‘Don’t be frightened, kid,’ he says kindly. ‘I’m Jok.’ He offers you his left hand, and you shake it awkwardly. Jok picks up the now-full sack at its neck, and swings it over his shoulder.
‘You ever see any cans or bottles lying around here, you bring them right to me, okay?’ he grins.
‘Why?’
‘Well, because I’m Scavenger Jok, that’s why. I collect stuff. Everything in my sack gets used again or sold. That’s how I get by. I’ll give you a coin if you bring me something good.’
A coin! you think. Maybe I won’t have to sell half the pen after all.
You spend the rest of the day running all over the camp hunting down anything that could be reused or recycled: tin, string, screws, half a plastic thong, the tough blue tape from around the food supply boxes.
‘You have a good eye for scavenging,’ Jok tells you at the end of the day when you find him again. He hands you a Kenyan five-shilling coin: not nearly enough to make a phone call, but a good start. ‘Still, I think you should have been in school today, no?’ You shrug. ‘I have more important things to do.’
‘Ha!’ Jok shouts. ‘Nothing is more important than getting an education, kid – d’you hear me?’
He squeezes your hand strongly with his good one.
‘Come back and find me at Bosnia over the weekend, if you want to make more money. But don’t you show up during school time, or I’ll put you in my sack and carry you there myself!’
Smiling, you promise.
AFTER SCHOOL AND on weekends over the next couple of months, you and Jamilah become Scavenger Jok’s sidekicks. Your aim is to make three hundred Kenyan shillings for phone calls and computer access, and you’re steadily getting there.
Jamilah is even faster and sharper-eyed than you are at finding rubbish for Jok, and in your wanderings, you see a lot of the camp. Doing this work for Jok makes you feel like nothing is wasted: everything has a purpose. Jok sometimes tells you stories of life in his home county, or Sudanese folktales, but you’re too shy to ask how he lost his hand.
Dadaab will always be dusty, and dry, and crowded, but now you begin to see how hard people here try to get ahead – how resourceful they are. You begin to admire the mothers lugging babies on their hips, the porters from Bosnia market bent double under sacks of charcoal, the imam whose mosque is a tin shed but who carries on blessing the newly born and the dying every day.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ you say to Jok one day. ‘Everyone here lives in tents and huts with no windows. It isn’t safe to cut a hole in the wall or canvas to let in light, and there isn’t any glass to make a window that you can open and close. So it’s always dark and dingy inside.’
‘That’s true,’ agrees Jok.
‘What if we use some of these bottles to make a light?’ you say, holding up a plastic bottle half full of water. You’ve been throwing and catching it as you walk, noticing how the light sparkles from it. ‘If you had one of these water bottles in your ceiling, it would catch the light and beam it all over your hut.’
‘Wow – good idea!’ Jok exclaims. ‘Let’s try it on my hut first.’
You, Jok and Jamilah rush back to Jok’s hut to try it out. His wife, a curvy, brightly dressed woman called Adut who is always kind to you, is very sceptical about cutting a hole in their roof, but Jok convinces her.
Together, you and Jok carefully use a rusty pair of tin-snips to cut a hole the right size in Jok’s roof. Jok tips more water into the bottle until it’s full, and Adut thinks to add some soap powder to keep the water from stagnating. Jok then tightens the lid, and inserts the upright bottle into the hole. Jamilah squeals happily. ‘It works, it works!’
‘This is amazing!’ exclaims Jok. Light is filtering through the bottle and now illuminates the inside of his hut. ‘It’s so simple!’
You climb onto his roof, seal around the edges of the hole with some melted plastic, and the job is done.
‘Everyone should have one of these!’ says Adut. ‘I know my friends will all want one.’
And she’s right. Some people copy the idea and make their own bottle lights for free, but many more pay you and Jok to provide the bottle and install it for them.
By the end of that week, you have enough money to use a phone and a computer.
I’ve done it, you think triumphantly. And I still have the whole pen. I’ll call Sampson tomorrow after school.
The thought that you might be talking to Sampson, and then Aadan in Australia, by the end of tomorrow makes your stomach dance.
That night, you dig in the dirt in the corner of your tent and take out the pen. There’s just enough moonlight coming through the tent’s doorway to write with, and there’s a piece of paper in your pocket – a label from one of the bottles you picked up earlier.
You write with the pen for the first time. A poem that has been forming in your mind these last few days now flows like quicksilver onto the back of the label.
I H
AVE A
D
REAM
A dream that will never fail.
Wasn’t every successful person
Once a dreamer like me?
Wasn’t every great tree that the wind blows
Once a tiny seed?
My dreams are just like a seed
Fallen on a rocky path.
My journey is long
But I do not waver.
Every day of my life is a page of my history.
Every day the seed spreads its roots.
Every step that I take is a move
Towards my glorious destiny.
As the seed becomes a tree
It’s not where I am
But how I’m growing that matters.
Now listen carefully to these words of wisdom:
Stop watching your dreams fall.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight for your dreams.
Fall down seven times and get up eight times.
Wasn’t every successful
