chapter 11

april thursday 29th 2010
The group of boys continue walking in silence all night until Moriba, Saidu’s best friend, stops and starts to cry uncontrollably, The other boys start to cry as well. eventually Kanei breaks the silence by saying that he has a feeling that they will find their families or at least news about them. Finally, they start walking again and finally get to the village where their families are supposed to be. They come to a small banana farm and see a man who turns out to be Gasemu a man from Ishmael’s village. He recognizes the boys and asks all of them to help him carry the bundles of bananas back to the village. Along the way, he asks Ishmael if he is still a troublesome boy and then says that Ishmael does'nt have a natural glow like it had when he was a younger. He also tells him that his family talks about him everyday and that they had sent Junior to look for him. and he had obviously returned with no news, so they will all be very excited to see him.
Just as Ishmael starts down the hill, he hears gunshots and dogs barking and people screaming. They hid in the bushes and listened to the gunshots. Ishmael ran into the village as soon as the shooting stoped. It was completely on fire with bullet shells covering the ground. People were locked into their houses and the houses were set on fire. Some got out with the boys help but later died. Ishmael then keeps running through the village looking for his family. He finally came to the house where Gasemu said they were living. It was only charred from the outside. However, the flames inside have totally destroyed everything and everyone inside. The first reaction to ishmeals family’s death becomes anger at Gasemu. ishmeal feels that if they didnt stop to rest on the hill with him and carry his bananas, he might have seen his family and died with them. He began to choke the older man and then picked up a pestle and shattered the man’s nose with it. as this was all happening they heard the rebels coming around the corner, so they started running. they ran throught the forset with the rebels chasing them for hours but eventually the rebels gave up and went away.
Casemu began to cry like a child and Ishmael knew that when a grown man cries this way he has no other choice. Suddenly, Casemu begins to roll on the ground in pain. The boys then find out that he had been shot as they were running from the rebels. He has a bad wound in his side that they couldnt get to stop bleeding. They know what is going to happen to him. In between his cys of pain, he tells them there is a wahlee nearby and if they take him back to the farm he would show them where they missed the path and took the wrong turn. At first, he was able to walk with someone to hold on to, but eventually they are forced to pick him up and carry him. When they finally get at the coffee farm,and they lay him down where he eventually dies. Once again Ishmael finds himself crying softly for another loss.