The next morning, we were back at his doorstep.
We didn't knock. We just sat.
Mr. Kalumba didn't say a word. He stepped over us and went about his business, feeding the
chickens, patching a leak in his roof, coughing into a dirty cloth. We waited all day.
That became our routine.
Every morning: walk the miles.
Every evening: walk back home, empty-handed.
But not hopeless.
"He hasn't told us to leave," my brother said on the fourth day.
"Maybe he's waiting to see if we'll give up."
"We won't."
On the seventh day, he finally spoke.
"If I show you the plane," he said, "you'll see what's impossible."
He led us behind the house.
There it was: the plane. Small, battered, and sun-bleached. Its right wing was bent. The door
hung loose. The propeller looked like it hadn't turned in years.
But to us, it looked like hope.
"What happened to it?" I asked.
"Life," he replied.
We didn't ask for permission. We just began working.
We cleaned the cockpit, removed leaves, tightened what we could with the broken tools he had
lying around. Every day we returned, sweeping, fixing, asking questions he didn't answer.
One morning, he came out and found us beneath the engine, covered in oil.
He didn't speak, just stood watching.
Then finally, quietly:
"That's the fuel line. It's cracked. You'll need to patch it if you want this bird to fly."
From that day, things changed.
He began helping. Slowly. Quietly. Not out of belief, but out of memory, maybe. Of our mother.
Of the time before everything went wrong.
Weeks turned into months.
We worked until our hands bled, until we knew the smell of engine oil better than food. Our
sisters grew thinner. The little one barely moved some days. Still, we pressed on.
Then one morning, Kalumba walked out with a cloth in his hands.
He laid it over the plane's nose like a farewell gesture.
"She might fly," he said. "But I only take the girls. Just the girls. If I try with all of you, she'll fall
from the sky.