Shame, when the boy was first brought to us he was very undernourished, and even before I gave him a bath, I made sure that he had a large bowl of putu and lamb stew. I was very worried about him, and not just because the sores on his legs and arms were infected. He had seen a doctor, who prescribed antibiotics, and he was given a course of ARVs as there were signs that he may have been working as a sex worker. This is not uncommon for street children. Many of them have been abused by their parents, and they know of no other way to survive.

What can I tell you about the boy? He did not have a Nigerian accent as far as I could tell, but it was difficult to be sure as he so rarely spoke. He seemed to be older than seven years, which is the age of Kenneth Oduah. As he ate, I asked him, ‘Is your name Kenneth?’

‘Yes, my name is Kenneth,’ he said. But then, later on, I found that I could ask him anything and he would agree with me.

The next day, a forensics team came to the shelter and took a saliva swab from him so that they could run a DNA test. I was informed that the boy would be staying here until they could be sure that he was indeed Kenneth. I felt very strongly that if the boy did in fact turn out to be this child, then he should be reunited with his aunt and family as soon as possible.

I am not from Khayelitsha, but I have been to the memorial site and seen where that plane went down. I do find it hard to believe that anyone could have survived such a thing, but it was the same with the crash in America and the ones in Asia and Europe, so I did not know what to think. Little by little, by asking him direct questions, I managed to extract the boy’s story. He said that he had lived for a while on the beach in Blouberg, then in Kalk Bay and then he had decided to make his way back to the CBD.

I kept a close eye on him to ensure that the other children did not bully him–this can happen–but most of them gave him a wide berth. I did not tell them who he might be. I was the only person who had that knowledge. Some of the other staff are superstitious and already there was talk that if a boy had survived the crashes, then it was certain he was a witch of some type.

Two weeks later we heard that the DNA did indeed match Kenneth Oduah’s aunt, and it wasn’t long before the authorities organised a big press conference. I assumed that Kenneth would be taken away almost immediately after that, but then the police called to say that Kenneth’s aunt had fallen sick (perhaps from the shock of hearing about her nephew) and so could not travel from Lagos to formally identify and collect the boy. They told me another family member, a distant one, was en route instead.

He arrived the next day, and said he was the cousin of Kenneth’s father. I asked him if he was sure that the boy was his relative and he was adamant that he was.

‘Do you know this man, Kenneth?’ I asked the boy.

‘I know this man,’ the boy said.

‘Do you want to go with him or stay here with us?’

The boy did not know what to say to that. If you asked him, ‘Do you want to stay?’ he would say, ‘I want to stay,’ but then, if I asked him, ‘Do you want to go with this man?’ he would say, ‘I want to go.’

He did not seem to know what was going on.

He was taken away that night.