Paul & His Plastic-Bag Ball
When I think about my year in Kenya, I don't immediately remember crossing the equator or visiting villages or seeing wildlife. I remember a little boy named Paul. Meeting Paul marked the moment I stopped being an observer of life in Kenya and became emotionally invested in one small corner of it.
From our living room, I could hear laughter in the backyard.
Ian had discovered that Paul's "soccer ball" wasn't a ball at all, but a bundle of plastic shopping bags wound tightly together and knotted until it bounced. While laundry soaked nearby in a wash basin, the two of them tossed it back and forth across the yard.
Earlier I'd watched Paul crouch beside the driveway, inching along behind a tiny green plastic tractor no bigger than three inches long. He played contentedly, making the most of what little he had.
From my bedroom window I listened as the plastic ball slapped against eager hands and bounced across the hard ground. I heard their breathing grow heavier as the game became more energetic.
Mostly, I heard Paul laugh. Not a polite laugh. Not a shy laugh. A child's laugh. The kind that makes you forget everything except the game you're playing.
The next morning I found him crouched beside a small cooking fire, boiling tea while porridge simmered over another fire nearby.
Peter, an older boy who looked after him like a protective brother, joined us.
"Does Paul speak Kiswahili?" I asked.
"Yes," Peter smiled, resting a reassuring hand on Paul's shoulder.
"He's quiet then?"
"When he gets used to you," Peter laughed, "he'll be talking to you all the time."
I reached into my pocket and handed Paul a box of colored pencils. His face lit up. Peter laughed out loud, patted him affectionately on the head, and reminded him to say, "Asante."
I promised I'd bring him a drawing pad the next time I came into town.
Watching the two boys together, I realized how deeply Peter cared for him. But something else had begun to trouble me. Paul should have been in school.
Instead, he spent his days tending fires, sweeping yards, washing clothes and doing chores for the family who had taken him in after his father's death from AIDS.
That realization lodged somewhere deep inside me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. A few days later we walked into town.
First stop was Black Berry Enterprises, where school uniforms were made. After telling the sales clerk Paul attended Central Primary School, she disappeared into the back room and returned with trousers and a crisp white shirt.
While we waited, an elegant woman I'd never met walked over, smiled warmly and took both of my hands.
"Thank you so much for helping him," she said. "We're very appreciative."
At the time I felt embarrassed by her gratitude. Helping Paul felt less like charity than something I simply needed to do.
Looking back now, I appreciate that moment differently. She understood before I did that small kindnesses ripple far beyond the people directly involved.
The clerk helped Paul into the dressing room to try on his uniform. When he stepped out, she leaned toward me and whispered quietly,
"He's missing one other thing." It took me a second. Then I understood. Underwear.
So we added a pair of underwear and socks to the growing pile.
His shoes told their own story. They had been worn so long the leather had collapsed inward and the size had disappeared from the soles. We measured his foot against new shoes and found a size four fit nicely, leaving just enough room to grow.
I couldn't afford them that day, but I promised myself I'd be back.
After shopping, I asked if they wanted something cold to drink.
"Coke?" I suggested. Paul grinned and shook his head.
"No?" He smiled wider.
"Fanta." Of course.
We settled into a small vegetarian café run by an Indian family. Orange Fantas arrived in glass bottles alongside hot samosas. Behind us an Indian musical played on television.
Paul could hardly eat. He sat mesmerized, eyes fixed on the brightly colored saris, dramatic love story and sweeping music. Every few bites he remembered his samosa or took another sip through his straw before returning to the television.
I let the afternoon linger. There seemed no reason to hurry.
On the walk home we happened upon a barber working beneath a corrugated tin roof supported by rough tree trunks.
Paul quietly told Joyce he'd like a haircut.
Moments later he sat wrapped in a faded sheet while the barber clipped carefully around his head.
Every now and then Paul squeezed his eyes shut.
Without thinking, I asked, "Does that hurt him?"
The barber looked puzzled until I repeated myself. "No," he answered gently. "It is not painful."
Still, every time Paul flinched, I felt it too. It's difficult to explain. Some invisible cord seemed to stretch from his small body to my own.
The barber worked with extraordinary care, opening a brand-new razor blade to shape the neatest hairline around Paul's ears and neck. When he finished, Paul looked wonderfully handsome.
The barber had asked for thirty shillings, then suddenly offered to do the job for five—a piece of Kenyan bargaining I never completely understood.
I handed him twenty. It felt right.
As we walked home beneath the shade trees, Paul rolled a ten-shilling coin down the road, chasing it whenever it wandered into the grass.
Watching him play, I realized something.
It wasn't the uniform. Or the shoes. Or the haircut.
Those things mattered, but they weren't why this day stayed with me.
When my own children were growing up, one of my greatest joys was quietly making sure they had what they needed. Clean clothes. Shoes that fit. Haircuts before school started. I hadn't realized how much I missed those ordinary acts of caring until I spent a day wandering through Kisumu with Paul.
I couldn't solve every problem in his life. I couldn't change the circumstances that had brought him there. But I could make sure one little boy had a uniform to wear, socks for his shoes, a decent haircut and, perhaps most importantly, the chance to return to school.
Before I left for Kenya, my friend Kourtney Bryant tucked a twenty-five-dollar check into my hand as a going-away gift. I almost didn't cash it. She was young, buying her first home and beginning her own life.
Instead, her generosity crossed an ocean.
It became a school uniform. Underwear. Socks. Shoes. Afternoon tutoring. A haircut. A bottle of orange Fanta.
Years later, I no longer think of it as my gift to Paul.
I think of it as one more reminder that kindness rarely belongs to just one person. It travels quietly from hand to hand, heart to heart, often reaching places we could never have imagined.
Sometimes it begins with something as ordinary as a little boy laughing while he kicks a soccer ball made from plastic bags.
About the Author
Cindi Brown is a Georgia-born writer, porch-sitter, and teller of truths, even the ones her mama once pinched her for saying out loud. She runs Porchlight Press from her 1895 house with creaking floorboards and an open door for stories with soul. When she’s not scribbling about Southern music, small towns, stray cats, places she loves, and the wild gospel that hums in red clay soil, you’ll find her out listening for the next thing worth saying.
