The Hawkers

They sat outside the old tea room run by the white men.  Raising babies on flattened cardboard boxes which all of them sat on whilst selling their wares from the moment the sun appeared and long after it sank.

In the rain and through the heat, they were there.

Returning to sit in the sun, on the flattened cardboard the day after giving birth.

It was hard, hard work. There was no easy path.

The baby grew up there, on the pavement, outside the old tea room run by the white men.

They sold similar items, in competition, to the white men and outside their shop... their shop for which they paid overheads.  On their doorstop, just there, on the pavement... they sat, sweated, sold and squawked all day amongst themselves in a fashion only women can follow.

Then Betti walked into the shop.

A large african woman who casually seated herself in front of the white man at the till.

'Across the road is a man in a red shirt who is eyeing your shop.  He bent over and I saw he had a gun,' she told him without expression and in one tone.

Alpheus the Security Guard was largely rounded and fierce in every way.  His gun strapped across his front paraded around, bobbing on his belly, all day.  He felt no conflict within when duty called upon him to confront his own people by weapon or death.  The power of it all overtook him.

Then Rosi walked into the shop.

Rosi was also well-rounded, with straight black hair and impeccably spoken English.  Raised in Zanzibar, learning English as her first language and only Zulu later.

She would converse with the Owner's wife, for hours, in perfect English about this and that and the other.  There they stood, bent over the till, like two housewives speaking over the fence.  It went on for hours at a time.

The boss was away.  The hawkers decided to strike outside, multitudes of them led by a plastic badge wearing 'Hawker Supervisor.'  Large women, ranting, raving and dancing in a 'toy-toying' effort to make themselves heard.  Not to be meddled with, these women, well-sized and easy handed with throwing the punches.

Then Katrina walked into the shop.

She was party to these dancing, singing, shouting strikes ... from one foot to the other she hopped and shouted in zulu, standing in the entrance to the white man's shop, face to face - centimetres away - with the white man in the shop.  She had come to enjoy this particular white man who grew good relations with a number of them on the pavement outside the store.

As she chanted, jumped, shouted in Zulu then English... she winked as she declared 'the white man must humba, close your shop.'

The shop closed for an hour or so until eventually the Security Guard approached the white man on duty in the shop. 

'They say they are thirsty out there, Sir and they say what can they do about it?', he reported.

The kind gentleman dished out a family sized coke, as they knew he would do.

An applause and shouts arose outside in cheer of the white man.

White man you must humba but oh white man we need you.

The hawkers.