“Careful with my produce!  Can you afford to replace them if you dropped them?  Incompetent fool!”  She cursed angrily as she watched me manouevering my wheelbarrow around one of the many potholes that decorated the once tarmaced road.

“I wonder how cab drivers manage in these craters?”  I thought aloud as I pushed my fully ladden wheelbarrow around another pothole.

“Cabs?  Me, pay those thieves?”  She frowned in her loud voice as she threw her thick arms around.  “They are nothing but vultures!  Shameless thieves!”

She threw her thick arms wildly as she talked.  She hurried forth, dragging her old yellow sandals.  Her left foot carelessly kicking a heap of orange peels, next to an orange seller’s stand.  I turned my gaze to the potatoes in the top basket bounced against each other, making one fall off from the basket and hid itself among the many baskets in my old wheelbarrow.  Looking at the products in the baskets, I did a quick calculation and concluded that their worth could have solved atleast half my problems – the overdue rent, medical money for my mother’s arthiritis, school fees for my orphaned nieces, school uniform for my two brother and sister, a long promised piece of fabric for my girlfriend, some food, a few beers.  I sighed, suddenly thirsty for a long drag of marijuana to calm my nerves.

“Careful, I said!  I have never met such a careless imbecile in my life!”  She screamed again.

“Shangazi, if you think you can do a better job, why don’t you take over?”  I replied angrily.  I was tired, hot and hungry – and her naggings were getting to me.

“Don’t try me, Mpenda Chongo!  No wonder your mother gave you such a stupid name!”

Mpenda Chongo, all my customers called me because of the wording I had painted in white acrylic paint at the back of my wheelbarrow.  Mpenda chongo huona kengeza.  A begging young boy moved infront of her, turning the what would have been a row of more insults towards me to himself.

“Don’t you have abled hands?  Go find a job!  Lazy bum!  Stupid lazy fool!  Go away!  Get away from me!  Kwanza, you stink!.”

“Subiri!  Wait!”  She waved me to stop when we reached some tree shades.  “Let me catch my breath.  I am not that young anymore, you know.

Barely catching her breath, she leaned against a nearby tree, then went on complaining and cursing to nobody in particular, with her thick arms flying about.  My focus then fell on her thick arms and entricately hennad thick hands with so many gokd rings she looked like a hip-pop artist.  A thinning floral towel was drapped casually on her shoulder. Thick arms and hands  She always carried a floral towel of which she wiped sweat from her bleached and lightened, pimpled, pudhy face.  Her kitenge dress was drenched with sweat, with sweat blotches on her armpits.

Quickly I searched the pockets of my thread bare jeans for a cigarattes.  Not finding any I sighed heavily.  Thirst and hunger had gripped me tightly.  I thought of the money I had in my pockets but I dared not touch it as I had a landlord to pay.

A vendor boy on a bicycle selling sugarcanes rode past us and stopped under a nice spot where he could be seen by passer-bys.  Leaning his bicycle against the same tree, he unloaded he wares and started peeling more sugar canes, then packed the peeled and chopped up cubes in clear plastic bags he had with him.

“Kata kiu!  Quanch your thirst with delicious sugarcane!  Fresh sugar canes!”  He sand happily to potential buyers.

“Gimme me a bag!” She ordered the vendor as she moved towards an unturned empty crate of soda to sit on it, “give me a bag of the fresh ones!  Not those ones, you nincompoop, give me from the ones you just peeled!”

“Shangazi, can we move now.  I have other customers, you know,”  I called her when I saw her getting comfortable.

“Kwani, si I am paying you?”

“Yes, you are, shangazi.  But you ain’t paying me to stand around.”

“Kwanza you dropped my produce, you incompetent fool!”  She screamed, her brows knitting over intensely and her lips pursed.  “Do you think I dsidn’t see you?  Is that why you are insisting on leaving?  Hoping that I would forget, huh?  You will pay, I swear!”

“Shangazi, I didn’t.  Everything is in the wheelbarrow as we had placed them!”

“Are you calling me a liar now?  I know I had more potatoes and tomatoes that this!  You are all the same!  Thieves!  You are going to pay for this!”

I was tired and hungry and I didn’t havd the energy to argue with her.  I just wanted to drop her produce and continue with my work.  I had to go home with atleast some money for my landlord.  As hungry as I was, I wasn’t that worried about my next meal.  The roof over my head was what I was more concerned about.

“You are not a liar, shangazi.  Samahani sana,” I patiently tried to apologize, hoping she would get moving.  While everybody looked at me sadly.

She was a short, stout woman with thick arms and a thick neck, round face which wore a perpetual scowl which suited her stormy temperament.   Pouting her thick darkly lined lips, she turned her back towards me in a huff and popped the sugarcane cubes she had just bought in her mouth.

“I am expecting an customer in half an hour, shangazi, please let us get moving as I won’t make it back in time.”

Ignoring me she kept on popping the sugarcane cubes as she gathered the folds of her kitenge around her and sat more comfortably.

Angrily I put my weight on the handles of the wheelbarrow, without looking back. I rode away as shrills of insults from her were hurled at me and cheers from the stand-bys were shouted after me.

© Sandra Mushi 2009 Author of Sahara Soul Food, Sandra’s Den as well as the poetry collection book titled Rhythm of my Rhyme.

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