I heard a story that made me tear up. I was talking to a friend of mine and she told me about supporting a teenage boy16 to go back to school and finish his school cert.
My friend informed me that this boy was orphaned when his parents both died of some sickness no one knew of. So he was sent to his extended family in the same estate where my friend lived.
Like flies after a sore, it seemed bad luck dogged the boy. Soon after he joined this family of five, who were struggling to make ends meet, the household’s father passed on. He was diabetic, he fell sick, the hospital he was admitted to did not check that he was diabetic before they loaded him with drips that soon killed him.
That ended for the boy, a struggle for two meals per day in that home. The wife, as many women would often do, sought to care for her offspring and the boy only ate when his cousins had eaten…I heard they didn’t have much…even so.
So my friend often had to be the one the boy went to for food…she gave him whenever he came and he soon became a constant feature in her home. He helped her run errands and soon, the talk of school came up and my friend talked about doing extra work to fund the boy’s education…with permission from the boy’s guardian. That is the widow of his late uncle.
Now, it seems there are some forces against this boy as I have no explanation for what has happened twice; every time my friend got just about enough money to go enrol this boy at the nearest government secondary school. A paltry sum of N85k I think, you know, registration fee, uniforms, books, et al…being a public school and all and for WAEC fees, I think, my friend would always have one urgent need to divert the money.
The first time was when she was called that her daughter had been hospitalised at school. Food poisoning, I think. Of course, my friend had to rush off to the school, which was out of Lagos. She needed transport fare, provision for the ailing child, etc…N80k she had saved up for the boy, was used up.
The second time, she managed to save up money for this boy, the estate had issues with IKDC, so they came and my friend’s flat was among the buildings where IKDC removed their wires because some of their neighbours were owing…plus they had issues with their transformer and they had to contribute money…fiam, the money went into that.
Well, you could argue that would my friend have used the money to settle IKDC if the boy was hers? The question to ask is, would living in the darkness where her business depended on light have been an option for her?
Anyway, soon, the widow the boy lived with, one who had agreed for my friend to help send the boy to school, seeing as things were, she would be unable to…she has three children of her own…this widow came to my friend to ask why the boy was not in school, six months after the talk of sending him to school.
My friend of course informed her of the glitches towards this goal and when she told her that she had managed to scrape up N30k, thinking she would be able to make up the remaining in the following weeks, the widow said to her, “ We have not eaten for two days, aunty, can you help us with that money?”
They had not eaten for two days!
The boy had been to my friend’s the day before and had said nothing about his family not eating. You could say, he would have no way of knowing, especially as he hardly ate in that house, anyway.
You could say, he shouldn’t care about a family that did not care about him.
You could say several things and you may be right.
I just think that the boy ought to have known.
I think even amid our suffering, we should not ignore other people’s suffering.
But of course, first off, the widow should be blamed here, her reluctance to fend for the boy may have dictated the boy’s behaviour. She should have cared for this boy even if they were all drinking garri to sleep. If her children can eat, no matter how small, the boy too should have been given something to eat.
Well, that was what I thought, until my friend told me, “The woman said she caught him about to finger one of her daughters.”
She couldn’t send him away because he had nowhere to go. Lo ba tan!
The boy says it is not true, the woman swears by Ogun and Oya combined and the boy says, may those gods strike him if it were true…the boy is still walking as far as I know.
Why am I talking about these people today?
The thing that hunger makes us do.
The widow, saying vile things about a boy in her keep; maybe she became who she is because feeding an extra mouth just proved too much for her.
The boy, watching his cousins go hungry…not that he would have been able to provide a meal for them but he certainly knew my friend would have been able to help his family if she had known…even if for just one meal.
And with my friend questioning the wisdom of supporting this boy, did he or did he not?
Oh, I don’t know.
If I assume he indeed did what he was accused of, then there’s still hope for him. He could well be rehabilitated. Counselling/therapy, for one. He is idle, and does not go to school like his cousins…so he will get into all forms of evil the devil can find for him.
Would I be saying this if the widow’s children were mine or my nieces…I don’t know, I would probably go for his head and ask my friend not to feed him, ever again. That would be the unreformed me. These days, I believe in second chances…even third chances.
So I advised my friend to seek counselling for the boy. I hear the Lagos State Government offers these services free, even to families.
The widow and the said child involved also need therapy. My friend is ensuring they access one through the state government.
Does therapy and counselling solve all problems, nah, but it gives us a chance to give life another shot.
We all want that, don’t we? We don’t want our mistakes to define us for the rest of our lives, do we?
