What shall we tell orphans in the bar?

TOM ONIRO
Correspondent | Friday January 8, 2010 00:00

A senior citizen who is familiar with the  history of Gaborone claims that  this area, probably a strip like the chaotic and bloody Gaza in the Palestinean Middle East, was so named  Jinja and not Ginger,  in April 1979.

According to him, at the time this area was being demarcated by the Gaborone Town Council for development, the then Ugandan dictator Field Marshall Idi Amin was at the Ugandan eastern town of Jinja---whereupon rests the source of the world's second longest river after Mississipi---River Nile. It is reported that it was at this town that Amin sought to assure Ugandans and the whole world that he was still in control of the former Pearl of Africa yet he was in fact fleeing from the amphibious and eardrum bursting Saba Saba artilleries and the accompanying bombs that swept him from his 25 January 1971- 11 April 1979 reign of terror, as known to observers. The Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF), with the blessing of the then Tanzanian president Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, commanded the expedition with the Ugandan rebel exiles in tow.

All models and types of cars except the latest hummer park here at our own Ginger.Beer-bellied women and men of all shapes and sizes rub shoulders in this mini-Gaborone Sun area. When it happens to get full, it really gets full to capacity- to the extent that even human beings fail to park themselves outside. Dry, stale sweat replaces oxygen, when  the short, medium height and the tall; all form some kind of canopy. These middle-class as well as the lowest of the low non-tetotalers, most times than not,  do not sit inside the only two bars and beer outlets in Ginger or Jinja but instead their buttocks kiss the often open boots of their cars parked with beers and  open-air music that intercepts the ringing of cellphones. 

On Sunday January  3 late evening, three little girls are in Letlhaku bar. Letlhaku bar is so spacious that it accommodates three Pool Tables,  one six-seater bench that may sometimes---especially on month-ends--- agree  to exert opposite pressure on more than  eight pairs of buttocks. As usual, Letlhaku bar has its other problems---the blaring music from the jukebox. But that does not stop the experience at the same place. With black label stapled on my fingers, a young girl, Tirelo*, sitting beside me on the only one six-seater bench,  accosts me. On the other side are two equally little ones. 'Ke Kopa two Pula,' Tirelo, who claims to be 23 years of age although she looks much younger is the obvious leader and 'spokeswoman' of the contingent. Her 'juniors' ---Mpho* and  Masego*----watch in deafening silence but with sustained looks and hovering, surveying eye movements.

'Give us two Pula,' Tirelo tirelessly but seemingly withdrawing, pursues me. ' I do not like seeing children in the bar,' I reply and insist: 'But why are you young girls here?' 'We are not children,' Tirelo assures me.  'I am 23 years old,' she says.  'And what about your friends,' I ask Tirelo. 'That one[pointing at Mpho] is 22 and she[Masego] is also 22.' 'We are not even here to drink but to pass time,' the spokeswoman  claims. My assurance to them is that  I am not a child molester and  giving them two Pula should not have strings attached to it, as that is a  practice reserved for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. I encourage them to be honest. And in addition, I assure them, I am about 20 years older than each of them so they should treat me as their uncle or elder brother and nothing less, nothing more.

'Are you young girls at school?' I demand to know.  'But what work do you do?' Tirelo demands to know of me. 'I am a teacher,' I reply, although I may not necessarily be one  formally trained except through experience plus age.  Now is the moment for anguish as Tirlelo, as before, kicks off the conversation that would later turn out to be ugly: ' I completed my Form Five,'  she says.  'So are you at UB or some other Tertiary institution?' I probe. 'No. I failed some subjects and I am supposed to supplement but  I  do not have money.'  'But I thought the government caters for your fees,' so I thought.

'The government does not pay for those who have failed and are required to do supplementaries,' Tirelo clears the fog in my mind. 'How about you?' I turn to Mpho. At this point Masego has already jumped off her sitting position on the bench and, with her hands gripping the width of the rectangular wooden structure, she is crestfallen as the head hangs at its lowest as if to kiss the brown surface.

'I also finished Form Five,' Mpho says. 'So where next?'  'I am going for a course in Tourism in Mochudi this year,' Mpho is optimistic.

'And you?' I turn to Masego. 'Me? I am not at school,' she replies, lowering the head further, little did  I know that I was scratching the proverbial old wounds. 'Why are you  not at school?' I unknowingly worsen the conversation. 'My parents died,' the nearly half an hour sobbing begins.

'Who are you staying with?.' I ask.  'I stay with my brothers in Gaborone West and I came here to visit my cousin,' she points at Tirelo. Tirelo, the spokeswoman, explains the family tree revealing the fact that she is also an orphan who is staying with her sister.

And Masego---the last born of five--- happens to be her cousin who lost both parents in a road accident somewhere in Maun not too long ago.  Also an orphan, Mpho is Tirelo's friend with whom  they share the Ginger/Jinja neighbourhood. While Tirelo is engulfed in  explaining their relationship and friendship including the circumstances under which they currently live and survive, Masego is overwhelmed by tears and she disappears from the bar.

A long wait for her return is not promising and three of us file out of the bar to search outside in the crowd in the heart of darkness. It means hanging around like vultures waiting for leftover carcass from the carnivores in the wilderness. About 20 minutes elapse and Mpho spots her emerge from the side of the Maruapula-Ledumang highway; right behind the bar. Mpho reaches her first as Tirelo and I follow. She is bending with her hands on her knees. She is still crying. 'Where have you been? We have been looking for you,' Tirelo asks. Masego is all cries and no talk. 'If I offended you, then Iam sorry.

Please, I am sorry,' I try to plead with her. A rather  small but heavy hand misses me narrowly. That is a slap that goes off-target.  My plea and apology is not welcome and Masego appears to be annoyed with me for probably asking silly questions. I quietly retreat to sit on a huge stone under a thicket overlooking Notwane Primary School; meditating and pondering what it means to be alive and kicking in this world, the other experiences of life out there in the distant horizon. 

Mpho and Tirelo console her as she is led to the company of their friends seated outside the bar. After realising that tempers had a little bit cooled down, I slowly but humbly locomote towards them where Masego is in a jolly company of two boys in their mid-20s.

I get closer and offer Masego the last coins that I had in the name of her transport fare.She willingly takes it , returns to the boys and she is immediately, at the speed of lightning,  led inside the bar. It is my time to disappear from the bar for that night, but what shall we tell the children? Or what shall we tell orphans in the bar? And Oliver Mutukuzi can be heard in the background, asking: 'What shall we do?'  * Not real names.