Kwei Quartey - Children of the Street

They stared at each other across the table, neither of them blinking.

“They are so easy to get, these children,” Obi said softly. “Just walk around the Novotel Lorry Park, or on Tudu Road, or around the old UTC building. You can find them there by the hundreds. Just pick one and go to him and ask, ‘Do you want to make some money? Come and clean my house.’ They are so poor, so desperate, and they will come with you. Even, you can just offer them a ride in a beautiful car.”

“Don’t you fear someone will see you take a child?”

“And so what?” Obi laughed hard. “Please, Inspector Dawson, let me tell you something you should know by now. Accra is a perfect place for murder. It is so dark and so quiet at night. Street people are sleeping everywhere. Who knows they are there, and who cares about them? Who will report anything? Everyone fears you, the police. They say if you go to report something to the police, you are the one who they will arrest. I could kill one of these rubbish children around the corner from where the other ones sleep and I could walk away without worrying. No one will care.”

Dawson shook his head. He didn’t want that to be true.

“When I throw such a person into the lagoon, or into the latrine or the rubbish pile or the gutter,” Obi continued, “I can do it without any concern whatsoever. I go back to my bed and sleep without any problem. You think a policeman is going to come and get me? Ha.”

Dawson leaned across the table and brought his face so close to Obi’s that the man drew back.

“But Obi, my fool,” he whispered, “that is exactly what I did. I came in and I fished you out.”

Obi swallowed.

“It was you who was reading Dr. Botswe’s book of proverbs and taking your cue from them,” Dawson said. “Sankofa, the bird whose head is turned backward, so that’s what you did to Ebenezer. ‘The knee does not wear the hat when the head is available.’ That was for Comfort, so you gouged her knees out. Musa: ‘We must count one before we can count two,’ so you chopped all his fingers off except the index. Right?”

Obi averted his gaze.

Dawson moved back again. “And last, ‘No one spits on the ground and then licks up the spittle with his tongue.’ You cut out Ofosu’s tongue. A sweet boy who loved to talk and joke around. And you, cold-blooded, and vicious.”

Obi was trembling. “But how… how did you understand what I was going to do with the charcoal stove?”

“Why do you need a charcoal stove? You told me yourself that Dr. Botswe bought you a gas one years ago. You needed the charcoal stove for the grate on the top. ‘Everyone climbs the ladder of death,’ the proverb goes. You were heating up the grate to brand the pattern of parallel lines into Akosua’s skin. If you look at the pattern with the lines going horizontally, it looks like a ladder.”

Obi nodded. “Yes.”

“Why did you kill with proverbs?”

“Anyone can kill, sir, but few people can kill and leave a mark of wisdom on the body. Ghanaian proverbs are the wisest in the world.”

“Leave a mark of wisdom on the body,” Dawson echoed. “That’s what you call all those mutilations?”

“Yes, sir,” Obi answered. “Please, how did you find me?”

“I called Dr. Botswe to find out where you lived. He told me Madina-but then he said he thought you had told him that you had some kind of house in Jamestown. I knew it would have to be the most deserted section of Jamestown. The only area like that is near the lagoon, where putting up new buildings has been banned and old ones have been closed down. I have been passing that Woodcrest Services factory for years, and I never gave it a second’s thought, but it is the only abandoned building that is completely closed, preventing people from seeing inside.”

Obi’s shoulders suddenly contracted and shrank, and he began to weep.

Dawson stood up. “Do you know why he’s crying?” he said to Chikata. “Because he was caught. That’s all he’s sorry about. As for the people he has slaughtered, he feels nothing for them.”

Dawson took Christine and Hosiah out for a celebratory dinner at Maquis Tante Marie. It was more than he could comfortably afford, but he didn’t care. He wanted this to be special, and what was one more day of being broke? He surprised Chikata by inviting him to join them. Par for the course, one of the female waiters simply could not keep her eyes off Chikata, and par for the course, he got her phone number as they left the restaurant. Dawson and Christine exchanged glances and a sly grin.

Walking out to the car, Hosiah suddenly put his hand in Chikata’s and said, “Uncle Philip, you can come to my house on Saturday and play with my cars if you like.”

Chikata at first looked dumbfounded, and then a big grin burst out on his face and he laughed. “Well, I have to ask your daddy first, okay?”

“The answer is yes,” Dawson said, smiling.

They said good night to Chikata, dropping him off at police barracks. Just after they passed the Ako Adjei Interchange, Dawson spotted someone at the side of the street and pulled over.

“Why are we stopping?” Christine asked.

“It’s Sly,” Dawson said, his door already open.

He ran back to where the boy was standing.

For just a moment, Sly stared at him as he approached, unsure. Then his face lit up.

“Mr. Darko!” he screamed and began running.

Dawson knelt down, opening his arms wide. Sly joyfully threw himself into his embrace.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Dawson cried. “Where have you been?”

He held Sly at arm’s length. The boy had lost weight, and his clothes were even more ragged than before, but that old spark in his eyes was still there.

“I don’t live in Agbogbloshie anymore,” Sly explained. “My uncle went to the north and left me and he never came back.”

“So where do you live now?”

“Oh, well, just on the streets, you know. I walk around during the day and try to do some jobs, and then I find somewhere to sleep.”

Dawson shook his head. Sly is not going to be a street child .

Christine and Hosiah had joined them.

“This is Sly,” Dawson introduced.

“Oh, yes!” Christine exclaimed. “The boy we went to look for. How are you?”

“Please, I’m fine.”

“Hosiah?” Dawson said, a touch apprehensively. He wasn’t sure what the reception was going to be like. “Say hello to-”

“I already know about him, Daddy,” Hosiah said in somewhat long-suffering tones. “I heard you and Mammy talking about him.”

“Oh,” Dawson said.

“Can you play soccer?” Hosiah asked Sly.

“Sure,” he replied, grinning. “I can dribble paa, and I’m a good goalie too.”

“I have a soccer ball at my house we can play with.”

“They look sweet together, don’t they?” Christine whispered to Dawson as the two boys talked. “He looks awfully hungry, though.”

“His uncle left,” Dawson said. “Deserted him without a word.”

“Ewurade,” Christine said, appalled. “So he’s on the streets with no one at all to take care of him?”

“Yes.”

They looked at each other.

“Well, we at least need to get him something to eat, poor kid,” she said. “And then we can see what else we can do to help him.”

“We may have to take a trip to the north to find his parents,” Dawson said, “which might be easier said than done. Beyond that, unless we take him in, he’ll become just like the other thousands of street children. And I don’t think I’m going to like that.”

“I know,” she said, hooking her fingers around his. “I know you won’t.”