JABALI AND THE BIG FIVE

The Restaurant

At the house , Jabali went to the kitchen to get some water. He felt an excruciating pain on his right hand. He painfully remembered his incident at the family restaurant. Jabali's parents owned the only restaurant in St.Benedicts Town. Deena Restaurant was a family restaurant started by Jabali's grandparents. Mr and Mrs Muta Senior , had bought the restaurant from a Danish couple before they left St.Benedicts. Jabali loved the restaurant and would always be there helping out his parents. This was until a week ago when Jabali got a burn. A kettle containing hot water had poorly been placed at the counter and in hurry , Jabali had tried to move it but got scalded by the hot water. The sucked his teeth as he remembered the incident.

The doctor had advised him to stay away from the restaurant for a month so as to ensure the quick recovery of his arm. Jabali felt crushed , his life mainly consisted of School and the Restaurant. Now that schools were closed for the holidays and was banned from the restaurant by the doctor , he felt bored. He got some drinking water from the fridge and poured it in a glass. He silently drank it and felt the cooling sensation throughout his body. He felt calmed and relived. He put some water on Rex's bowl so that he could also get refreshed. He watched as Rex , licked the water from the bowl , wagging his tail in excitement. St.Benedicts was a small Town in the Eastern side of Kenya. It was far from the capital city but a few miles away from the Indian ocean. It was a small knit community where everybody knew everybody and they all went to similar institutions. St.Benedicts was a commercial town , hence many visitors were always there for business. This made the Deena Restaurant quite famous as both visitors and residents loved dining there. Jabali was well aware that the restaurant was quite busy , especially during midday. He felt bad for not being able to help his parents serve the clients. He couldn't wait to get better and go back to help his parents. They always came back home exhausted and only wanted to rest. Being an only child got boring sometimes , he wished he had siblings who he could talk to and even help him at the restaurant. Roby had two sisters and he seemed to always be annoyed with them. He wished he could have siblings to , even though probably they would mainly annoy him.

He placed the glass on the sink and attempted to clean even though his hand was in pain. He later dried it with a dish cloth and returned it to the dish rack. He went to his room as Rex followed him. Jabali's room was well organized with environmental posters spread across his walls. He looked at his trophy wall and felt proud of his environmental accolades. He reached out to his drawer and retrieved a book that his grandmother had left for him. She had always insisted that it was special , he decided to find out if it was true. He opened the cover and flipped through the first page , what he saw shocked him.