How I Became a Christian-Chapter Six: The Journalist
But inside me, everything had changed.
I carried Simba's notebook everywhere I went. It lived in my school bag, wrapped in an old plastic bag to protect it from the rain that sometimes leaked through our roof. At night, after my mother fell asleep, I read it again and again, memorizing names and dates and details. I wanted to be able to recite the evidence from memory in case the notebook was ever lost or stolen or destroyed by someone who wanted to protect the abusers.
The names of the children stayed with me the longest. Farai, the boy who had tried to call his parents in the United Kingdom. Tendai, a girl with no legs who had been slapped for crying too loudly. Ruva, a small boy with one arm who had been locked in a storage closet because he asked for a second blanket. And Tobias, my Tobias, whose name appeared seven times, each entry worse than the last.
I could not save all of them. I knew that. I was one poor boy with no money and no power. But I could save Tobias. And maybe, if the plan worked, I could save some of the others too. Maybe the journalist would write a story that would reach the parents abroad. Maybe the parents would come home. Maybe the government would shut down Kudakwashe Home forever.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
The word was a prayer and a curse all at once.
Finding a journalist was harder than I expected. I had never spoken to a reporter in my life. Newspapers were luxuries in our house—things we saw other people reading, never things we bought for ourselves. The only reason I knew anything about journalism at all was because of Mrs. Ncube, my English teacher, who sometimes brought old newspapers to class and asked us to discuss the articles.
So I went to Mrs. Ncube.
I waited after school on a Tuesday afternoon, when the classroom was empty and the other students had gone home. Tobias waited outside in his wheelchair, reading a book with his mouth—a skill I still found astonishing every time I watched it. I stood at Mrs. Ncube's desk, my hands shaking slightly, and I told her everything.
Not everything, at first. I tested the waters. I asked her if she knew any journalists who wrote about social issues, about children's homes, about disability rights. She looked at me with her kind, curious eyes and asked why I wanted to know.
And then the dam broke.
I told her about Tobias. About the bruises on his arm. About the voices I had heard through the staff room door. About the smaller portions of rice and the colder rooms and the children who had tried to complain and been punished. I told her about Simba's notebook, though I did not show it to her. I told her about my mother's promise to give Tobias a place to stay.
Mrs. Ncube listened without interrupting. When I finished, she was quiet for a long time. Her face had gone pale, and her hands were clasped tightly together on her desk.
"Blessing," she said finally, "do you understand what you are asking me to do? If what you are saying is true—and I believe you, I want you to know that I believe you—then you are asking me to help you bring down a business that has connections. Powerful connections. People who will not want their secrets exposed."
"I know," I said. "But Tobias cannot stay there. And neither can the others. Every day I push him through those gates, I am pushing him back into a place where people hurt him. I cannot do that anymore. I cannot."
Mrs. Ncube nodded slowly. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a worn leather address book, the kind with pages that had yellowed with age. She flipped through it until she found what she was looking for.
"There is a woman I know," she said. "Her name is Thandie Moyo. She used to be my student, years ago, before you were born. She is a journalist now. A good one. She writes for the *Daily Herald*, the newspaper in the capital city. She has won awards for her investigative reporting. She exposed a human trafficking ring two years ago. She is brave. She is honest. And she is very, very difficult to intimidate."
Mrs. Ncube wrote a name and a phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me.
"This is her contact information. I will call her tonight and tell her to expect your call. But Blessing, you must be careful. Do not give her the notebook over the phone. Do not give her names. Meet her in person, somewhere public, somewhere safe. And do not tell anyone else what you are planning. Not your mother. Not Tobias. Not even me. Secrets are safest when they are kept by as few people as possible."
I took the slip of paper with trembling fingers. "Thank you, Mrs. Ncube. I will not forget this. I will not forget you."
She smiled, but her eyes were sad. "I hope you know what you are doing, Blessing. I hope you are as brave as you think you are. Because once you start this, there is no going back. People like Mr. Dube and Mrs. Chikumbutso do not forgive. They do not forget. They destroy the people who threaten them."
"I know," I said. "But Tobias is worth it. They are all worth it."
I walked out of the classroom and pushed Tobias home in silence. My heart was pounding. My hands were sweating. But I had done it. I had taken the first real step. I had found a journalist.
Now I just had to find the courage to call her.
I called Thandie Moyo three days later.
It was a Thursday afternoon, just after my mother had left for work. I sat on the floor of our single room with the door closed and the candle burning low, even though it was daytime. I wanted darkness. I wanted the feeling of being hidden, of being safe, of being invisible.
The phone belonged to our neighbor, Mr. Sibanda, who let me use it for a small fee—five cents per minute, which was almost everything I had saved from the small jobs I did around the neighborhood. I dialed the number with shaking fingers, my heart hammering so loudly that I was sure she would hear it through the line.
She answered on the third ring.
"Thandie Moyo," she said. Her voice was crisp and professional, but there was warmth underneath it. The voice of someone who had heard a thousand terrible stories and had learned to listen without breaking.
"Hello," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "My name is Blessing. I am a student at Chikomo High School. Mrs. Ncube gave me your number. She said you might be able to help me."
There was a pause. Then: "Ah, yes. Mrs. Ncube called me about you. She said you have a story. A big one. She said it involves children and abuse and a home for the disabled."
"Yes," I said. "That is correct."
"Tell me," Thandie said. "But not everything. Not yet. Just enough for me to decide if I am interested."
I took a deep breath. Then I told her. I told her about Kudakwashe Home of Disabilities. About the yellow walls and the pretty garden and the cruelty that lived inside them. About the parents abroad who paid thousands of dollars for care that never came. About the children who were hit and starved and locked in closets. About Tobias.
And about Simba's notebook.
When I finished, Thandie was silent for a long time. Then she spoke, and her voice was different now. It was harder. Sharper. The voice of a woman who had found her next target.
"Blessing, listen to me carefully," she said. "What you are describing is not just a bad situation. It is a crime. Multiple crimes. Abuse of vulnerable children. Fraud. Theft. Possibly worse. If you have evidence—real evidence, not just stories—then I want to help you. But you need to understand what you are getting into. Once this story is published, your life will change. People will be angry. People will threaten you. People will try to make you disappear. Are you ready for that?"
I looked around our small room. At the leaking roof. At the thin mattress where my mother slept. At the candle burning low on the table. I thought about Tobias, waiting for me at Kudakwashe Home. I thought about the bruises on his arm and the seven entries in Simba's notebook and the way his jaw trembled around the pen when he wrote.
"I am ready," I said. "I have to be. For Tobias."
"Good," Thandie said. "Then here is what we are going to do. I will drive to your town this Saturday. We will meet somewhere public. A café, maybe, or a church. Somewhere with people around. You will bring me the notebook. I will read it. And then I will decide how to proceed. Do not tell anyone about this meeting. Do not bring anyone with you. Come alone."
"I will," I said.
"And Blessing?"
"Yes?"
"Be careful. Do not let anyone see you with that notebook. Do not let anyone know what you are planning. If the wrong person finds out, you and Tobias could be in real danger."
"I know," I said. "I will be careful."
I hung up the phone and sat in the darkness of our room, holding Simba's notebook against my chest. The candle flickered and died. The rain began to fall outside, drumming against the tin roof like a thousand small warnings.
I was afraid. More afraid than I had ever been in my life. But underneath the fear, something else was growing. Something that felt like purpose. Something that felt like the first stirrings of faith.
I did not know if God was real. I still was not sure. But as I sat there in the dark, holding the evidence of so much suffering in my hands, I prayed anyway.
God, if you are there, please let this work. Please let Thandie believe me. Please let us save Tobias. Please let us save all of them. I do not know how to do this. I am just a boy. But I am trying. I am really trying. Help me be brave enough to finish what I started.
The rain fell harder. The roof leaked in three places now. But I did not move. I stayed on the floor, holding the notebook, holding the hope, holding something that felt almost like a prayer.
Saturday came slowly, the way heavy things always do.
I woke before the sun, before my mother, before the birds had even begun their morning song. I dressed in my best clothes—which were not very best at all, just the cleanest shirt and the least torn trousers I owned. I wrapped Simba's notebook in two plastic bags and tucked it inside my school bag. I kissed my mother's forehead while she still slept, and I walked out the door into the gray morning light.
The meeting place was a small café near the bus rank, a twenty-minute walk from our room. It was not the kind of place I could ever afford to eat at, but Thandie had chosen it for its visibility. She wanted witnesses. She wanted safety. She wanted the comfort of other people nearby in case something went wrong.
I arrived early. Too early. I stood outside the café for almost an hour, watching the town wake up around me. Vendors set up their stalls. Bicycle taxis pedaled past, their bells ringing. Children in school uniforms walked to class, their laughter bright and careless. Normal life, happening all around me, completely unaware that I was about to try to change everything.
At exactly 10 AM, a car pulled up outside the café. It was a small blue sedan, dusty from the long drive from the capital city. The woman who stepped out was not what I expected. She was short and round, with braided hair and bright red glasses. She wore jeans and a simple white blouse. She looked less like a famous journalist and more like someone's favorite aunt.
But her eyes. Her eyes were the eyes of someone who had seen everything and had decided to fight back anyway.
"Blessing?" she said, walking toward me with her hand extended.
"Yes," I said. My voice cracked. "You are Thandie Moyo?"
"I am," she said, shaking my hand firmly. Her grip was strong. "Thank you for meeting me. Thank you for trusting me. Now, let us go inside and talk. I want to see that notebook."
We sat in the corner of the café, away from the windows, away from the other customers. Thandie ordered tea for both of us, even though I had no money to pay for my own. I unwrapped the plastic bags and placed Simba's notebook on the table between us.
Thandie did not speak. She simply opened the notebook and began to read.
I watched her face as she turned the pages. At first, her expression was professional—calm, focused, analytical. But as she read deeper into the notebook, her face changed. The corners of her mouth tightened. Her jaw clenched. Her eyes grew bright and hard, like a fire burning behind glass.
When she finished, she closed the notebook and looked at me. Her hands were shaking slightly.
"How long have you known about this?" she asked.
"A few weeks," I said. "Tobias told me. Then I snuck in at night. I heard them. I heard everything."
Thandie nodded slowly. She took a deep breath and let it out. "This notebook is detailed. Specific. It names names. It gives dates. If even half of what is in here is true, then Kudakwashe Home of Disabilities is not a home. It is a prison. And the people running it are criminals."
"They are," I said. "I have seen it myself. I have heard them laughing about it."
Thandie looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached across the table and took my hand.
"Blessing, I am going to help you," she said. "But I need you to understand something. Publishing this story will not be quick. It will not be easy. I will need more evidence. I will need to interview witnesses. I will need to verify everything in this notebook. And all of that will take time. Time that Tobias and the other children may not have."
"How much time?" I asked.
"Weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe more. These things move slowly. The law moves slowly. Justice moves slowly. But I promise you this: I will not stop. I will not give up. I will write this story even if it costs me my job, my reputation, everything. Because this is why I became a journalist. This is what I was born to do."
I felt tears burning behind my eyes again. I blinked them back.
"What do I do in the meantime?" I asked.
"Protect Tobias," Thandie said. "Protect yourself. Keep the notebook safe. Do not tell anyone about our conversation. And pray, Blessing. If you have any faith at all, pray. Because we are going to need all the help we can get."
She handed me a business card with her name and phone number. Then she stood up, tucked Simba's notebook into her bag, and walked out of the café.
I sat there alone, staring at the business card in my hand. The tea grew cold. The café filled with other customers. And I prayed. I prayed harder than I had ever prayed in my life.
God, please let her be as good as Mrs. Ncube said. Please let her be brave. Please let her be fast. Tobias is running out of time. They all are.
I did not know if anyone was listening. But for the first time, I believed that someone might be.
That afternoon, I pushed Tobias home from school as usual. I did not tell him about Thandie. I did not tell him about the notebook or the café or the prayer. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to shield him from the hope that might be disappointed and the fear that might crush him.
But Tobias was smarter than I gave him credit for.
"You are different today," he said, as we passed the baobab tree. "Your hands are not shaking the way they usually do. You are walking taller. Something happened. Something good."
I stopped pushing. I looked at the back of his head, at the small scar behind his left ear that I had noticed on our first walk together.
"I found someone," I said. "A journalist. Her name is Thandie Moyo. She is going to help us. She is going to write a story about Kudakwashe. About everything."
Tobias turned his head slowly. His sharp eyes met mine. And then he smiled. Not the small, careful smile he usually wore. A real smile. A smile that reached his eyes and made them shine.
"Really?" he whispered. "You really found someone?"
"Really," I said. "And she believes us, Tobias. She read the notebook. She saw the evidence. She said she is going to help."
Tobias looked away, toward the yellow walls of Kudakwashe Home in the distance. His jaw trembled. His shoulders shook. And then, for the second time since I had known him, Tobias cried.
But this time, they were not tears of pain or fear or exhaustion.
They were tears of hope.
End of Chapter Six
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