My walk changed, not only across Kinshasa but also in my life. During the weeks that followed, I moved slower around Zando Market. While passing through various streets, I carefully watched street people and passersby. Finally, I began to shed the habit of assuming I knew someone’s life just by looking at their social status or at their clothing.
On the streets, people will talk if given a chance. They will tell you a few words or their whole story. Street people don’t always shout; they communicate their thoughts. Some people pass the same street every day, pretending not to notice people who live or sell on the streets. They do not stop or excuse themselves. They just don’t talk.
Not all of them are cold-hearted. There’s fear. There’s helplessness. Or worse, they were taught not to care or to believe that those living in poverty are failures in life. That being in need is a weakness and that some people simply don’t count.
I visited Bernard, who tailors and mends clothing to make ends meet. His place was under the overpass near Zando Market. He sat on an old cushion. Next to him was a bucket. In it were shoes, old shirts, and other things. Customers had brought the items for him to mend. He was putting stitches on a shirt for one of his customers. Now and then, he looked up, anticipating that new customers would come by.
He did not always do this type of work. Once he worked at a factory stitching school uniforms. When it shut down, he tried selling second-hand clothes in town. But the stall rents were too high, so he had to give it up.
“So I came here,” he told me once.
This overpass was now his workshop, waiting room, and home.
“It’s been a long time,” he said while looking at me.
I had not heard his full story yet. Nor had I had a chance to know him better. He had probably heard of my visits to the other street people. He didn’t know me much yet. But soon he would.
“Another one is gone,” he said. His voice sounded low.
He was referring to a man from the streets who had died. I took a seat next to him.
“Who?” I asked.
“Uncle Ben. You’d know him. He used to sell brooms made from palm branches. Tall guy. Always had that minty smell,” he said.
Ben used to sell cooking sticks on the streets where I used to see him. I nodded.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“He collapsed last night by the bus station. He just fell down,” Bernard said.
He had fallen down suddenly owing to either illness or fatigue, although there was no clear reason for it.
“Did anyone help?”
Bernard shook his head.
“No. Someone took a video instead. That’s it,” he said.
Later, Bernard told me that the police came with a truck. They carried Uncle Ben’s body like a bundle of rags. There was no ceremony, no family.
“He’ll end up in the cemetery for unknown persons,” Bernard muttered.
He would get a burial without his name and identification details written on his grave. Like he was never here. At the time of his death, Ben had never had any identification documents with him. Without that, authorities would record him as unknown. We sat in silence. A baby cried in the distance. A truck sounded as it passed by. A man who passed by yelled something I could not make out.
“There is sadness in dying where no one seems to care,” he said.
I did not respond. I had nothing to say. What he said made a lot of sense. He stitched on. His job seemed to be the one thing keeping him going. I observed his hands as he worked. He patched one piece of torn fabric to another. One by one, the torn clothes got sewn back together. Each thread pulled through the fabric, giving it back the semblance of wholeness. A boy came to Bernard asking if he could help repair his shoes.
“Come tomorrow,” Bernard told him.
His shoes were torn. Soles had come off. He was hopeful that tomorrow the job would get done. I left Bernard and moved ahead in the streets while thinking about what I had seen and heard from him. I saw Emelda again in Gombe selling her goods. Today, like yesterday, she was at her stall arguing with a man, who left quickly, taking some of her goods. The man did not pay her for the tomatoes and groundnuts but instead fled and did not bother to look back.
“You can’t just take things like I don’t matter!” she said. But he had already walked a distance away. She looked at me and exhaled sharply.
“You always come at the wrong time,” she said.
“Seems like you were just defending yourself,” I said to her.
She lifted her shoulders, wiping sweat from her neck. She told me that shouting was a form of resistance. But at times she did not have the energy to fight back. In her stall were lots of tomatoes and a few onions and garlic. The previous week I had been to her stall for the first time. Her daughter was with her. Every evening she went home to her children. She took her stock home if customers did not buy it all. Everything was packed inside a sack, which she carried over her shoulder.
“This stall feeds my family. If I close, they starve,” she once told me.
I sat on a bucket next to her. The area was dusty. I could smell some roasted peanuts. Emelda’s shoes were damaged at the toes. I shared with her what Bernard had said about dying invisible. It took her a moment to respond.
“We aren’t invisible. To them we are already dead,” Emelda said.
For a moment her words lingered. A little girl holding some small change in her hand asked to buy tomatoes. Emelda packed the order.
“Thank you,” the little girl said and ran off.
Emelda sighed while stretching her legs. She was trying to relieve her painful legs.
“To people, we are weak. But it takes strength to get through a day without breaking down,” she said.
Emelda smiled again, but her eyes told a different story. She knew that tomorrow we would talk again.
