brought my pen and pencil together and snapped them, the ink spurting into my palms like blue blood. I got out my only pair of trousers and two shirts and put them on, over my clothes.
I avoided the uniform package. Sitting where the trunk had been, I wept. It was like a newly dug grave. I sniffed hastily, tilting the bottle up and down until the
kabire
came close to my nostrils.
As the car pulled away with Maisha, our mourning attracted kids from the gangs. They circled the food, and I threw away the bottle and joined my family again. We struggled to stuff the food into our mouths, to stuff the bags back inside the shack, but the kids made off with the balloons and the cards.
I hid among a group of retreating kids and slipped away. I ran through traffic, scaled the road divider, and disappeared into Nairobi. My last memory of my family was of the twins burping and giggling.
Fattening for Gabon
Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids. You had to keep a calm head or be as ruthless as the Badagry-Seme immigration people. If not, it could bring trouble to the family. What kept our family secret from the world in the three months Fofo Kpee planned to sell us were his sense of humor and the smuggler’s instinct he had developed as an
agbero,
a tout, at the border. My sister Yewa was five, and I was ten.
Fofo Kpee was a smallish, hardworking man. Before the Gabon deal, as a simple
agbero,
he made a living getting people across the border without papers or just roughing them up for money. He also hired himself out in the harmattan season to harvest coconuts in the many plantations along the coast. He had his fair share of misfortune over the years, falling from trees and getting into scuffles at the border. Yet the man was upbeat about life. He seemed to smile at everything, partly because of a facial wound sustained in a fight when he was learning to be an
agbero.
Ridged and glossy, the scar ran down his left cheek and stopped at his upper lip, which was constricted; his mouth never fully closed. Though he tried to cover the scar with a big mustache, it shone like a bulb on a Christmas tree. His left eye looked bigger than the right because the lower eyelid came up short, pinched by the scar. Because of all this, sometimes people called him Smiley Kpee.
A two-tone, blue silver 125cc Nanfang motorcycle was the last major purchase Fofo Kpee made that month when our lifestyle took an upswing and the Gabon plot thickened. He planned to use it to ferry people across the border between Benin and Nigeria to boost our family’s income.
I could never forget that windy Tuesday evening when a wiry man brought him back on the new bike to our two-room home that faced the sea. I rushed out from behind the house, where I was cooking Abakaliki rice, to greet Fofo Kpee. His laugh was louder than the soft hum of the new machine. Our house was set back from the busy dirt road; a narrow sandy path connected them. On either side of the path and around our home was a cassava farm, a low wedge in between the tall, thick bushes, clumps of banana and plantain trees, and our abode. Our nearest neighbors lived a half kilometer down the road.
I was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing the sea-green khaki shorts Fofo had just bought for me, and my feet were dusty from playing soccer. Yewa had been building sand castles under the mango tree in front of our house when the bike arrived.
“Smiley Kpee, only two?” the man who brought Fofo exclaimed, disappointed. “No way,
iro o!
Where oders?”
“Ah
non,
Big Guy, you go see oders . . .
beaucoup,
” said Fofo, a chuckle escaping his pinched mouth. He turned to us: “
Mes enfants,
hey,
una
no go greet Big Guy?”
“Good evening,
monsieur!
” we said, and prostrated ourselves on the ground.
The man turned away, ignoring us, his large eyes searching the road, his narrow forehead set in wrinkles. He had a small pointy nose. Although his head was clean shaven,
I avoided the uniform package. Sitting where the trunk had been, I wept. It was like a newly dug grave. I sniffed hastily, tilting the bottle up and down until the
kabire
came close to my nostrils.
As the car pulled away with Maisha, our mourning attracted kids from the gangs. They circled the food, and I threw away the bottle and joined my family again. We struggled to stuff the food into our mouths, to stuff the bags back inside the shack, but the kids made off with the balloons and the cards.
I hid among a group of retreating kids and slipped away. I ran through traffic, scaled the road divider, and disappeared into Nairobi. My last memory of my family was of the twins burping and giggling.
Fattening for Gabon
Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids. You had to keep a calm head or be as ruthless as the Badagry-Seme immigration people. If not, it could bring trouble to the family. What kept our family secret from the world in the three months Fofo Kpee planned to sell us were his sense of humor and the smuggler’s instinct he had developed as an
agbero,
a tout, at the border. My sister Yewa was five, and I was ten.
Fofo Kpee was a smallish, hardworking man. Before the Gabon deal, as a simple
agbero,
he made a living getting people across the border without papers or just roughing them up for money. He also hired himself out in the harmattan season to harvest coconuts in the many plantations along the coast. He had his fair share of misfortune over the years, falling from trees and getting into scuffles at the border. Yet the man was upbeat about life. He seemed to smile at everything, partly because of a facial wound sustained in a fight when he was learning to be an
agbero.
Ridged and glossy, the scar ran down his left cheek and stopped at his upper lip, which was constricted; his mouth never fully closed. Though he tried to cover the scar with a big mustache, it shone like a bulb on a Christmas tree. His left eye looked bigger than the right because the lower eyelid came up short, pinched by the scar. Because of all this, sometimes people called him Smiley Kpee.
A two-tone, blue silver 125cc Nanfang motorcycle was the last major purchase Fofo Kpee made that month when our lifestyle took an upswing and the Gabon plot thickened. He planned to use it to ferry people across the border between Benin and Nigeria to boost our family’s income.
I could never forget that windy Tuesday evening when a wiry man brought him back on the new bike to our two-room home that faced the sea. I rushed out from behind the house, where I was cooking Abakaliki rice, to greet Fofo Kpee. His laugh was louder than the soft hum of the new machine. Our house was set back from the busy dirt road; a narrow sandy path connected them. On either side of the path and around our home was a cassava farm, a low wedge in between the tall, thick bushes, clumps of banana and plantain trees, and our abode. Our nearest neighbors lived a half kilometer down the road.
I was bare-chested and barefoot, wearing the sea-green khaki shorts Fofo had just bought for me, and my feet were dusty from playing soccer. Yewa had been building sand castles under the mango tree in front of our house when the bike arrived.
“Smiley Kpee, only two?” the man who brought Fofo exclaimed, disappointed. “No way,
iro o!
Where oders?”
“Ah
non,
Big Guy, you go see oders . . .
beaucoup,
” said Fofo, a chuckle escaping his pinched mouth. He turned to us: “
Mes enfants,
hey,
una
no go greet Big Guy?”
“Good evening,
monsieur!
” we said, and prostrated ourselves on the ground.
The man turned away, ignoring us, his large eyes searching the road, his narrow forehead set in wrinkles. He had a small pointy nose. Although his head was clean shaven,
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