines on her forehead wrinkled together. Although the woman spoke some Swahili, she preferred to speak to Moses in her language, even though Moses could not understand the words.
She touched Moses. At times when he lay down, he would feel her touch his head, his hand. One time he woke to find her rubbing the top of his hand. When he opened his eyes, she continued looking at him and rubbing his hand. When she gave him a drink or food, she often touched him when handing it to him. At first, Moses found it was strange, foreign even, the gentle touch. But after a while, it became normal, and he did not notice it any more.
Toroye and the man came back that day with no food. They had hunted hard and long, spending the night out in the bush. When they walked ba
ck into camp silently at midday, Moses stood up. He watched them lay their bows against a tree, sit without speaking, and then take food handed to them by the woman. Moses wanted to ask about the hunt and why they had not gotten anything, but knew better.
The men ate and then slept. Moses thought about the day when he and Toroye had first encountered the couple collecting honey. They had now stayed with them for some time, and the couple never seemed to ask why or for how long they intended staying. He and Toroye ate their food, slept in their huts, accepted their nurturing. They gave, but asked for nothing in return. Other Ndorobo would arrive from time to time, and would also eat and sleep and leave with little spoken thanks. Everything seemed to belong to everyone here, for people owned what the land could give them, and the land belonged to everyone. Or was it that nothing belonged to anybody? But they had nothing, in a place where there were no things, just land and sky and fruits and animals. Water and trees and rocks and caves in which to sleep out of the wind and rain.
The next day Toroye and the man left early and returned early too, with an antelope as small as a small dog. After they brought it back and skinned and jointed it, Moses picked up the head, a tiny thing, and cupped it in his hands. Its eyes were very large and its nose was strange and tube-like. To Moses, the nose looked like those of the fish he had seen in the market by the harbour. Moses held up the head by its tiny horns so its petite face looked back at him. He went behind the huts and into the low brush and buried it. He did not know why. The hole was deep and good, not like the scrape he had made when he had tried to bury Kioso, and he took care when he pushed soil back over it. Handful by handful, he sprinkled earth over the head, covering the grave.
When he returned to the fire where Toroye and the man and woman were cooking the meat, they took him by the arm, made him sit and eat, and then laughed and told him that they had never seen anyone bury a dik-dik head before. “That’s food to eat, not bury in the ground!” Toroye laughed his childlike giggle, and passed a small antelope leg to Moses to eat.
That night he fell asleep in the hut, listening to Toroye breathe deep and loud beside him. It was a warm night, with a soft breeze coming through the twigs of their hut. When he stepped outside in the night to piss, he looked at the stars and the half moon overhead, visible through the clouds passing beneath them.
After some days, Toroye said Moses was not ill any more and that it was time to leave. Time to take Moses back to where he came from. Toroye packed some meat, and told Moses they would walk for a couple days to a small village, and from there they would find a truck, and the truck could take Moses back to Bangata.
Moses thanked the man and the woman, and the woman touched his head and turned and went back to her work. And Toroye and Moses walked out of camp.
Moses went silently but sadly. He did not protest, and it did not occur to him to do so, but as he walked away through the bush, he felt as if he was being evicted, hurried away. He still had things he needed to say, to complete. It was all too sudden for him. Why did he have to leave?
But he followed Toroye obediently, redirecting his emotions back inside, as he had done so many times in the past in order to survive. Kioso, Boyd—they are dead people. Toroye and these people—they don’t want me and soon they will be gone too. It’s just me, and that’s how it is.
After two nights and a day they arrived in a small village, where they found an old truck driven by a Maasai man. The truck bed was full of Maasai, goats, and sacks of maize-meal. Toroye talked to the driver and gave him money, which Boyd had previously paid him. Moses climbed into the truck bed. He told the driver not to let the boy off until he reached Bangata. After that, Moses would return to the school on his own.
Toroye turned to Moses and put his hand on his head. “Nenda salama, child.” Moses did not respond. He had nothing he could say, so he sat on a bag of maize-meal as the truck started down the road, and waved at Toroye, who turned and walked back into the bush.
The truck bounced, spat, coughed, and sent dust over and onto the passengers in the back. The journey reminded Moses of the time with Kioso in the big lorry, when they jumped out and met the old white man. The Maasai man who owned the goats chatted to Moses about his family, asking where he was from, where he was going, and how old he was. Moses responded to the man in a friendly way, without answering any of his questions. The man liked to laugh and joke with others on the truck, and he made Moses laugh too.
They stopped at a small settlement where some people got out and more got on. They carried on and stopped again after an hour, and the man with the goats climbed out. Moses helped him lift the goats over the tailgate of the truck and to the ground. “Thanks, child! Go well!” Moses waved at him and the man walked to the side of the road where he was greeted by his friends and children.
When they reached Bangata, the truck stopped for the last time. Everyone was relieved to get out of the bumpy truck and onto firm ground. The passengers departed in different directions, and the truck driver went into a bar. Moses stood by the truck and looked at the road that went up to the school. He remembered when he and Kioso had first set out on their journey. He thought of himself before the journey as one thinks of another person. To Moses, it seemed that if he met that person now, he would not like him. In fact, he would hate him. Then Moses thought of people he did like. People he wanted to be around. He thought of Toroye and the man and woman in the bush. These people did not fight. They were not violent or cruel. They did not shoot people. They did not beat people. They did not look at him like he was an animal. They did not hate him. He thought about it some more: they shared with each other, they gave food, they sheltered people by their fire.
Moses sat on a beer crate outside the bar by the road, thinking of all the people he knew. He thought about the old man with clubfeet. He wondered what happened to him, and if he was still alive and selling oranges. He hoped that he was, that he was the kind of old man who lived forever.
Moses looked up again at the road leading to the school. It was where he was supposed to go, but Moses never went where he was supposed to go. Instead he sat in the cold evening air on the crate of empty beer bottles. When the shop closed and the owner took the crate back into his shop, Moses sat on the ground. It grew late and people dispersed, going to their homes and kitchens, children and beds. But Moses felt no cold that night. Eventually he lay down on the ground, just as Toroye would have done, and went to sleep.
The following morning, he rose early and walked onto the road leading east out of town. The big road, the one going far to the ocean and to Dar es Salaam. The road the big trucks drove, travelling between two different worlds—Dar es Salaam and everything else. Moses walked on, the dust from his heels reminding him of when he had walked in the bush with Toroye. He imitated Toroye’s walk, which he had come to know well. It made him laugh, walking along in Toroye’s choppy gait. When he had had enough walking, he asked for rides from the passing lorries, and eventually one driver stopped for him. He was lucky, because after his long time in the bush, he looked worse than any homeless streetkid. Surprisingly, his sandals had survived the journey, but his clothes were filthy and more stained than ever, and he smelled of a different world, of smoke, fat, livestock, dust. The driver eyed him carefully.
“What are you doing? Walking the highway? Where are you going?”
“Dar es Salaam.”
“Dar?” The man—young, with an earring—whistled and laughed. He then opened the door for Moses. And Moses climbed aboard.
“Dar, eh? Wewe kichaa, man!” The man shook his head, laughing, put the truck into gear and started down the highway.
Chapter 10
The sun was up now, and the morning had changed from gentle morning, which Moses enjoyed, into angry morning of sun and dust and noise. He sat on a broken slab of concrete with a tangle of iron cables sticking from its side. He watched the road and the people. The hawkers selling newspapers and cigarettes, the people going to work and the people doing n
othing, just sitting like he was. Matatus passed, horns hooted, people yelled. A fat woman drove by in a small Peugeot. Moses knew she was fat just from the way she sat in the car. Then some birds landed near him and called. Moses looked up into the tree across from him, and saw them sitting on a branch. He watched them and noticed what they did, the way they sang.
It used to be his place, this stretch of road. He was briefly entertained by recognising some faces, shops, and habits. The Indian shop owner stepped out from his store to inspect the chaos of the day, his expression cynical, as if to say, “See what I mean? Just look at these people.” He was overweight and his shirt yellowed from days inside the musty shop, smoking black tobacco and chewing betel nut.
After a while, Moses looked over the scene with less interest and rose to leave it.
Back across the open yard and the rail tracks, he passed the glittering broken glass scattered on the ground and the flapping of plastic bags ensnared in the lone acacia tree. The tree stood by itself in the yard, a stubborn reminder of how things might have once looked. Every limb was decorated with plastic bags tangled in its thorns. Moses thought briefly of the piece of plastic bag he had found in the wilderness, and how he had kept it. And the bottle-tops. Here, such things were everywhere. Bottle-tops by the thousands, plastic bags, smouldering piles of burning rubbish, oil stains on the earth where a car had once been repaired. Here he picked up none of it, and walked down further towards the harbour.
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