"Madam, we got a trouble again. Please, can you give some help?" It was early Friday morning and Moses was back at Amy's door with Rosy at his side.
He had been out of hospital two days, and, with his sister, had moved into the mud hut on their land, 400 metres down the road from where Amy lived. Their mother's body had been buried on her family's property the day before, because Fred had never paid a dowry. It made matters worse for the children, who were now more or less illegitmate.
"Show her, Rosy," he said, and Rosy turned to the side while lifting her blouse to show two round burn marks on her lower back. Amy bent down to get a closer look, and reached out to gingerly touch one of the burns. Rosy drew back in pain, but still managed a laugh.
"How did this happen?" Amy asked, although she knew without asking.
"He wants the land, madam, pure and easy. He put cigarettes on her back.
Even he will do it again if we sleep there. Last night we laid in a shamba down the road. But we need the land, Madam!"
Rosy lowered her blouse and looked up at Amy with eyes that spoke sadness, but a mouth that still smiled.
"One second and I'll come with you," Amy said. Her children had just sat down to breakfast in the crowded living room, and so Benjie was put in charge.
On the walk out to the property, Amy asked Moses how his arm was.
"It hurts where it isn't," he said in English. "Me, I can't comfort it now...
because it's not there."
Rosy skipped ahead and turned to take a swing at Moses' phantom right hand. He instinctively pulled back and she laughed.
"You know English too!" Amy remarked. She had assumed that Rosy's shyness meant she was not as smart as Moses.
To reach Moses' land, the trio needed to walk down a narrow path that passed through his uncle's land. George saw them coming and was waiting.
"They are not wanted here," he said to Amy. "They will bring trouble to my family. The curse is on them."
"And the D.O. will be on to you," said Amy. She hated to use her friendship with the District Officer as a threat, because she knew that anyone with more wealth than herself might be able to make a similar threat to her if they chose to.
"I have other friends," warned George; but Amy knew he did not have any powerful enough to sway the D.O.
"And I have the burns that you gave to Rosy," Amy warned. "If you lay one more finger on her, I'll have you taken in and dealt with. True!"
Being "dealt with" was a guaranteed twenty lashes from a whip, standard interrogation in those parts; but it could also mean languishing in a cell for months, or even years, just waiting to be heard in court. Amy wasn't sure if she would follow through on such a threat, but George knew there would be no mercy for him if she did.
"It isn't enough land to feed them. They cannot come to me if they get hungry," he warned, which was his way of conceding defeat.
"We won't do that, Uncle," Moses promised, before pushing past him with a flourish from his good left arm, and leading the two females onto the land that was now rightful y his.
"It's true, you know," Amy reminded Moses, when they were out of earshot of George. "You won't be able to feed yourselves with what you can grow here.
Have you thought about that?"
"Madam, I been designing on that already. I reckon if I had a bodaboda, we could manage fine."
"But how would you drive with only one arm?" Amy asked, feeling awkward about mentioning something that Moses himself seemed oblivious to. There was no answer, and so she assumed she had made him aware of something that he had not previously considered.
After an awkward silence, conversation moved to other things, and there was no further mention of the boy's plans. Moses wanted to show Amy that he could still swing the jembe fine with just his left arm, and he took a few swings; but Amy cautioned him about exerting too much with either arm before the stitches had been removed from the stump. She forced herself not to get too involved, however. She had her own family to worry about, and in the end, Moses and Rosy Chikati would need to sort out their problems by themselves. Such was life in rural Kenya.
A few Saturdays later, Amy received another knock on her door. This time it was Rosy, and she was jumping up and down with excitement.
"Come! See!" she shouted, laughing almost hysterically to make it clear that she was bringing good news.
Amy rushed to the door and saw Moses barrelling up the dirt road from the markets with a trail of dust behind him, and a passenger on the back of a bodaboda. He pulled up in front of Amy's house, let his passenger off and then handed the bike over to that same passenger.
"Jidraph borrows me his bike when he's having a rest. I been getting lots of practice." he said, only slightly out of breath from his exhibition ride. "Me, I just need a ten-speed, like Jiddy, and I can ride fine. Starting is the hardest, but the gears, they just help." Jiddy smiled at the compliment, before heading back toward the village.
A bike of any sort was too much for Moses to afford, and a ten-speed was considered a luxury even amongst the other bodaboda drivers. Jiddy was the only one in Shinyalu with one.
"Where are you going to get money for something like that?" Amy asked, knowing that he had been hoping she would help him out.
She then proceeded to share with him some of her own philosophy about money.
"My White mama always said 'Waste not, want not.' What that means is don't spend what you don't have. Then if you need it, you'll have it. You understand?"
"We're not wasting, Madam," Moses said politely. "But we're needing... real soon. Last year's maize is running to nothing, and we only just planted for this year. It'll be September before we get more."
Amy knew before the words had left her mouth that she had been preaching to herself and not to Moses when she lectured about thrift. She had seen many Kenyans get money and then waste it. The same had been true of her people in Australia. So the sermon was one that she often preached. But none of this applied to Moses. He had not done anything wrong, and he did not have anything to waste, even if he had wanted to.
The lecture had been a vain attempt to compensate for her own feelings of futility. Living within her means had always worked for her and the kids, although even now they were going through one of the leanest periods that she had ever experienced. Two of her three best supporters from Australia had stopped sending contributions. Otherwise, she might have had something to help Moses get started with herself.
There was a little microbank in Kakamega that she knew would loan the money for a bike, but borrowing was a sin in her books. Still, she couldn't just stand by and do nothing.
"You know, Moses, borrowing money is an awful way to live. Most people who do it, just keep borrowing more and more, and it makes them slaves to the ones they borrow from."
"Yes, Madam," Moses said, trying hard to understand what she was getting at.
"But if you were very very careful and I can help you with this maybe you could just this once borrow for a bike... a ten-speed if you like. You know, boy, if it was up to me and if I had it, I'd give you the money myself. But I just don't have it. There's a place in Kakamega where you can get a loan. You could pay them back from what you earn each week. If I took you there, would you be sure to pay them back, fast as you can?"
"Oh yeah, you bet, Madam. Hear that, Rosy? We can borrow some money to get started."
Amy cringed on hearing Moses react so enthusiastically to an offer of credit.
She vowed to compensate for her sin by teaching him everything she knew about getting out of debt and staying out, so that she would not be responsible for any damage that might come from such a decision so early in his life.
The next day they went to town. With Amy's recommendation, Moses had no problem getting the loan. He ordered a ten-speed an hour later. If it had been a regular bike, he could have taken delivery then and there, but it would be a week before a ten-speed could be trucked up from Nairobi.
On the drive back to Shinyalu, Moses commented on the steep descent down to the river crossing, and the hill on the other side.
"Jiddy can just ride up with a passenger, but the others walk them up. Even me, I have to walk it. But it's the only place where I do. I been over this whole road on Jiddy's bicycle."
Rosy just grinned and giggled, with her hands clasped in her lap, kind of bouncing on the seat in anticipation of Moses starting work in a week's time.