From the street

The harshness of her voice kept reminding me to leave and never come back. She felt no pity even though she had to. It was true I was an orphan, she didn’t have to care like she brought me into this world, but she had to cater for me with contributions from some generous relatives. Eating soaked gari and left-overs from my aunt was the best I could thank for but being stranded in a place where I could die was terrifying. It wasn’t my fault that I found myself in her care but one thing I wanted was the freedom to live, like any child. At age seven, I left my auntie’s to live in the streets. Moving about in a street where I knew nobody was aimless but it marked the beginning the beginning of a free life. The sun quickly came down and I found myself starving and lying helplessly on a veranda in front in a cold store. My torn t-shirt and khaki trousers were not heavy enough to give me warmth in the cold of the night as a lay shaking. Two strong slaps at my back woke me up, but what I saw afterwards shook me up that the hunger I left me. It was a gang of street boys, short and the tall, big and small, surrounding me. They didn’t have to ask me before my story.

 Living under the care of my aunt was the only “care” I got in life until I became one of them, the street kids. Our mantra was “work hard, play hard”. I didn’t know what that meant until we started “playing”. During the daytime, we sold all kinds of things: gum, pure water, airtime, yam, coffee and ice cream. In the night, we surrounded a table in a drinking bar where we began to play. For my first time, I was scared to take even a tot of local gin down my throat. My friends convinced me that I will enjoy it and had me take three tots. In a state I couldn’t recognize as my own, I lived a different me. I screamed, danced, laughed out loud, made friends, things I couldn’t do with my real self. That was my new life, a street drunkard.

I am only 22 years but I look like a 42 year old reckless man. My teeth have turned brown, my lower lip red. Each time I recover from drinking, I say to myself:  “I will never drink again”. I work hard during the day but I end up spending every coin on alcohol. Not that I like how I behave and the things I do when I’m drunk, but it is hard coming out of that shell. Each time I try, I get back to my street life: work hard, play hard.