The Child who followed me Home

One day I acquired a child. I didn’t mean to though. It was an accident.

When I walk down the street I stand out like a glowing white beacon. This is particularly exciting for the children who rush to greet me shouting “Howareyou!” and not necessarily understanding my reply. The parents watch on proudly as their young offspring get to shake the hand of a musungu (white person) and at times like this I often feel like my pasty skin’s value has been somewhat overestimated but I haven’t yet learnt enough Swahili to communicate this theory. Anyway, on this particular day I had greeted a large group of children and even given a hair tie away to a little girl with no hair and a fascination for my possessions. When everyone had been thoroughly howareyou-ed I turned off the dusty main road onto the quieter side track and realised I was being followed by a very little person with knobbly knees and a grubby grey cardigan. I assumed that this was someone who had missed out on a handshake and didn’t want to be overlooked. So, I extended my hand in a friendly way and the little person took it. They then weren’t very keen to let go and I wondered if they were actually just intending to accompany me as I we both walked to our respective homes. That would be fine by me and so we walked on hand in hand.

I felt a bit unsure as to the gender of my new friend as I couldn’t guess from their clothes. I wondered vaguely where they lived and how much of the journey we would spend together. I tried to start a conversation but this wasn’t very effective as they didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Swahili (at least, none beyond a few key phrases). It didn’t seem to matter though as they seemed very happy just to be clutching on to my hand.

When we reached my road and the child seemed to be ready to follow me there I queried whether this was correct, surely this was too much coincidence. I let go of the child’s hand and said as much out load. It was totally useless though, and they simply gazed back at me with big brown eyes, not understanding a word. My fears were confirmed when we reached my gate and they simply trotted on through. Still, I thought, at least there will be someone inside at home that can speak Swahili and send the child on its way. I found the flaw in this plan when I reached the locked door and realised that no one was in. We have one too few house keys and I had drawn the short straw. So I sat on the door step, now in the deep darkness and proceeded to entertain the child with my phone. It was fascinated by the touch screen and very happy indeed to spend half an hour opening menus and then turning my wifi on and off again.

Eventually Mama returned. She’d had a long day and was probably not best pleased to find me with an abducted child on her doorstep. Still, she kindly let us both in and spoke to the child. Rather disappointingly I still didn’t get to find out its gender because mama is a bit confused by the English language and used ‘him’ and ‘her’ interchangeably. She asked it where it lived – it didn’t know, and why it had ended up on her doorstep – well, that was simple, the white woman had MADE it come!