Fingers fingers
Nsereko Rorens Back To The Shore

Nsereko Rorens is back on the shore. The decisive act was stealing money from my wallet. But in my mind he was already on his way (I'll tell you how that came about) and so the theft was welcome to me. Though he is still running around on the beach happily and I hear other children continuously shout "Nsereko!", to us this page is his in memoriam.

I will miss him. Making my coffee while I am still in bed, and mumbling after the second thermos: "This man is drinking coffee like a cow!". Climbing on the dhow after arriving with his canoe, looking, jumping on me and shouting: "You are not happy with me!!", simply to solicit a denial. Nsereko, who after some disappointing fishing days engaged in a stiff negotiation with a local witch doctor for a medicine to catch more (came to me for 10 000 shilling, I said: promise him half the catch, but the witch doctor refused). Nsereko, making his excellent specialty: macaroni with self caught fish fried with garlic, onions, tomatoes and masala. Even the Nsereko refusing to use the fish line, hooks and canoe I bought for him and go fishing (urging me to buy fish for him from others!), not going out to help his friend Desmond charged to dig a field for his father, sitting bored on the dhow pushing all buttons of my gadgets with his greasy fingers, spoiling my scissors by cutting something just because he felt the urge to cut something, collapsing on my bed in a dramatic act of posed sadness, then, after being cheered up and set on a job, using half a bottle of detergent for one session of dish washing, putting into use the muzungu toilet and clogging it with paper, smearing Otrivin on his bleeding football injury, spraying the entire dhow full with insect repellent because he inferred from my explanation that this would chase the (totally harmless) wasp haunting him, Nsereko, not shy of failed attempts to accuse his best friends, Tielly for stealing the money, and Desmond for using the white soap to wash clothes (which had been explicitly forbidden some minutes before). Nsereko, running around with my headphone and finally, while sitting next to me, making me see it far on the head of some other kid running around on the beach. The generous Nsereko who spent more than half of the stolen money not lost from his torn pocket on food and haircuts of others...The Nsereko never ashamed or remorseful if caught, but trying to correct himself if caught and warned seriously, even learning to shut up when I was reading, his first ever shyness showing when I turned out to know he stole money.

Nsereko and Tielly teaching themselves rowing, a locally unknown propelling procedure. Note: their grip is still like on a peddle.
Enlarged detail: note Nsereko's concentration

Nsereko still was well established on the dhow on an evening I went to Kampala and would return late. Tielly and Desmond would sleep with him on the dhow. The joy was great. When I arrived around midnight Desmond and Tielly were out with torches, they had heard me coming. Nsereko was in deep sleep. The next morning after our breakfast the three musketeers left the dhow and I found my battery charger's ampere meter pointing maximum instead of zero as it should when switched off. Moreover, it was switched to charging two batteries of 24 Volt instead of one battery of 12 Volt. The generator used? Yes, I found the generator not as I left it, its thermal fuse out. Nsereko, arriving, first stammered something confused in which the name of Tielly occurred, then readily confessed. I explained Desmond, also arriving, that their change of the charger setting at least broke the ampere meter, but probably the entire charger. That I had no money for a new one, that I was now without backup power on the dhow and we had to sell the canoe we just bought for them. I did not tell them the charger might be reparable, I do have a backup charger, and money to buy another one, because this flagrant insubordination should of course be presented as having s-e-r-i-o-u-s consequences. Later on I found two bottles of insect destruction spray totally empty and the low speaker of my 8 euro computer speaker set distorting, so music had been played on it with damaging volume - playing over the speakers  is, in my presence, explicitly forbidden, only headphones are allowed. Though damage in money value is limited, this experiment therefore was a revealing total failure, and I decided to get Nsereko lodged at Tielly's grandmother nearby during my trip, in three weeks, to Europe, pretending that the guarding of my dhow would require him to go off, and then, at my return six weeks later, not to take him back on the dhow.
But I would not have to play the game for another three weeks: the very next day I miss 4 bills from my wallet. On the dhow, when I am not alone there, my wallet always contains exactly 5 bills and 5 coins. This is to supply limited damage bait for the weak and to have no doubt whether or not some of it is stolen. So there was no doubt.
It was evening. I thought about other events. Nsereko wearing different watches all the time. "From my friends!" he would say. And it could be: he borrows radios and bicycles, borrows and lends caps, trousers, shoes and what not. But why borrow three pairs of sunglasses, red, blue and yellow, at the same time? And what about the story of the robbers? Could he just have made that picture with a torch, then realize he did not know how to erase it, then concocting the robbery story? But why would he use a torch? The cabin lights are good enough. No. Ok the probability of the robbery story is down a bit but his heart really was pumping and he really was upset and nervous. As a lie, the robbery story would have been good if something was missing and he would have been promised a share in the yield. But nothing was missing. So I keep thinking I was probably lucky there to have a Kampala street kid confronting the indeed laughably clumsy "robbers".
Thus were my thoughts on that evening. Nsereko was in Bukaya, where a friend's home features TV! Around nine he climbed on the dhow.
He had been to the hair dresser and sported one of those trendy 1 mm coiffures with bold shaved paths going through (you pay 40 eurocents instead of the normal 20).
"I have seen you made a mistake".
"What mistake"
"There" I shine on the box where I always put my wallet. The wallet is always at the extreme right.
He goes to the box. "Here?" He takes a cigar box containing bank code generators at the left extreme side.
The torch bundle is quite concentrated and points straight at the wallet. "No, there..."
"Here?" He takes the GPS in the middle.
"No there".
"Here." He takes the wallet.
"Yes". Tell me what you did.
He mumbles something of not having been around and Tielly's name passes again.
"Do not worry, I want to help you, but you have to tell me."
Then he tells me, the exact values of the four bills (total 28 euro, but for many Ugandans that is a full month's work). Spent on hairdresser, meals for Desmond, Tielly and himself, and the rest, 80%, lost on the football field.
I check the pocket he says has a hole. The hole is such that an escape of paper money is unlikely. Anyway, who cares.
"You need to practice your brain. You came on the street because they killed your uncle for stealing. What if everybody here knows you have been stealing? Will people let you do jobs for them? What do we do? We have to talk with Desmond and Tielly, they are your friends, aren't they?"
He nods, looking at the ground.
The next day he starts fishing. Fishing! He has not been so keen on that in the past week.
 

Nsereko fishing after confessing his money theft (note worried facial expression and fresh hair dress)

He approaches the dhow with only Tielly, also sporting an elegant fresh haircut.
"We have fish".
"I am not hungry, sell it....nice haircut!" Tielly smiles.
"Who paid?"
Tielly the Luo, only speaking weak Luganda, no English, does not understand.
"Ask him" I say to Nsereko.
Nsereko asks him in Luganda.
Thielly: "Nsereko".
I laugh. "Yes, and now he has a problem. Find Desmond!". Desmond is digging the field for his father, then shopping with his mother. Then in the afternoon, all three friends are on the beach. I take Nsereko's clothes, the fish lines and hooks I bought for them, and the small fish cage they cut out of my jerry can. I planned to take the camera to take a picture of three freshly clipped heads, but...Desmond had not seen the clipper! I go to the shore for our meeting.
To Desmond: "Has he told you what happened?"
"No".
To Nsereko: "Tell him".
Nsereko, head down, tells the story. I observe Desmond. It shocks him.
"Now what do we do." I say. "We have to hope this was one mistake. We should keep this a secret otherwise nobody here wants to deal with him anymore. But in any case he cannot stay on my dhow, because there are too many things there. It will be too difficult for him".
Everybody is convinced, Nsereko included. My personal interests are smoothly covered and met, I feel with relief.
"I have your clothes here. Do you want to keep the fish lines, the fish box?"
Everybody nods frantically.
"Where is my black torch?"
Nsereko runs to the hut of Tielly's grandmother and returns with the torch.
"Then, there are now three boys who know what is on my dhow. If we get theft or robbery, everybody will think you are involved, we will have to talk, and everybody will know everything. So if people ask us what is on the dhow we say what?" I had trained them on this before.
"We do not know", Desmond says, with a strained face as if he is carving the thing in himself another time.
"Could we find another place for Nsereko to sleep?" I ask.
"I think not"  Desmond says.
"I could try call some orphanages, but they are in Jinja, he will not be here".
Desmond looks to Nsereko, hesitant: "Would you want that?"
Nsereko displays the foggiest ever of his expressions.
To Desmond: "Have you already found someone to buy the canoe?"
"No"
"Would you like to keep it to show to buyers and use it as long as it is not sold?"
"Yes!!"
"OK, I'll try to inform about orphanages. And from now, I will work with Kingfisher security and I told them that I am alone on the boat and they should see nobody else there, so when you need me, do not go to the dhow but call me. I will come to the beach".
I walk to my canoe. Behind my back, Nsereko's contagious giggle dominates the beach again. I do not think this dhow experience has changed anything in him. It is business as usual. Of course, I will make no phone calls to orphanages unless Nsereko comes back asking for it.
I board the dhow. Me, myself and I agree that the quality of life is raised again to the satisfactory pensioner's level all of us were used to.

Postscript August 20, 2009: Some days after having kicked him off the dhow, I got  Nsereko accepted by Mugaga orphanage Jinja, where they even have a school fees fund so he could go to school!
Postscript November 26, 2009: After more than three months an old acquaintance of Nsereko visited Mugaga orphanage. Nsereko greeted him as such and the acquaintance told Mugaga staff that Nsereko is not an orphan. His parents are alive and well in Kampala, his father even runs a breaking up yard for cars. His mother was taken to Mugaga. Nsereko denied she was the one. Not so the mother! He was taken back to his parents.