Like any other day when my legs would run fast to my my sandy playground. Like any other moment under the watchful eyes of the sun when my eyes could only see things that were from the origin of man. Just like those days, like that day when my hands were covered in mud as I fondled them through some wet sand, from which I got my palms really dirty. There was one thing I was putting on, it was my slightly thick black and already dirtied pant. That black pant and others kept in a small basket placed on the floor of mama and papa's room were my playground suits. That was mama's thoughtful rule.
She was tired of it all, tired of continuously immersing her hands in dirty water like a fish having a hot bath in some overheated river and most especially tired of sweeping her tough palms through my rumpled and dirty clothes that have been subjected to harsh playing conditions. "You will not kill me, this child!" She would shout as soon as her sharp gaze fell on me from a distance as I walked towards the house. "Hmmm, and I did not disturb my mother like this." She would conclude and On days when papa would hear her shouting
at me, he would support her with his usual "Don't worry, leave him, the cow does not know the usefulness of its horns, until it loses one" So after all was said and done, mama because of this, stopped me from putting on clothes during the day when I was out to play except my pant which she made sure they were black. But I was happy with this turn of things: it meant mama would no longer restrain me from playing rigorously or shouting at me for messing up my cloth anytime I was heading into the house in the evening. Since there would no longer be anything like mama’s reverberating evening screams, it even made me happier.
There was an usual unchanged semi-quietness that always chained down our environment during such hour of the day. It had slipped into our surroundings once more like water cascading through the tissues of a coco yam. However, except for the cries of birds, the crow of fowls, fowls that at all times failed to depict the tunnel of passage between the morning and afternoon, rams roaming around the house in fours like friends who haven’t seen each other for long and now trying to catch up; apart from these animals, everything else melted itself over in that gentle but stubborn tranquility.
Though this period was a long time ago, as moments had climbed over it numerously, but I still remembered these things clearly; I still see them sometimes as if there were on my eyes, for they formed a part of me that could not be let go or forgotten.
My heart and face were cuddled in excitement as I engagingly made a little sand house in the vibrant sight of the adult sun. And that was what, among other things that always got me dirty and seriously bathed in sand. I sat on the floor with my buttocks getting the best out from the warmth of the coarse soil beneath them. I could feel the heat of the soil caused by the effect of bright sunlight that shinned, even though I at least wore a pant but that wasn’t a way to escape the hotness of the sands to get to me. It could have hurt me on a normal day, and made me jump up like having a hot charcoal pressed against my skin, but I didn’t feel the pain, except the awareness of what was happening underneath. All I was concerned with was getting my dream sand house ready for accommodation, a house which only the tip of my finger at the end would be able to acquire its C of O (Claim of Ownership) from the government (I represent the government here).
I took a hip of another sand which was mixed with a bit of clay, and mixing it with water from my little can of milk, I made a paste out of it then rolled it intensely with my hands it got very smooth in my little palms. That was going to be my door! And it was the last thing that remained in the master plan of the house which I had in my head.
Papa and mama were not at home. They had gone out to the market at the edge of the birth of the milking sun, but they never did one thing. To leave us alone in the house unattended. There was a neighbour of ours, who had no child of her own, but lived with her husband alone amidst the hurt she daily faced from the society where a childness one is made a witch. Mama always felt sorry for her, because she knew what she was passing through. She figured out our neighbour would have no one to play out her boredom with, so she offered us to her to help chase that monotony that could trouble her into a dam full of her own tears. However, the situation didn’t really play out as mama had supposed. Our neighbour was a tailor who had a lot of clothes to sew for people. She was good at it and even despite what the termed her to be, people still went to her to get their cloths sewn. That was how she had been driving away the pressure that came with not being able to produce a child. So to attend to her trade, she would leave us to play all by ourselves, but checked up on us at short intervals to know if we were still in one wonderful piece. But if I could remember very well on the day that the terrible incident that took everything away from us pounced on us like a cheetah to its innocent prey, she only came once and never came again to check on us. Though I didn’t notice, as the engrossment with my building had taken over majority of the things I should have been aware of.
My papa was a farmer as well as a hunter, though he rarely hunts but pays great attention to his farming. Papa was an educated man. He graduated from a good college which enabled him to become a teacher in our town, but after a while as a teacher, he stopped. He was discouraged from continuing his teaching career by mama due to the fear of losing him: she was afraid of shaving her long hair at a very young age, she was afraid of crying day and night for death to take loneliness away from her life if papa should go cold. So he stopped teaching and took to farming for her sake. The reason for this was that that time was a terrible moment for us all, even though we knew
only little then, we very much knew what was happening. Schools were death farms as many teachers
had been killed and blown up with explosives. Students were murdered, and
habitually kidnapped, sold out to slavery into far places. Ah, it was really terrible!
Due to the
continuous agitation from mama, papa decided to opt out and resulted
into farming. But Mama on the other hand had not much education to boast of as papa. She started school but stopped in form two because her father no longer had the money to waste on a girl who would later become someone else's property when married off. But mama was a very intelligent young woman, beautiful, elegant and hard working. Eh! Mama, She could do anything to make sure we were fed, even if it meant dying to keep us safe. She loved us as a plant loved its roots. And she was a trader of farm produce; the farm produce papa usually came with on his return from farm.
Papa and mama had been married for some years, but the first three years were fruitless. It was some months into the fourth year of barrenness that I surprised them with my coming and nine months later I was born. My sister came a year after, raising the number of children to two.
My sister, as little as she was then, was very smart and creative. She was very good in taking care of herself and making fun with her cooking experiments. While I battled with my constructions, she would go to the remains left by the open fire wood used by mama to make our meals each day and picked some charcoals for her own business. She had a small tin too, and this was her cooking pot where different categories of leaves and grasses were cooked into delicacies no one would try to taste. She used to be very excited about this, just as I was with the building of my sand houses.
Just like papa, we also did not go to school anymore. Mama was also behind that too. She had withdrawn us from school and said it was better we stayed at home and be taught by papa than go to school and be killed or kidnapped by one heartless riffraff. Papa did not thick otherwise, so he agreed on taking us through our regular school classes in the evening after he had rested from the tedious farm work. However papa did it, balancing everything, I did not know how, but he really concentrated on our education as he put us through several classes and topics.
After much rubbing of the wet sand in my palm, happiness finally dragged me to smiles when my door was completed and it was ready to be merged with the rest of the house by resting against the tiny bottle-hole made as the entrance. The style I was using to construct was more difficult and tasking. My usual method was to build directly on my leg; my leg acting as a foundation and it was faster and better, because the house wouldn’t have to break like six times before it finally would stand, as it always happened each time I pulled out my leg from the building. It would have done the same if not that I tried another style. I lifted the door and as I moved it to join it with the house, it was my sister’s tiny voice I heard loudly.
‘Brother! Brother! Come! Come and see my soup!’
‘Okay, I’m coming’ I was about completing my house with the door and I didn’t want to spoil the fun or put it on hold.
No! No! Now now. You won’t eat my soup o.
‘Alright I’m coming.’ I smiled a little and went into the house with her, as she was already standing at the entrance. After going with her to her kitchen, I came back to my own business and sat back on the soil. I was happy to be back. The door was right where I had left it. I stretched my both hands and reached for it. Gently I lifted it up and gradually brought it to the sand house. But something stopped me again. It was not the voice of my sister, neither was it the cool and swift voice of mama, but her ear-piercing one.
‘Get inside now! Hurry!’ she shouted.
My sister ran out of the housing, wanting to welcome mama and her tiny voice which was shouting for mama, for some seconds dominated the place, but mama’s voice banged again and this time higher. She ran towards me, hitting her leg on the house, and everything fell apart. I looked back as my eyes broadened to mourn my destroyed sand house. She held my hand and ran towards my sister, carrying her with her other and she ran into the house and locked the door.
Mama ordered us to be silent, not making a word nor any kind of movement. I squatted, holding my sister and pulling her to my side. The way mama was shaking, sweating and vibrating made me very scared. I had never seen in her such a state. I had seen her sweat but not like the river forcing itself to break through hardened rocks and mountain holding it captive. She knelt down, and held us both. She looked at our faces and bringing us closer to her, she hugged us. The hug was much a relief. I felt safe in her arms, even though the tiger chase, which was the reason why she behaved so strangely was yet unclear to me.
‘Mama where is papa? What is wrong?’
In her eyes were tears, queuing to have their way out.
‘Look, papa is….’ She heard an unfamiliar sound and she stopped.
‘Stay here she said and don’t move’
She stood up and went towards the window. She raised the curtain a little, making the room receive a light slightly and she immediately downed it back. She quietly walked back to us and did the same thing she did when she first brought us in; carrying my sister in her arms and leading me by the hand.
The backyard was clean, except for the cooking mess my sister had made of the place. Her leaves were scattered everywhere. I knew mama had seen it, the way her eyes glanced at it, but instead of scolding her as she always did, she ignored it as if she never saw it. Standing still, she perused the surrounding, looking for something unspecific. Three storage pit where papa used to store his farm produce was what drew mama’s attention. It was a bit far from the house, but could still be seen from a single close glance from papa’s room which was facing the backyard.
She ran towards the place and I had to work my legs to catch up with the pace. When we got there, she lowered us down into one of the storage pits. Me first and my sister second. I stretched my hands to enable my sister’s proper landing so she wouldn’t have to scratch her young skin against the unsmooth pit’s wall, even if I had, as a little child given myself so many injuries resulting into various structureless marks due to my every time adventure into bushes, which papa, even though a farmer discouraged intensely.
I received her from mama’s hand and mama instructed us, me especially not to leave there until she came back for us. Even if she hadn’t given the instruction, we wouldn’t have left there. There was no way we could have got out of the pit without calling for an external help, because the pit’s height was much taller than either of us.
I heard how she went away, each step running after the next and gradually it faded. And those where the things I still remembered of her till date. The very way her feet sounded and the voice and tone she used in instructing us that day. She had gone promising to come back but there was nobody like mama who came to bring us out. For four days, which I was only able to count due to the conversation between the sun and moon’s night and day, we were in the pit. My eyes were already becoming closed. My sister had been crying and I was only able to console her with tears, as I joined in the ceremony of tears, shouting mama! Mama! But no mama came for us. The whole place was quiet throughout those days, like it had had been deserted by all.
‘And maybe mama had forgotten us here.’
Some thoughts ran through my mind, but I knew she couldn’t have. She was the only woman I was familiar with her motherhood love and with my experience with her, I knew she couldn’t have gone away; leaving us to die in the pit. We shouted and shouted, yet no one came to the rescue. I felt life pulling out of my sister’s body. She couldn’t cry anymore, tears had been abandoned by eyes. They were now closed. At a time, I had to use all mush of my crippled strength to push her body with my hand, to see if she was still alive and it was positive.
Death was at the top of the storage and was already climbing its way down to take us home. I was very scared at our situation, because I have seen a lot of people die right before my eyes. I was little but, littleness was never a voice to speak for experiences in our town. The first time I saw it happen was in the market place where some young boys, headed by four other men who I had spotted before they eventually struck with guns and machete in their hands, which I had never seen before, until they came into the market and began smashing people’s heads with their weapons.
I was there with dad. He had taken me to the market to see the place for myself, how people bought and sold goods, but it was another thing I saw entirely that day. It was people giving people death like gifts and exchanging it for pain and sorrow. Dad covered my eyes and we fled the market place, leaving everything we brought into the market behind. And that same day, dad had come home to give mama the news, which I overheard, that about sixty people were killed during the attack and they had to be buried together in a large dug pit. So I knew what death was and that once that life leaves, it was no longer coming back and that only the body would be buried. And the thought that we were already in our own pit, where we were already buried, did no good thing to my frightening spirit.
I blew out another ‘mama help!’ From my little round mouth that was now dry, bearing a bitter and spitless tongue into the air and it echoed down back into the pit. But it didn’t go without doing something. Few seconds after I had made the cry, I saw the view of a man’s head revealing itself at the surface of the pit. I first thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t. He looked down at us, then turned his head backwards. It was like he was talking to somebody else, but no one appeared or came around the pit.
The man stretched his hands into the pit to get us out. He took my sister first and when it was my turn, I became scared, entangle with the feeling that they could be one of those armed men who were disturbing the town with dread. But something made me gave in. I was going to die anyway, whether or not I came out and my sister was already out and if she had to die, I would die alongside her. I gave him my hand and he pulled me out. Reaching the real soil and my leg touching it, I couldn’t stand on my feet, so the man lifted me up and carried me in his muscled arms. I looked around to see if I could find my sister and it was then I noticed they were truly two men, as I had early thought while in the pit. The other man I later noticed was with my sister. She was also being carried.
My sister was now slightly awake, after being given water to drink by the man who carried her. As I saw what was more precious than diamond, I drew the other man’s attention to it by pointing to it and he collected it then gave me to drink. I downed the whole bottle without hesitation.
I was now able to at least see clearly, though was still being hindered by the light of the sun, since I had been in the pit for four days without good light reflection. Our house had been destroyed, burnt down to ashes. The whole roof has crumbled and the front view of the house, where I had earlier made my construction could be seen clearly from the backyard. Everything had totally being destroyed. There was something that got my attention and it got it very greatly. It was a cloth which was very familiar. The men who carried us never said anything to us. They just carried us by the hand. They were putting on army uniforms, but it was not enough for me to conclude that they were from the military. The men who came to murder people in the market on that first experience of death also were in military uniforms. So it was no sign of divergence. It only meant they were armed men, whether military or insurgents.
I pointed to the direction of what I had seen and the man brought me there. It was a woman. She was lying down facing the ground. The man lowered himself a little and used his other hand to turn her the other way round, revealing her face. My heart skipped instantly. It was not due to her familiarity that got my heart to skip, but because she was mama. She was covered in blood. The blood on her had dried and her body had begun to smell, revealing that she had been there for about two-three days, even four. I couldn’t hold my tears, even though I was weak.
My sister was asleep, resting quietly on the other man’s left shoulder, so she didn’t see the awful seen of mama. Mama’s eyes were wide open, as if looking at me in the eyes and her mouth was not closed too. It was as if she should just wake up and take us from the hands of the men, but it was impossible she had been visited by death. And with the blood on her, it was clear that she was murdered.
‘Is that your mother?’ The man who carried me asked; speaking for the first time.
‘Yee…eess.’
I couldn’t reply properly. I was weak, depressed, disappointed and in the wrong state of mind. Now I understood what she wanted to say about papa. He was probably dead. The man closed mama’s eyes and covered my eyes with his titanic hand to impede me from seeing further, but I had seen everything: there was nothing more to be hidden from me. I knew we were now orphans, my sister and I. And hell was ready to unleash itself upon us. We were kids who knew not how to fend for a chicken not to mention a human being, not even one but two.
The two men took us to a place, where we saw other children, who were also like us. They had lost their homes too and loved ones. They had lost everything they believed in. We were all in it together, lost in a wordless world, where the only thing we could see was sorrow, pain, fear welcoming us to an unknown world. I saw what had happened within five days, terror, strive, loss and all what agony had unleashed from grief’s purse. I was scared of even meeting with tomorrow.
There were nurses there who attended to us. Most of them were aged women who knew how to take care of children. But what kind of treatment would be like a mother’s own or the warmth of a mother’s body be compared to that of another woman. What is not can never be. I looked at my sister’s face she had now woken up. She failed to recognize where she was, neither did I, but I was better off her own degree of knowledge because of her long sleep. She looked round, trying to locate someone she could beckon to. The only face she could recognize was mine. She came to me, having being dropped by the man who carried her some steps away from where I was dropped by the other man. A shocking statement dropped from her virgin mouth.
‘I want mama, mama, mama!’
I kept mute and silence enveloped me as I had not phantom what to reply her. I also wished for the same thing, screeching in my heart, asking, ‘mama where are you?’ as we went through the wringer of great losses.
**************************
People were out again to do their normal day to day activities. People of both good and bad minds, those who would meet what not to meet and people who would meet what needs be. We were in another category, the other kids, my sister and I. We were under those kind of people who meet to meet their needs.
Ever since we lost our parents about four years earlier, we had to fend for our stomachs with whatever means we saw. But we had it at the back of our mind that we weren’t going to engage ourselves in any form of affairs that would go against what was right, unlike some of our friends, both male and female who had now resulted into smoking marijuana, stealing, pick-pocketing, etc. were doing.
Even though our parents were gone and we were left to till our own soil, as little as we were in order to feed ourselves. The little time we spent with them when all still went well had shaped us. We were told from dawn never to indulge in activities that could cause people their lives. Papa listed some of them and we understood what must be, and what was not to be born in us. I taught my sister some of the teachings she was not privileged to receive from papa and mama and we abide by them. And also knowing how papa and mama had washed away, we understood that violence was only a key to destruction. We were not the only ones in the job; the job of begging. There were old men and women, as there were children too, even younger than we were. Some of our colleagues had parents, but they were handicapped, though not all. So they resulted into the same business.
Those parents who were fit, having hands, legs and everything a human being should have, were only there because they had given up. They had told me numerously that there was nothing out there to gain, no job, no money and no food, among others. I was little, but what I knew was not. The question I used to ask myself was that how then did those who gave us money survived if there was nothing out there. But as simple that question was, I couldn’t answer it, because all I had been experience was saying yes to my older colleagues. Most times we would beg for arms till the moon came out, but a time came when we stopped, as we suddenly became, the main targets of ritualist. We had a house we all lived in. It was more of a tent than a real house. It was our home, the only one we could point to as our way out of the rain.
I still remembered daily of home, our real home, though it had now become ashes, but I couldn’t forget the pictures of where I grew up. A place where I had built houses more than the population of the town. Nevertheless they were now in the past, but they were never my past. I had acknowledged the fact of leaving the past behind, but not the good lessons it teaches.
Some days after we were taken into the victim’s home by those men who brought us out of the storage pit years back, we were given beds to sleep, my sister and I decided to sleep on the same bed and daily we were fed by the workers. And gradually we began to enter into the system and accept our reality. Humans were made to adapt to any condition, and were subjected to their environments, and my sister had accepted this truth, even though not being told that mama was not going to come and papa neither, she accepted all that was offered her thankfully. So she stopped crying after mama. We were registered into a file, stating our ages and names. A bulk of us couldn’t fill the form perfectly, as they didn’t know their ages, except for those who were a little older than we were who could still remember where they were living before the incident and the details that were requested of.
Like happiness feeding us as time grew legs, a man came to the place on morning. He was fat and wore a suit, which I was very familiar with. Dad used to wear a black one to school then, when he was till teaching though it was no longer a black one but ash, as it had faded greatly, but those times he wore it, he used to be very smart in it. The man told us that a test for the level of literacy was going to be run to know the educational classes we belonged to. I was happy, especially for my kid sister that finally we would have the opportunity to be in school. But like they always say, some things are just in front of you that you never realise their coming until they hit you by surprise. A catapult killed that dream when an attack was carried out on the building and it was shutdown afterwards.
An unknown person had sneaked a bomb into the building and detonated it, killing a lot of lives, especially children and leaving the place to become like what we earlier knew, and was still fresh our burnt home. My sister and I were once again rescued together with some other kids from the bomb blast and it was mercy that brought us to safety. We were put in a vehicle and taken to another place that couldn’t be compared to our town in any way. It was a very big city, beautiful, full of opportunities and crimes, but we neither were given the opportunity that dwelt in the city neither did we choose the crime aspect. We were in-between, no crime, and no opportunity. The people who took us from our home town to the city, couldn’t do much for us, so we had to result to the begging job.
We had a common purse where we would gather all the money we made for the day, so we could buy food stuffs and other materials like dippers, and other baby materials, because some of us along the line got pregnant and we had to care for their children to, nevertheless, it sometimes caused quarrel. Some argued that no one should be responsible for the feeding of a child, except the mother of the child. There was no father involved, because most were from urchins and rogues that only took advantage of them, except when it came from one of us and which was rare, however it happened. There was a time one of us, an older one, stole away all the money we had realized that day in the night and ran away with them. And that really affected us, both in trust and in stomach, as we had to go hungry throughout that day, until we got some peanuts back which we didn’t disburse that day, but the following day. From then the money was kept away from anyone’s knowledge, except the person who was keeping it.
No one went to school, we were taught by the sun, the rain, the harsh weathers and kidnappings. We received mostly curses than prayers from people who would push us away, because they were irritated by our state and our glance troubled their sights. Some right in front of us would rob the arms of money they wanted to give us on their faces, blessing it with curses, prayer that their troubles and pains should be taken away as they offered the arms to us. But none of us cared. All we needed to do was to collect the money and bless them for the help, then it would complete our stew ingredient that night. Sometimes we even used to pray we had such opportunities because they really brought gains, as such persons would drop a big amount of money as they made such praying curses.
The only times we received blessings and prayers were during religious visitations and the non-government organisations visitations. We were also visited by political groups, which was done mainly for campaigns. But they helped us too, sometimes by bringing us food, clothing and schooling materials, though we went to no school. When the NGOs visited, we would be asked questions on how we got to that state of becoming children of the streets and we would answer them. It was during of these times that an interest was placed on us, me, my sister and some other persons. I was asked to tell what I could do, and I said building my own home. They were surprised and when they asked me more questions, I answered correctly and they were on what made up a building and I told them. Ever since we were brought to the city, I had shown interest in the construction work. Similar things were found in other children and about seven of us were taken off the street.
We got scholarship awards, even though it was difficult to cope at first due to our age and other experiences we had gone through, but we soon adapted, even if it gave us the unloving privilege of becoming the biggest and oldest in class, which in turn handed us unchallengeable mantle of being chosen as class monitors.
Our journey continued not without challenges. There were times we needed to buy about five books and we only got one, there were time we needed sandals and we had to manage the torn ones. The burden of catering for so many kids at the same time was on the organisation that helped us. They were managed with funds gotten from individuals, government bodies, etc. So we had to manage our way through.
The same thing happened while studying in the university, but we met some organisations that coached us on how we could become entrepreneurs while in school and that, in its own little way helped us. We all went to the same school and studied together till we graduated. I was in the faculty of atmospheric and structural technology, while my sister was in the department of Food Science and Management and others were in their various departments, working hard to get the best.
It was as if the future had had it all planned. We became what we had interest in while we were young and not otherwise. We graduated with the best results in our various faculties and got job invitations from various companies immediately after graduation.
After some years of working, my sister and I established a NGO which helped other kids who we were once like, because we never for once forgot how we got out of our situation. There were lots of other kids on the streets who we shared similar stories and experiences with poverty and sufferings with. We knew it was our duty to bring them to freedom, giving them hope towards living a life free from dusts, curses, rituals, diseases, pregnancies and death because what only breaks a man is being in an hopeless state of mind and condition and since no man is hopeless unless he chooses to be. We knew we couldn’t do it alone, but the little we did blessed lives who would have become rogues, killers and assassins like those who murdered our parents and blew off our first abode after losing our parents.
Living a life for others to live, is the true measure of life. Giving hope to dreams that are mature and ready to be blown away brings a new tree and breathe of life. These are the things every individual, whether young or old should always engage in. And they were the beliefs that kept us moving from place to place in other to help those who felt abandoned get more from life. That was our calling, what is yours?
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