Donate Fiction

The trek of Lucky’s life

The day opened in the same way; the indifference of the street. The weather prophesied the same journeys; from street to street, car to car, man with a bag to the other and many others. It was the same moderate cacophony that would grow violent as the day grew. As usual, the sun rays, though halfway blocked by one of the highest buildings, Mapera, smiled to Ayen in a joyous mood; that betrayal that only Ayen understood. They pointed sharply into her eyes. She tried to dodge them, but it was all a miss; one side was a wall that supported the veranda which was always a home for her and her family. The other side was another group of people of her caliber, and on the right was a big ramshackle of electric equipment- it was an example of a transformer. She still needed the warmth to chase way the whole night coldness on and in her body. So, our Lucky persevered the sun. She only endeavoured to protect her two daughters from its violence by covering them with a green greasy lesu.

It was already 7:30am and Lucky was still a big pile of mass on the veranda of Nabwama House. She was deep asleep. Achayo, her first born had already scrambled herself out of the old lesu, washed her face with dry empty hands and stood leaning against the wall and facing the old taxi park. Achayo’s eyes spoke a lot about her. She was an intelligent girl at that young age. At fourteen, Linda Achayo was already in senior three. These memories made sense to no one else but her; why could one boast about having only two report cards of senior three? She had not completed the class but had hope to go back and make it. This is the optimism that Peter had; to pull his leg off the boat and start walking on water towards his master, Jesus Christ and there after only his master had to pick him from the death that was to befall him. Unfortunately for Achayo, she did not know her master. Did she even have one?

Before coming to Kampala, Linda Achayo had been a happy student of Akipong Secondary School in Lango region. She had done her form one and two from there and passed in first grade. If problems had wings, perhaps some violent wind would have blown them away. Her education came to a standstill when one morning she came back from school and found her father lamenting. He held a machete and an axe, each in one hand. He was shouting on top of his voice. He vowed to die with someone. Being young, Achayo only remembers a few words of her furious father that day:

            “This land belonged to my father, his father and the father of my father’s father. No one will take it away from me or my family.”

Achayo’s memories about this day drove into a frightening nightmare when she reflected the scene in which her father had swung the machete and the chairman’s ear in a second was flapping on the ground. Oum Ochan, as he preferred calling himself was a strong man. He would have killed someone if it had not been for the six army men that descended on him in a blink to have him disarmed. The army men in red caps had taken him in a whirl of sirens to an unknown place where he stayed for two weeks.

When Oum came back, he was only welcomed by a pile of the components of his house collected under one of the Mvule trees far away from his house’s former position. His two children and wife were under a mango tree, which the tractor in a few minutes was coming to put down too. Oum Ochan stood agape. He was lost in wonder. This thing of land grabbing, he thought was TV and radio games. He looked at his former cassava plantation and saw that only three or even less stems were still on ground. The excavators were doing the clearing while the tracks brought in other construction materials. They were not constructing for him a house. They were sending him off the land. A BIG MAN had claimed he owned the land before even Oum’s ancestors. The TV and radio games were now real. Oum thought his wife called him by his Christian name, James. He turned sharply to go where she was and saw that the army men were beside him with guns whose knives were sharply pointing at him and to everyone else around.

“James.” He heard again as he contemplated sacrificing himself, get one of the security men, grab a gun from him and shoot at least someone before they killed him. He came out of his aimless slumber and went to his wife

            “James, those men are killers. Don’t think about it. I know what you are capable of doing, but it is late just like it has always been. We shall never fight them. They never come alone and they are not the ones. Leave the army men. They may be innocent.” Oum had always listened to his wife on several incidences. Ayen too was a very intelligent woman as she always spoke with discernment. Oum froze and sank onto the ground like a rotten papaya. The rest of the villagers watched and mourned; the lamentation of defenselessness. “Otuqwi otuqwi!” some were heard exclaiming, and others in unison calling their mothers, “Okwe toto ka!” a cloud of somberness, anger and fear filled the atmosphere. The sky released a few drops in appreciation of the excavators’ job.

As Achayo stood thinking about this cause of her education’s shake, her heart was filled with bitterness. Do people not sing education as a right to every child? Am I not a child like other children? She asked herself that very morning but a voice in her told her she was condemning her parents. Education is a right but her parents must play a role. They were doing that; her mother was going to deploy them as usual to different streets to beg and very soon, she would get fees. The cars were increasing on Ben Kiwanuka Street, and the city was coming to its usual beauty of stench, heat, congestion, jam, theft and begging- a business for Achayo and her family members.

Achayo did not realise she had taken more than enough vitamin D that it was becoming dangerous to her body. “How time flies,” she said as she scratched her dark glittering hands. That girl who was the opposite of her young sister, Leah Akello. Unlike Leah, Linda had a very shiny dark skin that needed no jerry to beautify. Her slender and attractive morphology contrasted itself in the dirty oversize clothes she was always found in. Her curly black hair was another miracle; women of class that had shops on Nabwama and Annet buildings always adored the hair of a street girl. They always wanted to sit with her for longer hours, the idea she liked but she could turn down their desires to go for her duties on streets. The ladies missed Achayo’s stories whenever she could see a potential customer with a briefcase or an expensive car and she could run to them for business. It was even worse when she could come back with nothing from them. It was a double loss to these ladies; she would never go back to tell the interesting stories for the embarrassment she came back with.

It was now 9:30am. By this time, Ayen Lucky was up on her feet. She did not know where her husband was. Lucky was always an early bird, but not as sharp as Oum. As a father, he maintained his status as when he was in a normal home. He would go very early and get some breakfast. His customers were people who came from overnights or early morning prayers. They could give him between two to five hundred shillings. This was always enough for his family’s first meal of fried cassava and some water which they always collected from the roofs when it rained.

Ayen inspected her daughter at a distance as she had moved to a nearby shop owner who she was helping to open the heavy door. Watching her daughter closely, Ayen thought she would marry a street kid if she was a man. How hardworking and determined her daughter was! The one year they were finishing on the street, she had never had any dubious behaviour about her daughter. She offered a hand to whoever dared to ask for help from a street kid. She spoke thoughtfully, and only got angry when she thought about her hampered education. Ayen knew this and it made her work harder and beg with all her effort. She learnt to also avoid the topic of her studies as much as possible.

Achayo saw her mother put back their rags in the sack and ran to her. “Good morning mother,” she said and ran back to her thoughts. Was it really a good morning at all? How silly I am!

Her mother understood her daughter well and could tell what she was thinking about as she gazed at her reflective face. She said, “It is a bright morning, Linda. I over slept towards dawn, but my dreams worry me a lot”

“They are just dreams, mother. You don’t need to worry about them.” she said as she organized and caressed her mother’s hair, picking the small twigs and green threads from it. she had always taken that responsibility of ensuring her mother was smart in her torn green old decrepit of a gomesi.

“Linda, what does it mean when you dream…. You know… okay.” She thought she was burdening her daughter by asking her to be a Daniel, but when she thought it fine for herself to be king Nebuchadnezzar, she gained confidence and went on, “I dreamt we had a bull. A very big bull and very beautiful. It respected and feared all of us, family members. We always fed it, but I wonder why this day it had hands and brought food for us instead. People came and covered our bull with pawpaw leaves and though it fought back, it could not lift the leaves off itself and it died.”

Jokingly, Achayo asked, “And where were we?” she turned and stood arms akimbo, but realizing she is now Belteshazzar, she humbled herself before her mother and listened.

“We simply watched and cried and that is all.” When Ayen said this, she felt the guilt pierce deep in her heart. She did not feel this in the dream. She looked at her daughter, who at this time was searching her mind for some answer to console her mother. Lucky took a deep sigh and said, “Perhaps as you said it is nothing. It is just a dream.?

“Mother, don’t you think you need to start praying the way you used to?” This was not Achayo’s voice. Lucky looked behind and saw Leah squatting on a stone her husband always sat on during time for meals. “That dream is a bad one. I was young but I knew you always prayed, mother. Why don’t you pray again?”

Lucky’s heart throbbed again painfully. She thought why she had given up on her God. Since the land grabbing scandal back in her village, Ayen had never gained confidence in prayer again. As a Christian, she must have missed sermons on 1 Peter 4: 12-13. She felt guilty again that her daughter had such a past at heart. A primary six school dropout was less than ten years by then, but her reminder to her mother was a thorn. It was Achayo who broke the little cell’s silence when she suggested she should find where her father was and ask for something to eat. Ayen affirmed that and advised her to come back soon with or without him so that they could also start their own journeys.

Just before Achayo moved five meters away, she met her father, and they came back together. The three concealed the information about the dream although all of them were hurting. After their usual first meal, the four family members dispersed, each to their own street- Ben Kiwanuka, Entebbe road Jinja road, and William road

At midday, Noah had closed the ark, and the effect was a heavy downpour. The rain that always saw nothing but only strong buildings standing in their normal positions; some cars would be seen floating in flooded streets of the city. Some people’s businesses were carried away, and this was always expected, so, people were ready for that view either on TV or physically.

Having stopped, the street was full of people; those looking for where to pass, some reassembling their businesses, some rescuing the flooded commodities and others simply having a view of the after-rain. Achayo and her mother were among those watching the flooded street. This was the street that was their home. They clearly saw that the shops on Nabwama House had been flooded, and under the very veranda they kept their sweaty belongings was an arm of Lake Victoria. Lucky consoled herself for having life since she was able to see her daughters.

Something funny, however, was happening. The police were busy, not fetching water from these shops. They were pulling something from the dirty water. Was it even something? Achayo remembered that it was her mother who kept the money they had got for her fees as they looked for the balance. The 80,000 Ugandan shillings were in that luggage that they had left behind and were now looking for 30,000 Ugandan shillings to go back to school at Kolo Secondary School. It was in a tiny bottle that no one could suspect. Was it the luggage the police were pulling out of the floods? Did they want to take such small amounts? “Mother, my fees.” She said looking at her mother directly in the face.

Ayen had the same thought but this was not a luggage. It was a human being. She did not know why she went bananas. Her heart was on a race. When the police pulled out the body, Ayen, Achayo, and Akello were astonished. Oum Ochan James, the head of the family, was dead.

“We told Oum to stop putting that red cap on his head.” One person in the crowd said in a sharp voice. “Now see what Sseka is doing also. Why should you take money for a street kid? Bring back that money.” The owner of the voice continued. He was a man in blue sandals and a pink T. shirt. He said this pointing at a fat smartly dressed man who had folded his trouser to the knees and was moving in the water. He felt ashamed and entered his range rover and drove away, but with the money. Achayo saw her school fees develop Kenyan legs, leaving her lonely and increasing her long stay away from school. People knew Oum loved politics. The last time they saw him actively engaged was when the police was chasing away people from Entebbe road to prevent the possible violence from Kyaga’s supporters for he was using the street from the Airport. Kyaga was a raising strong politician who was turning the wave of the politics of the country. Oum had stood firmly and told the police how his life was useless and he did not fear death. He said it was every person’s right to participate in politics and support whoever they wanted as their leader. The other supporters had used the chance to storm the street and the police found it difficult to manage the situation had it not been the army.

People would not only miss his political arguments but also his grave; where could he be buried? KCCA, the managing authority of the city knew better the fate of Oum’s body after long stay in the mortuary. Achayo knew better which side of bread was buttered; street life or her husband’s body? She chose to have hope in life and her daughters.

Six months down the road, Oum was forgotten and the life on the street was the same to many. However, for Ayen Lucky, now a widow, life was difficult. Oum had left her pregnant. At night one Friday, she got labour pains. Determined, she entered Nakivubo Channel, ready to give birth there rather than on the street where everyone would see. Her daughter, Achayo, who looked for her mother in vain smelt a rat and sure enough she saw her enter the channel. She alarmed in a piercing voice and two other girls helped her mother to Mukasa government hospital, where she found no doctor. All doctors had gone to prepare for the coming Independence Day, save two who had also just visited their lovers two hours back.

The askari felt pity and by the spirit of a good Samaritan used the hearsays about nursing to help Ayen be delivered just outside the hospital. It was successful but the young girls, due to fear could not remain there. They had all scattered and the askari was stranded. Ayen was asleep by this time. The askari called for a boda boda and set Ayen on it. Directions where given and in ten minutes time, the rider was in Kisenyi. The weak Ayen was put in the house unconscious. “That is all I can do for you young woman,” the askari said as she moved back to her duties. She had five more hours at work till morning. 

It was a day of elections. Ayen’s heart was warm and fast beating. She wondered if she had not become her late husband in character; that political fanatic. She thought her death was near too. She moved with vigor to vote for a person who would rectify the situations; education, health facilities, infrastructure, fight for the poor and helpless. She only woke up from this dream to see a flask near her. She was in the askari’s room. Her baby boy, very pink in a small black cloth lay just beside her on her right-hand side. Leah Akello was just on another bed in the opposite direction deep asleep.