Dark Streets

The day wakes up to life the way it did many days ago.
Somewhere in Kampala, a story happens. A bad story. Kenneth who is 6 years, is hungry.
He saw the previous day end with the relentless and rattling noises of city dwellers and old cars disappearing with it. The sun had traversed over the dusty city to go to where his mother said it eats its dinner.
In the past days, the pretty sun had been interrupted with several rounds of black cloud covers and rain, so much rain.
Seemingly, this morning, the sun had broke its day with a good meal of fofo and a very sweet paste on bread - it looks happy, Kenneth thought.
Down the infamous Nakivubo road, men and women tread over a soggy, potholed road. A couple of yards away, greengrocers concentrating on a space that would later in the day turn into a car garage cry out for buyers, as everyone else cared about their busines-- mostly men and women who are rushing to meet their second hand clothes businesses in Owino market.
Kenneth watched with a wry smile the sun's firm legs in a far distance.
Its legs calmly pressed over the other side of the city where many white foreigners climb hills jogging. The other city folks, a few years older than him, know the place. He heard from them what its called.
They had also heard their elders say that it is where Serena and Sheraton hotels are found. Kenneth has not been there before. He would ask a jogging muzungu to give him a one hundred shilling coin.
His mother, Ajok, had once hawked her yellow bananas there, Kenneth heard his friends say, and it is where she picked an oversized short from a hotel garbage disposal which Kenneth wore for most of his days on Kampala streets. Begging for money.
Kenneth does not know why city authorities had come to pick his mother who stayed in a calm sleep, on a warm street until in the late hours of the morning. May be he will learn when he is old, yes old enough to know that death had taken away his mother with whom they had shared the street woes.
Kenneth does not know of any relative. His mother had not told him. But he knows Okello, Boxer, Yanga and Little Manager with whom they beg money from strangers. And that is their routine.
Soon Kenneth will learn from Boxer that his mother had conceived him out of a rape action. Yes, because Boxer knows and he has raped enough girls to know that women get pregnant and produce icons with life in them.
Kenneth will only know if he does not die of hunger or AIDS, whichever claims him first or fast.
Ajok, his mother and a beggar too, died of AIDS.
Somewhere on his mind a thought lingers. Be still sad heart, for every cloud hanging on the sky, there is hope waiting to embrace you.
It rained again.

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I leave Kenneth in an innocent 'place'. He does not know how to start as a young boy... put him to the streets...