She woke before sunrise not because she was disciplined, but because hunger has a schedule, and it does not care about your excuses.
She washed her face with cold water, wrapped her headscarf tightly, and walked toward the city center while the sky was still pale and undecided, that weak color between night and day where the world hasn’t chosen what it’s going to be yet.
Some days she cleaned offices with glossy floors that reflected other people’s lives back at them.
Other days she washed clothes for families who never asked her name. She accepted whatever came, because pride is a luxury for people who can afford to eat without counting coins.
On the port road, the city was already awake. Vendors shouted. Buses coughed smoke. Men argued over crates of fish. And children too many children moved between the chaos like shadows.
Kadiatu noticed them because she always did.
They slept near the old drainage canal under torn cardboard and rusted sheets of metal. Boys mostly. Bare feet. Shirts that used to belong to someone else, donated and forgotten, like the boys themselves.
People stepped over them as if they were cracks in the pavement.
“Street rats,” someone muttered behind her once.
Kadiatu flinched even though the words weren’t aimed at her. The insult still landed in her chest, because she knew how thin the line was between “worker” and “waste” when you were poor.
That morning she bought a small loaf of bread from a woman she knew and broke it in half as she walked. She told herself she would eat later.
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