Davids Story

We were on the afternoon drive when David turned around to talk. A highly intelligent and respected man, we immediately turned to listened to him.

"I had a very strange day yesterday" he said, conversationally.
"I was walking back to camp from the village, when I seen a boy by the road. He was just just kneeling there, with his face to the ground curled up. I called to him to get up, but no, he ignored me. He must have been say, 10 years old, and very stubborn!"
At this he grinned.
"But I was concerned for him, breathing all the dust into his lungs. So I walked all the way to a women from the village, and asked her if she knew the boy's mother, but she says no! She knows nothing of this boy. So I walk and walk to the other village, and ask them all there. They tell me nothing. So I think he is naughty or very angry maybe with his mother and he is lying there in protest. So I walk back to take him a biscuit I had bought. I wanted to give it to him, to give him strength so he can walk home. When I reach him, I reach down to put the biscuit in his hand, but no.
He was dead.
He maybe died some hours before."

David looks down for a moment, silent, rocking with the motion of the vehicle. Some of us make shocked noises, but none of us know quite what to say.
"Is there not some authority or something they should contact?" I start, regretting it immediately.
"No. No authority. He will be collected after dark and then thrown into the bushes. The hyenas will clean him up. It is their way."

We were silent for a while, all of us thinking of the small boy, curled up alone on the dusty flat lands by the road.

I heard the hyenas that night. Whether they found the boy, I could not tell.

If they do not take him, the family will believe it is because the boy was full of evil.

So I guess I hope the hyenas did.