Fire

• Noah Jones, Grade 7, Koonung Secondary College
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition

This story is based in the small town of Dodoma in Tanzania, East Africa.

Timo walked back into the small mud hut in the outer region of Dodoma that was once his home. It brought sorrow to his mind. This is where he slept exactly seven years ago, on the night of the fire. Timo remembered all the bad things that happened that day. It was easy to remember that day as it was his seventh birthday. His present had been no more than a larger portion than usual of rice and beans.
That night so many years ago, the hearth had spread ever so slightly, and the thatched roof that was once his protection from both rain and heat; went ablaze. It had been a hot night and nobody had noticed the curling smoke until it was too late. On Timo’s birthday each year he remembers the pleading words of his mother and father. “Kwenda kukimbia, hivyo moto inaweza kudai wewe!” To go and run, so the fire would not claim his life as well as theirs. He hadn’t seen his mother, father, or sister since that dark day.
He had run out of the hut and looked back on the blazing inferno. Timo was terrified. He ran until he came to the dusty streets of Dodoma town. He had nothing except the clothes he was wearing and the fear in his heart.
For the last seven years since that life-changing tragedy, Timo had lived as a beggar on the streets of Dodoma, stealing fruit from the fresh produce stalls, begging the Europeans and westerners for money, and working for hours on end to be rewarded with as little as five hundred shillings, (about thirty Australian cents).
He would do things such as cleaning clothes, washing dishes and helping out at food stalls. For all this he would receive almost nothing. He had two sets of clothes which were always grubby. One outfit was what he slept in, ate in, and lived in, and the other was a set of pants and white shirt that he had stolen, to wear to the local church each Sunday. He would go and pray for his life, for his health and wellbeing, and also for his family, wherever they were now. Timo never lost hope. Hope that someone else had survived the fire. Timo had so much potential, but it was to be wasted on the dirty streets of Dodoma.
Timo was once again standing in the ruins of his old house on his fourteenth birthday. However, on this particular day when he arrived once more, there was someone else. Someone he thought he knew. “Irene, ni kwamba wewe?” meaning; Irene is that you? “Timo?” the girl replied. Timo and his no longer lost sister, Irene, both had a smile of recognition flash upon both of their faces. It turned out that both Timo and Irene hadn’t lost their family, because they still had each other, and that was enough.