THE PLIGHT OF AN AFRICAN CHILD

It was a sultry Thursday afternoon. A certainly good time to take a cold shower. I had just finished  my CDS which is the community development service. Walking out of Mapo hall, I noticed over a dozen children sitting on the floor, dirty looking with no flip flops on. They gazed at the NYSC members hoping to get money or food from us. I just couldn't move a step further after I saw these children. I approached them and asked my friends to go on ahead. "Hi guys", I said to them. "Why are you not in school?"

 It was just 1:15pm so it was logical to say they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like a chorus, they replied, "Ko si Owo" meaning no money. I became more interested since I was told there was free education in Oyo. If you know me well enough, you should know am my own ambassador for a better Nigeria. I tried asking them more questions  and they told me  they usually pay 3000 naira in government schools so it was not totally free. I was just heart broken to see these children here because of 3000 naira which was cheaper than a Mary Kay foundation. However, in their midst was an unusual child, Tunde. For as many questions as I asked the children afterwards, they replied "Yes", until Tunde said to me, "Aunty, they don't understand English." Tunde spoke so intelligently. In my head I said to myself, "He shouldn't be here." So I decided to dig deep.

Some street children

                                                           

                                                                        TUNDE'S STORY

              

             Tunde

 How old are you?

Tunde: Am 15 years old.

Where are your parents and  your siblings?

Tunde: My mum is dead. She was pregnant when she died. She came home one day and complained about stomach pain. She said she wanted to sleep and that was the last I heard of mama. She died in her sleep."Olokpa" meaning police men came and took my dad and I to jail till grandpa came and bailed us out but took my siblings and I to Ibadan. I lived in Lagos before. My dad is in Lagos  and my other siblings are with my aunt. Grandpa refused daddy taking us with him.

Why are you not in school?

Tunde: I dropped out of school in JSS 2. A church was sponsoring my schooling until my aunt came and took me away from grandpa's house because of a brutal uncle that lives with grandpa. I  ran away from my aunt's house two weeks ago. She  got me a job after warning me never to tell my dad when he calls that am not in school because he used to send money to her for up keep. They paid me 700 naira daily but I had to give her 500 from it everyday. My father thinks I have been in school all the while.

Why did you run away from your aunt's house?

Tunde:  My aunt and her children always accused me of anything that happens in the house. The one that hurt me the most was that her children kept insulting me and telling me that my mummy was dead and I had no helper. I don't have my dads number. I had to run away. It was one of the children in grandpa's house that told me to run away when ever I was maltreated so that they can feel the pain.

So where do you live now?

Tunde: I live in my friends brother's house. But "Alaye" meaning "he that owns life " in yoruba, own's the house. Alaye is the leader of the house. We are many street children living there.

How do you feed?

Tunde: There is a grandpa and his wife that live there.They try to give us morning food then Alaye gives us 30 naira in the evening after we have worked.

What kind of work do you do for Alaye?

Tunde: We pick scrap metals and give Alaye. So when he sells them, he gives us 30 naira from there. But in the afternoon, we can do small work and get 10,20, or even 50 naira.

Would you like to return to school ?

Tunde:Yes ma, I want to go back to school.

At this point, I asked Tunde to show me where he would like to school. It was a long trek, because I had about 300 naira left after buying flip flop for Tunde as he had none plus I needed to transport myself home as well. The other children cared less about our discussion but begged for money. In fact,  if you had seen us, you would have thought the children were trying to kidnap me. They had doubled by the time we were leaving, all bare foot. Tunde took me to the school but it was a no no for me. The entrance was horrendous.

School entrance

Don't get it all mixed up ok. Am not the daughter of the president, governor,  senator, minister or a tycoon. However,  I have an undying love for child education and women. 

                                                                 FACT FINDING
                                     

I needed to be sure that Tunde had not filled me with a bag of lies. We went to where he lived. I had to take two friends along(Ope and Oghuan) the next day as I wasn't sure what to expect. I just knew I wanted to move the needle for Tunde. My goodness, it was the Lions den. I felt like Christiane Amanpour of CNN "digging deep and taking risks" (Hope my mum is not reading this though). I knew this was not an enabling environment for my dear Tunde or any child whomsoever.

Path to Alaye's house

When we got there, we literally froze. There were 5 dangerous looking guys sitting in front of the house seriously smoking weed in the heat of the afternoon. It was the Lions den. There were also young boys of about 15 or 16 years smoking weed as well. There were also rugged looking girls who kept talking about how they were uncontrollable and are above the law. There was this other guy with a deep ear cut which I suspect he had gotten from a recent fight. Ope then told them why we had come. One of the guys said they were happy and that he had someone come like this to help him when he was younger but because he lost track of the people who helped him, he came back to Alaye's house. They said we had to come back and see Alaye.

Tunde later confirmed that Alaye was in but wouldn't come out to see visitors. We asked Tunde to take us to grandpa's house.

                                                            GRANDPAS HOUSE

Path to grandpa's house( Og, Ope and Tunde)

                                    

Tunde took us to grandpa's house but refused to go in with us for the fear of this uncle who treated him brutally. Now, we expected that he would feel uncomfortable or run away by the time we were done but he still stayed knowing he had been honest with us all the way. On getting to grandpa's house, we were welcomed by the popular uncle.

Irene: Good afternoon, we are here with respect to Tunde.

Uncle: "Hmm, that useless boy. He is not enduring at all. Is he the only one. In fact he is a closed case. I don't want to hear anything about that useless boy. Shaaaaa, I don't know where he is now because I heard two days ago that he ran away from my sister's house. He has to be tough. My father married 5 wives and for each new wife he married, I had to move in with them. I grew up the hard way oo. I had to fend for myself so I can't understand why his case should be different. "

Irene: But what are the good sides to this young boy?

Uncle: He is very very smart, kind and is very hardworking. He can clean this whole house in 20 minutes or less if he wants to.

The uncle said too much in a short time then said he wants us to wait for grandpa who was not around at the time.

In 15 minutes  grandpa was back. Ope greeted grandpa and introduced us and our purpose for the visit. Grandpa was more than excited to have us around and started calling us the CIA. Yoruba's love to pray a lot for their children and so baba was not in the wrong to have first flooded us with blessings and prayers before he told us his story.

Grandpa:  Tunde is my grand son. His mother is diseased and was my only child. I had to sign an affidavit in the station stating that I was now Tunde's dad and will take care of him and the other grand children. I was not aware when his aunt came and took him away but we knew it was because of his uncle. They were never friends. Right now I don't know where Tunde is. The aunt said Tunde has refused to attend school and is now working. She said he earns 700naira daily.

Ope: Tunde ran away  from home and we found him on the streets.

Grandpa: Yes he likes running away which has almost cost me my life as I fainted the first time he did it. He doesn't want to be chastised. So now I don't bother much when he runs. He was sponsored by a charity organization that paid his fees, bought him uniform and all necessary things. In fact let us call his dad.

Grandpa gave us his dad's number and said he wants us to try and mentor Tunde but wouldn't want Tunde in his house again to avoid the constant fights between his uncle and himself. He also said he would like us to make sure Tunde is involved in a church. We had to leave as this entire journey had taken us about 4 hours and more.

                                                                  REUNION

We(Irene, Oghuan, Opeyemi and Big Morax) put a call through to Tunde's dad and he promised to come and pick his son up. He was so concerned and didn't stop calling. Unfortunately for the man, when we asked about Tunde's education he said Tunde was going to school until recently when they called to tell him Tunde ran away. Poor man who had been lied to all along. He also said that his son never ran away from home when his mother was alive. Its my joy to inform my beloved readers who have read to this point, that Tunde's dad came as promised on Friday. It was a very emotional scene as Tunde broke out in intense tears when he saw his dad. Tunde is on his way to Lagos as I write this script. For precaution sake, we went to the Police station and made it know that Tundes dad had come to pick up his son. If you are wondering, we gave Tunde all the possible means of reaching us if he ever encounters a challenge.

Big Morax and Tunde on the day of reunion

Lady I and my babe Tunde

Tundes dad, Tunde, Big Morax and Lady I

Father and son

Uncle Remi,Tunde's dad,Tunde, Irene,  Big Morax and my other children

Street children

One of the days I went to pay Tunde a visit

                                                                      MY THOUGHT

All through this process, honestly, at some point, I wondered why I got myself into all these. In fact, my mind had what I will call an evil thought creep in." He is Yoruba and not Igbo , why stress yourself so much for him." But before the thought could settle it, I attacked it forcefully. For me, he was  human, he was African, he was definitely Nigerian. Those were all I needed to see this innocent and honest young man get off the street. I cared less about his tribe. If you want to render help, go all out and do it irrespective. For some people, with the way the children gathered around me, it must have looked embarrassing but really, what does Irene care? I saw a guy I knew from school who was my friend  but he acted like I was a stranger. Lady I does not care. For me, I had moved the needle for Tunde. Now he has a better chance to express himself and be great. I didn't need to contact any government agency during the entire process. I just needed a heart of love and compassion. On this note, I say

I pledge to Nigeria my Country,
To be faithful, loyal and honest,
To serve Nigeria with all my strength,
To defend her unity,
And uphold her honour and glory
So help me God.

Vote of thanks to these amazing people who supported me through this process.
Big Morax, Opeyemi and Oghuan

Much love,
Lady I