6 Chapter Six (1/2)
When Kamsi left, Joe and Kate thought life would be less difficult for them, but it was not that easy especially where struggling was often the order of the day. They still found it difficult to keep food on the table despite the little contribution and help they received from their church. When the heat of poverty was too much to take, they decided to move to Umunga their village which was five hundred miles away from the city.
Joe thought that moving to the village might not be the best option. Looking contemplative silent, he shook his shoulder and mumbled, ”What's the point of living in the city when I can not afford to pay my rent and those at the village will be seeing me as a city man?” he looked around to check if somebody was watching him. Joe sighed and continued mumbling, ”In the village, people believed that once one is living in the city he is rich, but what they did not know is there are a lot of city people who the villagers are far richer than.”
Joe knew in the city one must buy whatever he needs in the market if he wants to cook, but there in the village, there were certain things like fresh grown vegetables, peppers, and other food one could get in his farm. Joe might not have a place to farm in the city, but in the village, one thing that was for certain, he would definitely have some portions of land to farm. Joe might not be paying rent in the village, he may decide to simply live in their family house until he had enough money to build his own house but in the city, paying rent was one of those things he couldn't avoid.
When Joe, Kate and Sam moved to the village, life wasn't that easy with Sam because he was not born in the village, but he was a strong boy who easily adapted in any situation he just so happened to find himself in. Sam was fluent at English but not at his native language. The villagers always made jibes and snide comments about him when he attempted to speak the language and that forced him to learn it very quickly.
Life in the village functioned quite differently from the one in the city. In the village, once they made it home from school, they all go to the stream to fetch water, go to bushes so they could fetch firewood.
Sam took to it like a duck to water. No mountain was too high for him to climb as most streams in the village have mountains or hills somewhere along their path. No bush was too scary for him to enter. Most time they derived joy in hunting, shooting birds with a catapult was fun to them when they were supposed to fetch firewood.
Attempting to fit in with the village boys did not make Sam to forget his ambition. As a courageous and determined boy, he looked for a way to make money. When he noticed that villagers played a lot, he stopped a.s.sociating himself with some of them who don't see life the way he saw.
Sam was not comfortable staying idle. He started looking for a means of getting daily income until he found some group of laborers in the construction site. Sam developed interest in the work and when he approached the site engineer and asked him for a chance to be doing the less difficult work for a means of daily income; the site engineer consented. He told Sam to start work the following day.
Sam did not mind working from sun up to sundown, as long as he would be paid. He could do any type of job available. Because of his cheerful nature, the elderly ones liked taking him to sites when they were hired to work there. Sam didn't like begging, and he was a giver. He wouldn't mind giving someone the s.h.i.+rt off his back if they needed it.
As an intelligent boy, all one needed to do was to tell Sam how to do something and he would do it well. Sam was taught how to mix sand and cement at the site; he started making money from it.
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Every evening, after working for the day, the site supervisor would come and inspect their work before paying them and when he got home, he put some money back: he was saving the money because he wanted to go back to school; the rest he gave to his parents.
One day when Sam had finished up work for the day, he was very tired and hungry: the bread, beans cake, and the bottle of c.o.ke he took for lunch was not enough for him as it was what the laborers normally ate at the site. Sam decided to stop on the way home and bought some yogurt, eggs and some other things.
Sam also bought the same items for his parents and as he was eating his own, a woman saw him, obviously thinking that the money was stolen, because she wondered how a little boy like him could have the money to buy those things, ”Little boy, when I was at your age, I used to save money, I usually gave it to my mother to keep for me and at the end of the year she would use it to buy Christmas clothes for me, sometimes I use it to buy a textbook or an exercise book, and all the writing material I will use in school for the term. Even if you don't have a savings account, you should at least be giving to your parents to put up for things you need, rather than using it to be buying eggs. In fact during our time, we hardly eat eggs, if anyone sees you eating it, you would be considered a potential thief.”