Selekololens
My first 24 hours with a 12 year old orphan wanderer

Philemon is off. He will do a half year's course in Dar es Salaam to get his papers "Captain 5^th class". As I kicked out Doi ^{[details: surfboard]}, I am now alone on the dhow and should find solutions for guarding her in my absence for shopping, restaurants, days off to Kampala and, coming up, six weeks off to Europe. During daytime I can leave the dhow for a while, but she cannot be alone in the dark. I will need one guy first, then, if I find that one is oiled and greased, I will need a second.
Peter is ready to play a role as well, but should remain available on request for two bosses, Kingfisher for Nile boat rides and a tourist company to take people all round in Uganda. I could surpass the two bosses in payment but my job on the dhow is not interesting enough for Peter's brains.
We had a surprising appearance on our beach of...Doi. He had started trading clothes from Tanzania to Jinja/Bukaya. Elegantly dressed, sporting a big expensive cell phone, he firmly boasted around, as is his irritating habit of late. On being asked how he knows English he has now shifted, I heard, from "I am very intelligent, I taught myself" to "that is a long story" (the truth is that I taught him). But far from having landed in the sewers he seems to do well. 
Philemon told me he was amused by a talkative young boy nowadays never far from Peter who is helping everybody and has a lot of questions. After he had pumped Peter about the Karamojong he had asked Philemon, whom he consistently calls Edmund, who is the president of Karamoja. Also, after seeing the Tanzanian frame structure of our canoe, he asked Philemon what he would charge to make one for him. I was told he is a wandering orphan who had turned up a few months before and sleeps in the open party hut on de Kingfisher shore side ^{[middle of this picture]}. I told Philemon we had to test the boy, starting with employing him to collect the floating golf balls I hit every now and then in the bay. The next time I went ashore Philemon had pointed me the boy from the dhow. I went to him. He looks 11 or 12 years old.
"How are you?"
"I am fine"
"I am the president of Karamoja. Philemon told me you have questions. Tell me what you want to know."
"No you are not the president of Karamoja."
"But I am telling you!"
He smiles. First test passed.
"What is your name?"
"Selekololens"
"Say it again?"
"S�rekor�rens".
In Bantu language it sounds like Sedekodolens as well (actually in my modest but firm opinion, Bantu have one consonant I baptized randa, which to Europeans can sound like r, l or d, depending on context or even intonation of a word, hence European alphabet Swahili dictionaries write e.g. for gazelle both swala and swara ^[details]).
I asked him to count my golf balls.
23.
Another test passed. I instruct him where to expect the balls to land in the water, to hold the ball up after retrieval and wait for the next one. He gets my canoe. But the wind gets too strong. After nine shots I decided his canoeing in this wind is too much for his forces and call him back. On arrival at the shore without me asking him, he counts his balls, 1,2,...,9. Test 3: passed.
I give him 500 and we part.
The next day I hear a canoe next to the dhow. Selekololens.
"Selekololens! How are you? Today no golf."
"Many jobs today."
"Yes."
I plan to go to the shore the next day for some more conversation. But before I am there, he is already at the dhow.
"Selekololens! How are you?"
"I'm fine."
"Is this your canoe?"
"No."
"Did you steal it?"
"No!"
"Did you borrow it?"
"I take it when this man is not there."
Since there are always many people on the beach I assume it is tolerated.
"I am an orphan. My mother died when I was 2. My father died when my mother produced me. I was taken by my uncle. But they killed him. He was eating then he sat down and the poison came out. Then he was dead."
"Then how did you come here to Bukaya?"
"You wait. Some people say he was a stealer. Some say he was not. I could not find out who was right."
"Then I was on the street in Kampala. Begging. Blacks are bad. They do not give. Whites give 200, 200. I slept in hotels, many leave the door open at night but the receptionist is sleeping. I sneak in alone and sleep somewhere"..
"Kampala is far. How did you come here?"
"With the taxi, a pastor gave me 4000. You know what a pastor is? A man of God"
(By "taxi" he means the 14 person minibuses.)
"But did you know Bukaya?"
"No, I just told the taxi driver drop me at a good place. Then my friends found me, and we went fishing for money and food."
"When you arrived here, you could not swim?"
"Yes"
"You never operated a canoe?"
"Yes". 
"You did not know how to catch fish?"
"Yes."
"And now your sleeping in that open hut there?"
"Yes."
"It is not cold?"
"I have a polythene bag. The mamas gave me this trousers and pullover. I can get a room, if Jesus gives me 10 000, the man says I have to be quick because there is a couple who wants it."
(The mamas are the women at the beach who make food for the fishermen.)
"But yet it is cold isn't it?"
"Yes and there are dogs at night. One bit me in the hand, a muzungu took me to a very expensive doctor. Now it is all right."
"If you still have no place tonight, do you want to sleep here on my boat?"
"Yes."
"OK. But how do we do? You are here with this canoe, if you sleep here, we will have this canoe with the dhow. What if the man comes? This is a puzzle. I know the solution. You guess."
"I do not know."
"OK you start going with two canoes to the shore, and then?"
His face clears up: "I come back with yours."
"Yes." Pain in my heart. Test failed. Or was their another problem? I like to believe it.
Selekololens returns. Climbs up the dhow and fixes the canoe as if he always lived at the lake instead of a few weeks only.
"You want to sleep now?"
"I want to sit and talk with you."
He enters the main cabin. Bombards me with questions. "Do you have solar energy?"
"Yes, but it is a secret. Everything you see inside my boat is a secret, you talk to nobody."
"Yes."
"Come, I'll show you the solar panels. How come you know about solar energy?"
"I studied it."
I take a book. Its title starts with AFTER.
"Say that word, Selekololens."
"My uncle paid my school fees. When my uncle got poisoned they chased me off school."
He turns out to know the sound of every letter aaaa, fffff, t, eeee, rrrrrrr, but unable to jump to the word.
"I saw Peter and Philemon with two girls on the boat."
I manage to hide my astonishment and make a pose as if relaxing to wait for a long story. He continues.
"Girls. Very dangerous! If you don't watch out you have you boat on fire."
Could he have made this up to pretend he's useful as my secret agent? I can't believe it. This must be simply true. I already had some thoughts when I found the cabin door's hinge bent and the whole door frame become weak and bending. Instructed people like Peter and Philemon would never have leaned on that door when opened, but any guest might easily do so.
We prepare his bed. He will sleep at the stern side in the kiwanda (workshop), in the tent we have put there as a store to keep our new sail bone-dry. Mosquito protected, totally rain free. He can enter through the rear hatch.

I give him a torch and a blanket, and tell him not to wear his pullover. He had washed it, but to late in the afternoon. He had hoped it would dry on his body, he has no other clothes, but it was still quite wet. The pillow causes delight.
Now it is dark and I want to enter the cabin and close for insects.
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes."
I show him bread and Blue Band.
"I had no food for a week."
"No food for a week? But yesterday I gave you bread."
"Yes but I had no food."
Food turns out to be posho or matoke. "A week" later turned out to be two days. He got food for the money earned retrieving my golf balls.
"What do you pay the mamas for food?"
"Five ...eh....I forgot."
"Five hundred."
"Yes, five hundred. It is 7 but orphans pay 5. Sometimes they give me when I bring water or fish. I clean boats and bring worms for fishing. "
"I am making coffee, you want?"
"Yes."
Selekololens wants to know the exact operation of my decisively unafrican espresso cooker.
"They have stolen my fish hooks and line."
"Where?"
"I left them in the canoe when selling my fish then they took it. Do you have eggs?"
"Yes, how do you want them?"
"Fried. I can do."
"Hooks I have here, line I do not know."
I give him eggs, pan, salt cooking old. He starts the gas burner as if he never cooked on anything else. I get back to the difficult job of turning my web site mindphiles.com on line at a new host.
Selekololens comes to let me have a taste of his eggs. Real Ugandan, heavy of cooking oil and salty. He inadvertently turned the gas low instead of out. I show him the right direction for closing and tell the dangers of gas. My fish hooks are the size he needs. He thinks he is 12, that he was 10 when his uncle got poisoned. But he was kicked out of school when in P3 (primary 3).
With children your age? Or younger?
My age.
So that would suggest he was 8 or 9 when kicked out of school. 11 or 12 seems a fair guess for his present age, so he should have had a street career in Kampala of at least 2 years. After he went down in the tent I start typing frantically this page, panicking to forget something important. I know he could strip my dhow and disappear just as he appeared a few weeks ago when the minibus driver dropped him. Technically, he surely can. I limit security measures an old routine of small theft detection by having exactly 5 money bills and 5 coins in my wallet, but this is routine rather than any suspicion related to this particular case.
The next morning I am sleepy due to writing until late. Selekololens is up but still around. He wants to start fishing. Hooks are there, but I promised to have another look for fish line. So, morality forces me out of my bed, to meet the working class needs, but I do not find fish line.

Left: Selekololens making chapatti. The beer crate is there for him to reach the kitchen's top shelve.
This absence of fish line changes Selekololens's program. No fishing.
He makes tea, bread and my coffee. Then cleans the kitchen. I put a beer crate down at the dresser for him to reach the upper shelves. Now I can see he is still a child: the cleaning is somewhere in between working and playing. Loudly singing and dancing while cleaning. Yes, he could be 12. [� video: Selekololens cleans kitchen]
"Kitchen clean! No diseases!"
"How do you know?"
"I read it."
"No you did not, yesterday I found out you cannot read!"
"They told me."                                             Right: Selekololens making coffee in muzungu coffee cooker

Sunrise. Early for me but I have to go out: Selekokolens serves coffee and two-story-chapatti with three-eggs omelet, and needs fish line

Fishing could be done with lines borrowed from the mamas (they even sell), but they are not around, Selekololens sees.
"I want to fish. I want to be a man who works for his food. And I want a shirt made from this". He points at the cloth of his jeans. It's not begging, he does not show any hope that I may buy it for him, he expresses a dream.
"I go to the shore."
"OK take the canoe but when the sun is there", I point to a place in the sky, "I go shopping. You come to take me to the shore."
When the sun is at the agreed place the canoe is gone from the beach. Through my binoculars I see him at a far fishing with two other boys. I realize the only urgency I felt for shopping was fish line. Now that's off the list I turn the situation into another test: I wait. Will he think of me?
No.
When I have already long cancelled and forgotten my shopping he climbs on the dhow.
"Selekololens! You forgot me!"
He is not in the least upset. "You could have called me!"
He drinks water.
"Give to your friends too"
He brings water to his friends
Together they caught 26 medium size tilapia. I get two. He cleans. I will make fish with rice for us tonight.
"They want eggs", he says low and shy pointing at his fellow boys.
"No, nobody on this dhow. Only Selekololens."
Resignation.
Selekololens fries eggs. This time I want one.
"Now I am the cooker!"
"Yes, that's what they call the cook in English"
"I am the cook!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then he notices am am working at my computer.
"You are wasting time!"
"No this is very important."
No further protests.

Unrest. He walks through the boat, takes  lot of things, asking me what it is, plays on the African instruments hanging everywhere and notices I am still working, on my bed, at my computer.
"Yes Selekololens, when I am reading I am inside my brains and if you knock I do not open".
My adjustable desk stool is every now and then in service as a truck steering wheel. My sister reminded me this stool is an old family piece and as children we used it as steering wheel as well, 50 years ago! This is the typical but ever astonishing African 12 year old child mastering all adult survival techniques.

Are you a catholic?
No.
Born-again?
No. One day God woke up and felt like creating a nice decent unbeliever. That was me

My binoculars succeed to keep him occupied for a while. As everything, from the first acquaintance they get routinely used and are immediately integrated as obvious part of his normal live. From that time, when my muzungu low resolution eyes cannot spot what he wants me to see he immediately goes to fetch them for me.

 

Then he finds a solution: I am going to wash! He takes all my dirty clothes and his. Since he has no spare clothes I open my box and find a polo and a rain jacket I never wear. Happiness. His new acquisitions go on the washing heap as well. "You left the NIDO open outside, dudus then they come!" (NIDO is milk powder, dudus are insects.) I sincerely apologize. With the remaining washing water he scrubs the steering deck. It has not been so clean for weeks. Then new embarrassment. Nothing for him to do. How to get him off my chest? "Do the mamas sell fish line? " "Yes, and stones to sink the line. " "How much do you need to pay for what you want? " "900. (euro 0.25). Give me for chapatti." Chapatti is 200. I give 1100. "But we eat fish with rice in two hours." This changes his mind. Returns the 200.

 

But eating my fish with rice at sunset is nothing for him. In Uganda, you eat late evening. He finds macaroni, prepares it and eats. Then new search for entertainment. "I am going to read. R-O-K-E-N   I-S   D-O-D-E-L-I-J-K", he takes a Dutch smoking health warning. I delve out two children's' English exercise stories with nice drawings, about Kahiigi the hunter fighting witchcraft, and about a glutton stealing his own family's food during a famine. I find some glossy advertisement journals that somehow got in the box, want to throw them away, but Selekololens is protesting loudly: "you always throw away good books!". After some "reading" in the glossy magazines: "I go to the shore. I have to defecate. My feces is paining me." "You know how I do? I just swim and release." "O no."

 

Selekololens prepares for land, dressed in his new clothes.
You come back here to sleep?
"Yes, in my house.", he says looking down the rear hatch.
"I go to Bukaya then you can quietly read your books"

Half past nine. No Selekololens. Should I be worried? No, we are equals. We are both surviving in the world, I only might be able to make his survival a bit easier. With good luck you live, with bad luck you die. And what does he do for me? I feel as if I have not cooked or cleaned for ages.
Then the sound of a canoe in the dark. Selekololens.
"Have you finished your books?"
"I never finish my books. Not even in 100 years."
"We have been talking talking talking, with my grandmother."
"Your grandmother??"
"The grandmother of my friend."
"About what"
"About Kahiigi, hunting and witchcraft" he had left the book in the boat, so this long conversation must have started from what I told him was in. But then, if talk is about hunting, grandparents are the centre of conversation. In their days - on average they are some twenty years younger than me - the last animals got finished.
He takes the fish I left for him. Onion, garlic, masala, pepper, more Indian than Ugandan. But...
"You are a good cooker, a Man asks if you to buy a hen from him".
"Tell him when we have visitors"
"Can you kill and clean a hen?"
"Yeeesss! Very good."

He puts his plate back on the dresser. "Tomorrow ...I will wash these ones, then I am going to fish."

These were my first 24 hours with Selekololens. He has not asked me for anything. I have not asked him to do anything.