The Road

The road did not begin with a farewell. It began with a footstep.

One foot in front of the other. Dust rising from the earth like breath. Mkavu walked with no procession behind him, no blessing spoken loudly enough to soften the journey. Only the night, wide and listening, and the long road stretching toward Malimwengu.

He had left before dawn, when even the chickens in Madara were still dreaming. The village lay folded behind him, quiet in the way rural places become when they do not know they are being abandoned. His sandals were thin. His bag lighter than his thoughts.

He was not running away. He was running toward something. Toward a name. Toward a father. Or so he believed. Two hundred and thirty kilometres.

The first hours were easy. The road out of Madara was familiar, lined with the same guava trees that had watched him grow. The same women sweeping compounds with twig brooms. The same smoke rising from breakfast fires. "Where are you going, Mkavu?" "Just walking." Just walking, as though a boy could walk out of his life and into another.

But as the sun rose higher, the land began to change. The paths grew lonelier. The dust thickened, clinging to his skin. By midday, his feet burned. By evening, his throat was a dry cave. By night, the darkness arrived like an animal. He walked anyway. Because the conversation had already happened. It had happened by the fire.

Mwalimu had been sitting with him, the old man's face lit orange by the flames. "You see, my son," Mwalimu had said, "a man who does not know where he belongs will spend his whole life explaining himself." That night, Mwalimu's voice softened. "I have thought of giving you a place here forever. You are my son in everything except the blood." Then the old man looked at him. "But tell me, do you ever think of Malimwengu?"

The word landed like a stone. Malimwengu. His father's community. A place across the border. Across history. Across abandonment. "I don't know him," Mkavu said. Mwalimu nodded slowly. "But you know of him." Silence. Then, as if speaking to the ancestors themselves: "A man cannot outrun the question of his origin. It will follow him even into success." That was the night the road began.

The border came like a scar across the land. Not a wall. Not a river. Just men. Men with uniforms and weapons. They stopped him. "Who are you?" Mkavu swallowed. "I'm looking for—" The first blow came fast. Boots against ribs. Dust rose. He did not think of communities or borders. Only the next breath. When they finally let him cross, it was not mercy. It was dismissal. He stood slowly, wiped his mouth, and walked on.

Mkavu did not arrive in Malimwengu like a visitor. He arrived like a question. Children stared. Dogs barked, announcing that something unfinished had entered their world. Somewhere ahead was his aunt's hut. He stepped forward. The hut was smaller than he imagined, crouched beneath banana trees. Smoke curled from the roof. A goat watched him without interest. Then a voice cut through the air. "Eh?" A woman emerged, wiping her hands on her skirt. Her eyes narrowed—then widened into something ancestral. "Mkavu?" His name sounded different in Malimwengu. He nodded. And just like that, the road ended.

She pulled him in without ceremony. Fed him water first, then silence, then finally food. "I am Saki," she said. "Your father's sister." Father. The word hung between them like a pot suspended over fire.

In the days that followed, Saki did not interrogate him. One morning, she took him to the market. Saki sold bananas. Her stall was small, her presence large. Then, as if speaking to the bananas more than to him, Saki began. "So, you have come because of Josica." Mkavu's throat tightened. "My brother was not a bad man. He was only careless in the way young men are careless when they believe talent is protection. In Jiji la Mawe, talent is not protection. It is provocation." She told him of Jack and Jill, the contract, the arrest. "He was framed. That is when Saida became a widow of paperwork." Mkavu swallowed. "And Jessica?" "Ah, that girl was light. She helped free him. She walked into their offices and introduced herself like a journalist. They feared shame more than justice. So they paid something small. And that is where my brother failed you. He used that money to restart himself. To live. To love. To forget. He was not careful enough to safeguard the interests of his eldest son." The words landed gently, but struck deeply. Saki's voice softened. "But you are here now." She placed a banana in his hands like an offering. Mkavu stared at the fruit. In Malimwengu, truth arrived in pieces. Sold like bananas. Told like myth. Carried like inheritance.

— ancestors listening —

The City of Stone

The night before his graduation, Mkavu sat alone in his room. The gown hung on the back of the door. Blue. Unworn. His name had been printed on a programme somewhere. He had not packed the gown. He had packed his bag.

He thought of the photograph they would take without him. The empty chair. The name called twice, then three times, then abandoned. He thought of what came after. The soft disasters people never announce. Alcohol. Women. Recklessness. That kind of courage that is really just drowning. He did not want to become a shadow with a certificate. He wanted to know whose face he carried. So he left the gown hanging. And when the sun rose, he was already on the road.

The bus to Jiji la Mawe was not the kind that asked permission. It took. It swallowed. Mkavu boarded at dawn. The conductor shouted destinations like commandments. "Jiji la Mawe! Jiji la Mawe!" Women with baskets climbed in. Men with tired eyes climbed in. Mkavu climbed in carrying something heavier than a bag. He carried Malimwengu. He carried Saki's voice. He carried the ancestors' ultimatum. The bus groaned forward. Dust rose behind it like a spirit refusing to be left.

At first, Mkavu watched the landscape. Banana groves gave way to open fields. Fields gave way to trading centres. Trading centres gave way to nothingness. The bus was loud in the way Africa is loud when it moves. Music crackled from cheap speakers. A baby cried. Somewhere behind Mkavu, a woman prayed under her breath. Mkavu sat by the window, silent. He had imagined this journey differently. It felt like walking into court. He pressed his forehead against the glass.

Hours passed. Then a roadblock. Police. Uniforms. Guns resting casually. Mkavu's stomach tightened. The conductor's voice softened. Officers approached. One of them looked inside, scanning faces. His eyes paused on Mkavu for half a second too long. Then moved on. A bribe was exchanged. The bus rolled forward. But Mkavu remained tense. In his life, law had never been neutral.

By evening, the horizon began to change. The air grew heavier. The sky dimmed under the weight of buildings. Jiji la Mawe announced itself before it appeared—through smoke, through noise, through the feeling that the city was already reaching out its stone hands. The bus entered the city. And the City of Stone received him without welcome.

Mkavu had been to Jiji la Mawe before. He knew its breath. Its noise. Most times, the city had been a place of errands and reunions. This time, Jiji la Mawe did not feel like a city. It felt like a courtroom built from stone. He stood at the edge of the pavement, holding his bag, watching the world move too fast. He knew the directions. But knowing directions did not mean knowing courage. The problem was not the city. The problem was what waited inside it. Josica. A father was not a place on a map. A father was a door that had never decided whether to open.

His pocket vibrated. Saida. He stared at the phone as though it were an accusation. Then he answered. Her voice came through like rain on dry ground. "Mkavu…" Just his name. "Where are you?" "I'm… around." "Around where? You left without a word." "I'm okay." "You are not okay. You don't leave before your graduation because you are okay." He almost said it: I couldn't celebrate while my father is still a question mark. Instead, he stayed silent. Saida's voice softened. "Mkavu… tell me the truth."

Saida did not shout. "You are in Jiji la Mawe, aren't you?" Silence. "Yes," he admitted. "You are going to him." It was not a question. Mkavu felt his chest tighten. "I had to. I can't keep walking around my life like half of me is missing." Saida exhaled slowly. "For years, I carried you away from that world with both hands. I thought distance could protect you. But mothers do not decide these things forever. Sons grow legs. Sons grow questions." "And what if he rejects me?" "Then you will still return with yourself. You are not going there to beg. You are going there to know." Then, almost like a prayer: "Just be careful, Mkavu. Do not let anger speak for you." Her voice dropped into something ancient. "You think you are walking alone… but blood has long roads." The line went dead.

His phone vibrated again. Mwalimu. "Where are you walking to with such heaviness?" "I'm just… walking." "A man is always walking somewhere, even when his feet are still. Do you remember, boy… the river?" Mkavu's chest tightened. "The boys who are beaten into strength often grow into men who do not know where tenderness belongs. You are not only looking for Josica. You are looking for the part of you that was never allowed to be soft."

Mkavu found the place the way people find painful things—slowly. With dread. It was not a grand house. Just a worn building. Children played nearby. Someone's radio spilled music. Then Josica appeared. He was lean, his shoulders slightly hunched. A door that had never decided whether to open. Their eyes met. Josica's voice was rough. "So… you are Mkavu." "Yes." "You came to Malimwengu first." An accusation disguised as fact. "I was looking for—" "For what?" Then he stopped himself. "I heard you went there without telling anyone." Mkavu's voice came out smaller than he intended. "I left." Josica's eyes flickered. "That is what I used to do."

Silence grew. Guilt sat in Josica like a stone. "You look like your mother. She is alive?" "She is alive." Josica nodded. "Good." Then, trembling: "You… you have grown." Mkavu said only: "Yes." Josica's jaw tightened. Finally, his voice lower now, not angry, just wounded: "You should have come to me first." Mkavu stared at him. The words rose in him like fire: You should have come to me first. But he did not say them. Not yet.

They did not embrace. Josica cleared his throat. "Let us walk." Mkavu nodded. And so they walked. Side by side. Like strangers who happened to share blood.

— the city watches —

The Falling

The city does not care if you are falling. It only cares that you do not block the pavement.

Those first weeks in Josica's house, Mkavu slept on a mattress so thin he could feel the floor's ribs through it. The room was not his room—a space between storage and forgetting. Josica left before dawn. Returned after dark. They passed each other like boats on a river that had forgotten how to dock.

The cousins arrived on a Sunday. Otieno and the others. City eyes that measured you in seconds and found you wanting. "This is Mkavu," Josica said. "From Madara. He will stay awhile." Otieno looked at his sandals. "Madara." As though the word itself was a diagnosis. Mkavu understood: he was not a guest. Not family. A fact to be accommodated. That night, Otieno's girlfriend cooked. Mkavu sat at the edge of the sofa, waiting. No one invited him. At midnight, hunger woke him. He found leftover ugali in the kitchen. Ate it standing, in darkness, listening to the city breathe.

Weeks passed. Mkavu looked for work. Any work. Construction sites—the foremen looked at his soft hands and shook their heads. Washing cars—three boys already did it. He asked Josica for help. "I will ask around." He did not ask around. The cousins did not beat him. Worse: they ignored him. Spoke over him, through him, around him—never to him. He became invisible while remaining visible. A ghost who ate their food.

One evening, Otieno's friend visited. Pressed shirt, polished shoes. They spoke in low voices near the window: supply chain, border, six figures. After the man left, Otieno counted money at the table. Slow. Deliberate. Mkavu watched. Otieno caught his gaze. Held it. Then smiled, and continued counting.

That night, Mkavu walked. He found himself at a small bar. No name, just a counter and men who drank like they were being paid to forget. He ordered something cheap. Drank it too fast. Ordered another. The bartender, a heavyset woman named Wanjiku, stopped asking for ID after the third visit. "You're young. Young men drink like they're trying to drown something. But the thing always learns to swim." Mkavu looked at his glass. "What if it's already drowned?" Wanjiku studied him. "Then you're drinking for nothing." She poured another anyway.

The drinking became daily. Josica noticed the silence. "You look tired. There are jobs at the industrial area. I can—" "I don't need your help." The words came out sharper than he intended. Josica flinched. Then the door closed between them again.

Months passed. The pandemic arrived like a slow storm. Lockdown. Curfews. The city changed. Matatus stopped screaming. The streets became rivers of silence. Josica's work dried up. Money became tight. The cousins began looking at Mkavu the way men look at an extra mouth. "He's not even working." "He's family," Otieno said. The word hung in the air, unfamiliar.

Mkavu found casual work at Mama Zuri's kiosk. He stocked shelves. Swept the floor. One afternoon, Mama Zuri went to the back to pray. Mkavu stood alone at the counter. His eyes moved over the register. The small notes folded beneath the coins. His hand moved before his mind decided. Two hundred shillings. It became easier after the first time. Not good. Not justified. Just easier. He stole three more times. Then Mama Zuri noticed. She did not shout. She simply looked at him. "I think you should not come tomorrow." Mkavu nodded. Walked out. He did not return.

He began stealing from the cousins. Loose change. A watch. He sold them at the market. The cousins noticed. Accusations flew. No one suspected Mkavu—not because he was above suspicion, but because he was beneath it.

The drinking became daily. The cousins evicted him on a Thursday. Not officially. They changed the locks while he was at Wanjiku's. His bag waited on the doorstep. No note. No explanation. Mkavu stood on the pavement, watching the curtain move. Then still. He walked.

For three nights, he slept in the city. Doorways. Bus shelters. The stone of the city was cold, then colder. On the fourth night, it rained. He pressed himself against a closed shopfront. His teeth chattered. His mind drifted. The river. Roho Safi's hand on his head. His mother, waiting for a call he could no longer make.

Saida found him. Her voice came through the phone like a blade. "Mkavu. Where are you?" "I'm fine." "Don't. Don't say that to me. Your cousin called Josica. I know everything." "Then you know why I can't come back." "You can always come back." "No. No, I can't." He ended the call. He did not call again.

The street received him. He learned its rhythms. Which hours were safe to sleep. Which vendors accepted small thefts. He learned the language of the forgotten. Chokora. Scavenger. The word followed him. Became his shadow. Became his name.

He stole from an elderly woman in the market. Her purse hanging open. His hand moved with practiced ease. Later, counting the notes in a doorway, he recognized the face on one of them. His mother. Saida's grocery money. He had stolen from a stranger. But he had also, somehow, stolen from his mother. He sold the notes anyway.

His body began to fail. A cough that would not leave. His ribs, bruised at the border, ached constantly. His hands shook. He looked in a shop window and did not recognize the man staring back. Gaunt. Grey. Eyes that had retreated somewhere deep. He thought of God. Are you there? No answer. Have you forgotten me? The sky continued its slow lightening.

A former classmate saw him near the bus station. Brian. Suit, briefcase, polished shoes. "Mkavu? Is that really you?" His eyes traveled over Mkavu—the calculation of appropriate response. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine." Brian nodded too quickly. Reached into his pocket. Pressed a folded note into his hand. "Take care of yourself, brother." Five hundred shillings. Mkavu spent it on alcohol.

More sightings followed. Each encounter: recognition, disbelief, calibrated kindness. Are you okay? I'm fine. Here. Take this. The money bought temporary relief. The encounters bought permanent shame. He began avoiding areas where he might be recognized. The irony: he had come to Jiji la Mawe seeking recognition. Now he hid from it. Be careful what you seek. It might find you when you no longer want to be found.

Josica appeared one evening. Mkavu sat in a doorway. A shadow fell over him. Josica lowered himself to the pavement beside his son. "I looked for you. For weeks. I didn't look hard enough. That's the truth." Mkavu stared at his shaking hands. "Why are you here?" Josica was quiet for a long time. Then: "Because you are my son." The words arrived too late. "I don't believe you," Mkavu said. Josica flinched. But he did not leave.

He came back the next evening. And the next. He brought food. Mkavu did not eat it. He brought money. Mkavu did not take it. He brought silence. That, Mkavu accepted.

The pandemic entered its second wave. Third wave. Fourth. Mkavu met Musa on the street. Older, face mapped with survival. "You're young. Young ones don't last. You need to learn, or you need to die." "Teach me." Musa taught him. How to identify plainclothes police. How to sleep without dreaming. How to steal without the theft consuming you—the last lesson, Musa could not teach. Mkavu learned it alone. The theft always consumes you. You just learn to live with the hunger inside.

He began using drugs. Not heavily. Not yet. Just enough to quiet the noise. The first time, he felt the anxiety lift from his shoulders like a bird taking flight. He chased that feeling for weeks. The bird always returned. Heavier each time. Saida stopped calling. His phone died. Sometimes, in half-dreams, he heard her voice. Mkavu. Hold on. Hold on to what?

His mother's grocery shop. A memory surfaced like a body in a river. He had stolen from her register, years ago. Five thousand shillings. She had never mentioned it. Had simply continued loving him, as though the theft was a wound she could absorb without bleeding. Mkavu sat in his doorway and wept. Not for the theft. For the love that had absorbed it.

He decided to return to Madara. He walked to the bus station. The fare was eight hundred shillings. He had forty. He stood at the edge of the station, watching buses depart. The last bus left at dusk. He watched its taillights disappear. Then he turned and walked back into the city.

He did not try again.

The drugs became heavier. Not quantity—he could not afford quantity. But the substance shifted, from cheap relief to something darker. He spent days in a haze of half-sleep. Musa found him in an alley, unresponsive. He slapped Mkavu's face until his eyes focused. "You want to die? Because this is how you die. Not quickly. Slowly. By inches." Mkavu stared at him. "Is that so bad?" Musa was silent. Then he stood. "I taught you to survive. I cannot teach you to want to." He walked away.

Mkavu lay in the alley, watching the sky. Blue. Then grey. Then black. He did not move. Then something shifted. Not hope. A recognition that he was standing at the edge of a cliff, and the fall, while inevitable, could still be chosen. He could become nothing, slowly, in an alley. Or he could go home.

Madara. The word surfaced like a memory of water. He stood. His legs trembled. He took a step. Then another. The bus station was three kilometres away. He walked through the night. The bus station appeared at dawn. "Madara," he said. "Eight hundred," the clerk said. He had seven hundred and forty. Then, from behind him, a voice: "I'll pay the difference." Josica stood at the entrance. "I followed you. Last night. I saw you leave the alley." He stepped forward. Placed three hundred shillings on the counter. "Madara. Two tickets."

The bus departed at six. They sat side by side, father and son, watching the city recede. Josica did not speak. Mkavu did not speak. But for the first time since the road began, the silence between them was not a wall. It was a bridge.

— the falling, and the catching —

Home

Madara received him the way villages receive all returning sons—with silence, with memory, with the terrible weight of being known. The women sweeping compounds looked up. Their brooms paused. "Mkavu," someone whispered. His name, spoken not as greeting but as recognition. He has returned. He is broken. He is here.

Saida stood in the doorway of her kiosk. She had aged. Mkavu stopped at the edge of the compound. He had rehearsed this moment. The words deserted him. "Mother," he said. His voice broke. Saida did not move. Simply waited. "I stole from you," Mkavu said. "Five thousand shillings. The semester I came home. I took it and I never told you and I never paid it back and I—" His voice broke again. He pressed his palms against his eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

Saida stepped forward. Her hand touched his face. Warm. "I knew," she said. "I always knew. The money was not for the shop. It was for you. For your fees. I had saved it over two years. When it disappeared, I knew who had taken it. And I knew why. I thought, if I said nothing, you would bring it back yourself. When you were ready. Then you left for university, and the money stayed gone, and I understood that some debts are not repaid with currency. So I forgave you. Not because you asked. Because you were my son, and I could not carry the weight of your shame and mine both. I have been waiting for you to forgive yourself."

He moved back into Roho Safi's compound. His grandmother did not ask questions. She simply made space—a mattress in the corner, a plate at her table. "You are thin," she said. "You will eat." It was not a suggestion. The withdrawal came in waves. He shook. He sweated. Roho Safi did not comment. She simply brought him water. Sat beside him. Waited. Saida came every evening. She did not speak of the past. Simply sat with him, her presence a quiet anchor. One evening, she said: "He called me. Josica. He said he wants to come. To Madara. To meet the elders properly." Mkavu stared at the wall. "Tell him not to come. I don't need his acknowledgment. Not anymore."

But Josica came anyway. Three weeks later. Roho Safi received him at the gate. "So. You are the one." Josica lowered his eyes. "Yes, Mama." "The one who made my daughter a widow of paperwork." Silence. "The one whose son walked two hundred and thirty kilometres to find a closed door." Josica's voice was barely audible. "Yes, Mama." Roho Safi studied him. Then she stepped aside. "He is inside. He does not want to see you. But I did not raise quitters."

Josica found Mkavu in the back room, sitting on the mattress. "Mkavu." No response. Josica lowered himself to the floor at the foot of the mattress. "I have spent my life being afraid. Afraid of the city. Afraid of failure. Afraid of your mother. Afraid of you. A boy I had never met. A son who had grown into a man without me. Afraid that if I saw you, I would see all the years I had stolen from us both. I was a coward. I am still a coward. But I am here. I do not ask your forgiveness. I only ask that you do not disappear again. That you do not become the kind of father I was. That you do not pass this wound to children who do not deserve it." Silence. Then Mkavu spoke. "It's too late. I am already what you made me. What Mjengo made me. What the city made me. There is no son left to save." Josica stared at him. "I don't believe that." Mkavu looked at him. "That is your curse."

Josica did not leave. He stayed in Madara. Found work at a construction site. Slept on a mat in Roho Safi's sitting room. Each evening, he sat outside Mkavu's door, waiting. Some days, Mkavu spoke to him. Brief sentences. Most days, he did not. Months passed. His body healed slowly. But something in him remained untouched by healing—a core of cold that no warmth could reach.

One evening, Mwalimu came. The old teacher moved slowly now, his hand resting on a cane. "Boy, you have been sitting in darkness long enough." He lowered himself onto the mattress beside Mkavu. "Do you remember the story of Okonkwo? A man who feared nothing except weakness. Who spent his life proving he was not his father. Who destroyed everything he loved because he could not carry the weight of his own fear. He is not you. You are not him. Because Okonkwo never learned that strength is not the opposite of softness. He never understood that a man can be both iron and water. The greatest courage is not the refusal to break—but the willingness to be remade." Mkavu's voice was barely audible. "I don't know how." Mwalimu placed his hand on his shoulder. "Then learn."

Something shifted. Slowly. A crack in the wall of his numbness. He began to eat regularly. To sleep through the night. To leave the compound for short walks, then longer ones. He did not know what he was walking toward. But he was walking.

The idea came to him during one of these walks. He stood at the edge of the river—the same river where he had swum as a child, where Mjengo had beaten him. The water moved past, indifferent and eternal. He thought of the garments his father had once made. Beauty from rags. Possibility from waste. He thought of the street. The forgotten. The ones discarded by systems that did not care if they lived or died. What if they could be remade? Not by charity. Not by pity. But by work. By dignity. By the same hands that had once stitched fabric into possibility.

"Recycled garments," he said to Josica. "A business. Like you used to make. But also training. For people on the streets. People like Musa. We teach them to stitch. To create. We give them work, not charity. Dignity, not pity. I have no money. No equipment. But I have nothing else to lose." Josica was quiet for a long time. Then: "I have money. Not much. Savings from construction. A few thousand. It is not enough for a business. But it is enough for thread. Needles. Fabric to practice on. If you are serious—if this is not just a dream to escape the darkness—I will give you everything I have." For the first time since the alley, something flickered in Mkavu's chest. Not hope. Not yet. But possibility.

— the slow work of becoming —

Pamoja

They began with nothing. Two second-hand sewing machines, their cases cracked, their pedals hesitant. Fabric from Saida's kiosk—damaged sacks, unsold remnants. Thread from the market, purchased in small quantities. Roho Safi donated her sitting room as a workshop. "This house has held marriages and births and funerals. It can hold a few machines."

The first weeks were disaster. Mkavu's hands, still trembling, could not control the fabric. His stitches wandered. His seams unraveled. Josica watched. Did not criticize. Did not intervene. Simply sat beside his son, working his own machine, letting the rhythm of stitching become their shared language. Slowly, Mkavu's hands steadied. Slowly, his stitches straightened.

Musa arrived on the third week. Gaunt, wary, the city still clinging to his clothes. "I heard you are making things. I heard you are teaching others." "Yes." "I don't know how to sew." "I will teach you." "I don't know how to do anything else either." Mkavu met his eyes. "Neither did I." Others came. Slowly. One by one. The forgotten and the discarded. A woman who had been a seamstress before her husband died. A young man who had never held a needle but had watched his grandmother sew. A teenager who had been on the streets since she was twelve. Mkavu taught them what Josica taught him. Josica taught them what the city had taught him. They learned together.

The business grew. Not quickly. Not dramatically. But steadily, the way roots grow—invisible beneath the surface, anchoring something that would one day become visible. They named it Pamoja. Together.

The first sale came from a neighbor. A child's dress, stitched from recycled fabric, its seams uneven but its spirit undeniable. Two hundred shillings. Mkavu held the money in his hands. This money was different. Not stolen. Not begged. Not borrowed. Earned. The second sale came from a stranger. Then a third. Orders began arriving—slowly, tentatively—through the network of neighbors and relatives and word of mouth. Pamoja. The place where forgotten people make beautiful things.

Saida came to the workshop one evening. She stood at the doorway, watching her son guide Musa's hands through a difficult stitch. His voice was patient. His fingers steady. His face held something she had not seen since he was a child: concentration. Purpose. She held out a folded cloth. Old. Faded. "This was his. Josica's. He made it before you were born." Mkavu took the cloth. Unfolded it. A shirt. Simple. Hand-stitched. The seams, even after decades, were perfect. "He gave it to me the week we married. He said he had nothing else to offer. Just his hands. Just what they could make. I kept it because I could not keep him. I think you should keep it now. His hands made this. Yours will make the next thing." Mkavu folded the shirt carefully and placed it beside his machine. Then he returned to work.

The months passed. The workshop grew. Two machines became four. Four became six. Musa, once a student, became a teacher. Josica remained. Not at the center of the work, but present. Reliable. The quiet man at the machine, stitching seams that would hold. They did not speak of the past. Not directly. But sometimes, working side by side in the afternoon light, their elbows almost touching, Mkavu would glance at his father and see not the absence that had shaped his childhood, but the presence that had arrived too late. Too late to prevent the fall. But perhaps not too late to help him rise.

One evening, Josica spoke. "Mkavu. I never said—when you came to Jiji la Mawe. When you stood across the road and waited for me to recognize you. I recognized you immediately. Not because you look like your mother. Not because Saki had described you. I recognized you because you carried yourself the way I carried myself when I first arrived in the city. Young. Hopeful. Certain that the world would make space for you if you simply asked. I saw myself in you. And I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I had become. Ashamed that my son had found me selling tomatoes and counting change. Ashamed that I had no empire to offer, no fortune to bestow, no grand explanation for my absence. So I closed the door. Not because I did not want you. But because I did not believe I deserved to be wanted." Mkavu stared at him. Then, slowly, he said: "You didn't. You didn't deserve it. Not then. Maybe not now. But I came anyway."

That night, for the first time, they ate together. Not as strangers. Not as penitent and judge. Just two men, sharing a meal, sharing silence, sharing the small, fragile possibility of something neither of them knew how to name.

The pandemic, for all its devastation, had changed the world. People, isolated, craved something tangible. Something made by human hands. Pamoja began receiving orders from beyond Madara. From the city. From other towns. Mkavu hired two more teachers. Expanded into a second room. Began dreaming of a third.

He did not forget. The street had marked him. He still woke some nights with his heart racing, certain he was back in the doorway. But the mornings arrived anyway. And each morning, he returned to his machine. Saida came less often now. Not because she was withdrawing. Because the terror that had gripped her for years had loosened its hold. He was not healed. But he was no longer falling.

One Sunday, Mkavu walked to the church. He sat in the back pew. The service continued around him. Are you there? The silence answered. Have you forgotten me? No answer. But also, perhaps, no confirmation of forgetting. He stayed until the service ended. Then he walked home.

The dream came again that night. He was at the river. The water moved past, clear and quick. Someone sat beside him. His mother. Young, as she had been before the city broke her. Mkavu, she said. You are walking. He looked down. His feet were in the water. Where am I going? She smiled. Home. You are walking home.

He woke. The sun was rising. The workshop waited. He rose, dressed, and walked toward the machines.

— stitch by stitch —

The Road Continues

Two years later. The workshop is no longer a sitting room. It occupies a building now, rented from the village cooperative. Twelve machines. Eighteen workers. An order book that stretches weeks into the future.

Mkavu stands at the window, watching the afternoon light fall across the compound. Musa approaches. He is different now—fuller in the face, steadier in his movements. He wears a shirt stitched by his own hands, the seams straight. "Order for the city school. Fifty uniforms. Delivery next month." Mkavu nods. "And the training program. Three new applicants. All from the streets." Mkavu turns from the window. "Enroll them."

Saida visits that evening. She is older now. Slower. But her voice remains the voice that has anchored him through every storm. "Josica called. He will come for the weekend." Mkavu nods. "You two. Still circling each other like planets." "We're here," Mkavu says. "That's enough." Saida studies him. Then, slowly, she smiles. "Yes. I think it is."

The night is quiet. Mkavu sits alone in the workshop, surrounded by sleeping machines. The fabric of tomorrow's work waits in neat piles. He thinks of his father, somewhere in the city, preparing for another journey to Madara. He thinks of his mother, asleep in her kiosk, her dreams full of children who have grown and survived. He thinks of the boy who walked two hundred and thirty kilometres to find a closed door. He thinks of the man who opened it himself.

Outside, the road continues. It does not ask where he is going. It only waits for his next step. Mkavu places his hand on the nearest machine. The metal is cool. Familiar. Tomorrow, he will work. Tonight, he rests.