Observing the Orphan Boy

I was watching you, you know,
when you were sitting. Obinere.

Sitting in the corner.

Sitting in the dirt.

Sitting on the front step watching flies fly by.

Sitting on the floor you slept and swept.

On a handful of black rags that was called Your Mattress.

I was listening when you were singing.

I promise not to tell. 

That you sing yourself lullabies in grunts and growls.

That ever so quietly you buzz

to hear something.

To hear yourself maybe?

Or maybe to prove that

you exist where you are sitting. Yamawe.

The whale song of a small invisible boy

with an invincible soul

that is so unsure of its invincibility.

I was crying for you when I saw your skin.

Marked and scared with Disappointment, Burden, Accident, Grief.

The coarse roads across your back that paid the debt of your rent as Orphan Boy.

Lost Boy. Pest. Scavenger.

Blistered and peeling from sleeping beneath the Equator's Wrath. 

Whithering away where you fell in boiling water. Where you burned with bleach. 

Twisting and racing in spider webs across your chest,  

being sure to steer clear of your never touched heart.

Pink and raw  where you were once creamy and oh so chocolate.

Scabies and ringworm and lice and fleas tell you

I Am A Street Boy
and selfishly find their home inside your skin.

As they say where you are from, It Has Remained.

I was celebrating when you found the scraps of mango.

A candied delight on a surprise Wednesday night.

Forgotten and left behind by Eating Men who no longer taste mangoes but have left there for you leathery skins to suck on for hours.
The skeleton of the meat you wished to eat.

A glimpse of something Sweet.

I was dancing for you when the others were dancing.

When you sat and you sat and you sat.

When you sat where you exist.

In the back. Behind the kitchen. In the dark.

It is the burden of the Orphan Boy; that sitting.

Wasting and watching and wishing the days away.

Melting in the lazy heat of days that bring nothing.

Why should you dance?

Would your muscles be stronger if they had things to do?
Your bones would be taller if someone spoke to you?

Only by miracle, your body grows.

Another year older and wiser.

in survival.

I am loving you now from Here.

In this Plastic, Gluten-Free, Buy One Get One Free, MTV, Do You Have Two Cars or Do You Have Three? country.

Where we print and sell your pain on ORGANIC 100% Cotton All-the-proceeds-of-this-purchase-save-a-life-in-Africa T-shirts.

V Necks with the silhouette of an entire continent stamped to our chests.
Our badge of servitude to The Least Of These. The Lost Continent.
As if you are not from that small Pearl of a country that rhythms your veins and bleeds Bakiga.

Because in our country, you are from Africa. As we understand it:
That Wave Your Flag, Waka-Waka Ay-Ay, Hakuna Matata, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, with no worries, Rastafari, let's go see the elephants, Garden of Eden where little dark children have names with too many vowels, stretched earlobes and protruding stomachs filled with worms.
Where little boys and little girls sleep on the street and dream of AK-47s and we say

That is life over there.

Here you are African Orphan Boy as the American sees you.
Not Mutungi. Not Moses. Not Manzee. Not Clever.
Here where we buy bracelets and stainless steel water bottles and trendy canvas-wrapped shoes with Your Continent as our logo and bumper sticker. 
So we can buy without The Guilt.
We buy tote bags and stuff them with food (we pay extra so it is organic)
That we are sure to waste.
The Civilized Ones.

I am loving you still even though I am embarrassed to tell you that  

I was born here.
In this Botox Twittering Empire.
Where we starve to be beautiful and put clothes on our dogs.
Where our government passes out food to people that do not want to work.
And it is destroying me.

Me? Destroying me?

And I sit and I sit on it.

Never knowing what to do.

I visit and I visit and I visit you.

I feed and hug and wipe and bathe and kiss and dance and twirl and jump and sing and laugh and cry and hold you.
And then I leave.
And that's never going to been enough to show you that I love you.
Orphan Boy.

Nimbakunda Munonga. Omugiisha.