Isaac can’t be more than seven or eight years old. It’s hard to tell his exact age because he’s so dirty and scrawny and his face is dark and haggard from the sun and the stress of hard living on the streets of Musina-Beitbridge, the border town between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
I meet Isaac during a mission to Musina with a colleague covering the Zimbabwean elections. We’ve followed the media hype that predicts a massive outflow of ZimbabÂwean migrants going over the border to cast their votes, but things are slow.
So here we are, lazing around with a large contingent of foreign correspondents with their designer gadgets, from Gucci sunglasses and fancy laptops to designer flasks and other drinking utensils that seemed straight out of a celebrity kitchen on the BBC Food channel.
Then here comes a pair of boys walking aimlessly around the Âmarket and taxi rank at the border. They are in a bad state. At first I didn’t take any notice of them, what with the poverty and misery that is in abundance in this forgotten place on Earth. I say forgotten, because everyone in this place is busy trying to stitch up a broken life.
The streets are packed with vendors, their wares stacked on homemade tables, from tomatoes to bottled water, airtime and starter packs. Spaza restaurants come by the dozen and the taxi touts and street “businessmen” hold out huge stacks of Zimbabwean currency and talk animatedly to anyone who cares to listen. The street politicians are there too, speaking in undertones and making incomprehensible gestures, the meaning known only to themselves.
So I really notice these boys only because they are so young and look so out of place. I hesitate to talk to them, not knowing which language to use. Then by a stroke of luck as they walk past us, I overheard them mumble something to each other in Shona, a Zimbabwean language. My curiosity gets the better of me and I greet them in the same language.
Voila, one answers readily, and as I later deduce, the sight of a white female (my colleague) must have seemed like a ticket to a sympathetic ear and a meal and, with that, a temporary escape from this abyss. The boys are clearly hoping to get something, judging by the expectant looks on their faces.
I don’t have much to give myself (you know how tight the budgets are in the NGO sector — you have to account for every cent and no receipt, no return), so I offer them a yoghurt and an apple, remnants of the breakfast we had back at the guest house.
The boys fall on the food and the conversation starts in earnest. They introduce themselves as Isaac — the scrawny young one I’d noticed earlier — and Kelvin, who is probably nine or 10. They tell us that many other boys like them have left Zimbabwe — unaccompanied — to escape hunger and imminent starvation.
Isaac, who says he’s from Tsholotsho in Matebeleland, says his parents are dead. First was his mother, then, a year later, his father. Kelvin says his parents are factory workers who were retrenched and later divorced as a consequence of the domestic rows that followed. He stayed in Masvingo until life became unbearable and he jumped on the back of a haulage truck to Beitbridge.
These boys are part of a contingent of street boys who can lay claim to the extra title of illegal migrants (is there anything called “illegal migrant street kids” I wonder). It’s hard to determine their exact number as they are constantly on the move for various reasons; rushing to get “clients” for whom they carry various loads, from jerry cans filled to the brim with fuel, to grocery-laden Shangani bags. An interruption in our conversation takes me by surprise.
As we chat about all sorts of childhood things, which they did not really have, I notice quite late that I’m talking to an empty space — Isaac and Kelvin have dashed away in a mere blur of movement. I turn just in time to see them disappear among the haphazardly arranged tables.
Next thing I see a group of police men and women spewing out of several SAPS (South African Police Service) vans, clad in royal blue, complete with white surgical latex gloves.
One could be misled into thinking they’re off to attend to a traffic accident littered with broken bones and blood, but alas, they are off on the valuable mission of apprehending illegal migrants, who according to them are worse than rabid dogs and just as contagious.
As I look up the hill, I see a soldier with an assault rifle, battle ready, patrolling the hill above the small market and taxi rank below. Within minutes the police have dragged two frightened youths, weak and confused, to the waiting police trucks. Apparently, this operation is undertaken several times a day.
Within minutes the operation is over and a few moments later our boys are back minus Kelvin; in his place is a chubby little boy about Isaac’s age and he is limping. Some time later Kelvin returns from wherever he was hiding.
We get back to talking and to our horror we learn the boys would have been detained and deported if the police or army had caught them. Isaac says he’s been deported three times already. So this is their daily struggle, to scavenge for food, carry heavy loads on their small, frail shoulders for a few cents and evade the police and army as many as six times a day. This is life in Musina at the Beitbridge border post for an illegal migrant street kid.
Eddie Matsangaise is a programme manager for the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum