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    Kiss The Handcuffs
    Kiss The Handcuffs
    Kiss The Handcuffs
    Ebook61 pages55 minutes

    Kiss The Handcuffs

    By Gerald Kithinji

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Before the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy in the early part of the first decade of the new millennium, cross border traders from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique used to have a hard time sourcing goods from Harare for their markets back home. But then things started getting tough for Zimbabwe and the effects were keenly felt across the borders to the north and east. As hunger sharpened its fangs those who failed to reach Harare for one reason or another began to plot ways to get to the heart of the matter: to share the spoils of those lucky enough to brave the odds. This is one such case.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGerald Kithinji
    Release dateOct 20, 2014
    ISBN9781310958830
    Kiss The Handcuffs
    Author

    Gerald Kithinji

    I trace my roots to Kenya but I am a Citizen of the World when it comes to what I write or what I read. Whether Poetry, Short stories, Novellas or Novels, I strive to tell it as it is or was for the World Reader. Karibu. Welcome. Bienvenue. Willkommen. Bem vindo. Bienvenido. Benvenuto.Enjoy whatever suits you on my humble page.

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      Book preview

      Kiss The Handcuffs - Gerald Kithinji

      Kiss The Handcuffs

      Copyright 2014 Gerald Kithinji

      Smashwords Edition Notes

      Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

      Prologue

      The events in this story took place in the not so distant past in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The hitherto ‘food basket’ of southern Africa was entering a period of economic turmoil while Mozambique was rising from the ashes of a long civil war.

      Chapter One: Off to Harare

      Hunger, like, poverty, is not only detestable but, sadly, demeaning and humiliating. Like poverty, hunger is also relative and restive.

      If you embark on a journey by air, chances are that your hunger will be satiated on the way, in the air. Your ticket always includes something to eat and drink on your way to Cairo, Paris, London, Nairobi or Harare. If you choose to go by sea, you will have paid for meals, unless of course, you are a stowaway, in which case you will end up in some shark’s stomach. That assumes that you are discovered along the way. They don’t tolerate stowaways at sea!

      Once you decide to travel overland, you have to plan how you will cater for your needs and comforts. You might decide to carry your food and drink. You might decide to buy these on the way. Or you might decide to travel anyway, if your journey is a short one. Or if go you must and your budget is extra tight or included and could only include the fare to your destination or part thereof and nothing more.

      In Africa, overland transport is the most common and the most tedious. It is also the most dangerous. It is worse if you are a travelling businessperson, especially if you have to cross borders. Unfortunately, most business people know that the grass is always greener on the other side, in the neighbour’s paddock. If not all the grass, then at least, the kind of grass that they are interested in! The neighbour, for his part, may not be ready to meet you halfway. So you may be forced to go over to his paddock and purchase the goods that you need. This neighbour is not always a disciple of the Good Samaritan, let alone the brother or sister of the Good Samaritan. He or she is a businessperson also and business people can count the money in your pocket even before you make your proposition. They take no less than the entire loot, more or less. The transport people take the balance. Then you have to check in your innermost pocket, tacked away in the most secretive contours of your body, for something to pay the customs officials, the immigration officials, the doubting police officers and all the other undesirables, trying to make life difficult for you in order to make life easier for them. You curse them even as you pay them! They are, in your view, all out to derail your plans to fight all hunger, poverty, disease and illiteracy at your own door.

      Goodwill Phiri woke up with the vanishing of the last star and picked his friend André Jorge Machungo at Moatize, near Tete. Together they headed for Harare, crossing the border at Nyamapanda. This was before Harare had little to offer following the trials and tribulations of the second half of the first decade of the 21st Century and was the centre of mercantile activity in what used to be the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Mozambique had stabilized politically but had a long way to go mercantile-wise. When they arrived in Harare, they made their way into a small but clean lodge in downtown Harare, far from the Avenues. After a bread-and-sour-milk dinner, they slept.

      In the early days of the Federation, André’s father, Jorge Machungo, had got a job with the regional PTC in Salisbury, as Harare was then called. He had travelled together with two other young men, who had been equally lucky, but in different corporations.

      Armed with a Railway Warrant, Jorge Machungo and his friends had hiked a lorry ride from Angónia bordering Malawi to Moatize Railway Station in Tete Province, Central Mozambique. There they boarded the train bound for Beira and for the first time Jorge crossed the kilometre-wide Zambezi River, at Dona Anna Bridge in Mutarara. They changed trains and boarded the one

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