Mtoto: A little African Story

My name is Mtoto. That’s what they call me – usually to order me to do heavy work. Mtoto in Swahili means “child,” or “kid”. My parents had left for heaven before I was grown and so I don’t remember them. Nobody bothered to give me a regular name, nor to my little sister. I only remember that one day my mother’s cousin came and took us to live in the straw hut where she lived with her husband and their eleven children, my cousins. They had very little food, and now they had two more mouths to feed. We ate once a day…