You will all remember when, a month ago, my sister Yunia dumped her son Theophilas at my place. Despite my resistance, she unapologetically told me that she had handed over the boy to me and that I needed to figure out what to do with him—and quickly—because in a year, she would be sending his brother my way too.
Like the good parent and great teacher I am known to be, I tried to implement my years of training in him. I befriended the boy and saw that I was slowly but surely impacting him positively.
Besides taking evening walks with him, I also taught him how to ride a motorcycle. This made him very happy, as for the last few weeks of school, he was taking me there in the morning, leaving the motorcycle at school, and coming back to pick me up in the evening.
When we closed school, he asked if I could give him one of my motorcycles so that he could start a boda boda business. I have three motorcycles: one that I use and two that are leased out to riders who pay me daily. “I can bring you more money than the boys,” he said confidently. “I know what to do.”
I told him that I had bigger plans for him—plans much bigger than boda boda riding—and all I wanted from him was patience, discipline, and focus. I knew very well that if he entered the boda boda business, it would be hard for him to get out.
I planned to take him to a TVET or polytechnic and have him trained. I had narrowed it down to either welding, carpentry or plumbing.
“I will not go back to any school,” he told me adamantly. “I’ve already been to school enough and don’t need to continue. All I want is to do boda boda and make quick money.”
I put my foot down and told him that I wouldn’t let him do boda boda, instead, I would enrol him in a TVET program starting this September or January.
“That’s okay,” he said reluctantly. “But what can I be doing between now and then? Sitting at home?”
I told him there was plenty of work to be done, including work on the farm. We needed to weed the maize I had planted a few weeks ago. Last week, I informed him that he would have to help with the weeding. I sent him to the farm to join other workers in the weeding on Wednesday, but he left early—long before the others finished.
On Friday, when we went to wake him up so that could go to the farm, he was gone. I just kept quiet and joined the rest on the farm. It was later, when I wanted to go somewhere that I got the shock of my life: My motorcycle was missing. I tried calling him, but he was unreachable. I tried to look for him but got information that he had been seen ferrying customers.
He came back at around 3pm, just before I left for my evening classes at Hitler’s. He looked worried, he was sweating, and in a hurry to leave. I asked him to sit down and asked him where he had been.
"I was just testing the bike, and I got two customers who were going far, so I took them," he said, giving me the money he had made. My heart did not want to take the money but my hands took the money.
Two men, the passengers, quickly alighted and came in our direction. Theophilas took off and jumped over the fence toward the maize plantation with the two men in hot pursuit. They caught him and brought him back. I needed no calculator to know they were policemen.
"Where is Juma's phone?" one of them asked, slapping him. Theophillas said he didn't know. I tried to intervene and ask what the issue was, but they said that Theophilas was a thief.
"Is this your son?" one of them asked me, and I said he wasn't, but he was my relative.
"He is a dangerous thief," they said. "Where is his house?"
I told them he didn't have a house, but had a room, and added that I couldn't allow them to search my house without a search warrant.
"If we come back with a warrant, you will also be arrested if we find anything there," one of them warned.
I allowed them to proceed. We went to his room, which the boy had left without even spreading the bed. The police threw everything over, and one of them was interested in a bag under the bed. They asked Theophilas if the bag was his, and he accepted it. However, when they asked him what was inside, he couldn't say.
When the bag was opened, there were three phones, including mine that I hadn't seen for weeks, several SIM cards, a power bank, a portable radio, a blue tooth speaker, some necklaces, Fiolina’s purse, a wallet, among others.
They called out one of the men they had come with and asked him to identify if any of his things were there.
"My phone, power bank, and my wife's necklaces—where is the money?" he asked Theophilas. "I did not take any money," Theophilas replied.
Within minutes, they handcuffed him and left with him to the police post.
With the boy having disappeared that morning without telling me, and the fact that my phone was found in his room, I just let them take him away.
What later emerged was that Theophilas had committed some crimes in his village, and because the police were searching for him, he had come to hide at my place. On the day he took my motorcycle, he ferried a passenger and was spotted by the victim, who alerted the police and they gave a chase that led them to our home.
Yesterday, his mother called me, upset with me for letting the police arrest his son. “What kind of uncle are you? Would you allow your son to be arrested?”
She went on: “We agreed you find him something to do! Now see, can you get him out of the police station immediately? And get him a job!”
I will let the boy stay in the cells for a few days to learn his lesson. And once he is out, he has to go back to his mother. I will not live with a thief.
