Letters to Simi: Episode 1 by @Kbaronn

 

Sometimes I sit and stare and think and cry. Sorry, I would be lying if I said sometimes, for it happens always, something like a daily routine, and considering religion is the opium of the masses which I unconsciously am part of, I have to state the truth . I’d cry and cry often till tears dried up from my eyes and all that could depict that I was still crying was the movement of my lips and the awkward look of sadness on my face. I live in the Northern part of Nigeria, where our governors rode in cars that I always thought I’d see in heaven alone while their citizens trekked for miles barefooted, where our leaders ate excessively on tables crested out of gold, while their citizens had no meals to put on their tables, coined out of patched woods. I was poor, unarguably. My father had just died of malaria
and is yet to be buried, for his body is still in the hospital where he died. “Mai Kudi” General Hospital, the only health center in my village, which serves four other villages around mine, all of enormous population. His body wouldn't be released to us due to the outstanding bills that we are yet to foot, and so his body is kept in the hospitals partially roofed mortuary. Left to be beaten by the rain, sun and other natural elements that an habitat is meant to protect a body from. My mother struggled hard everyday to feed my younger brother and I from whatever she can scramble out of the small piece of land that she tills on rental. I had just concluded my secondary school education through toil and struggles, through pain and countless moments of disgrace and embarrassment that compounded daily.I had just written my senior secondary school final examination with no idea what the next step to take was academically , in fact if any idea ever crossed my mind , it was to opt out of the thought of ever furthering my education,to discard the thought from the confines of my heart and work menially to support my mother and possibly light the candle of hope of my younger brother’s educational enlightenment possibility, but never would my mother agree to such, always cajoling me to extinguish the thought of not furthering my education. She always tries to embedd into me  certain ideals, building the pillar upon which my resolve often rested, telling me that as long as God lives, I would be fully educated, and often I would sit on the balcony of our house to think about the strength and quality of the faith that my mother has in this God that she firmly believes in. My teacher on Christian religion knowledge back in secondary school always hammers on how difficult it was to believe strongly and have an untainted faith in God. That along side a lot of other things stipulated and reminded me always about how strong my mother was. She also always believes in my educational acumen,encouraging me,pumping into me the energy that my vitality required, always telling me that “God cannot create someone as intelligent as me, only to allow my intelligence waste without it helping humanity”, and I would often laugh  and say “mama, na gode”. This is the story of a boy who is sad, unhappy, poor,  negative adjectives pile up when it comes to describing my situation. Amongst all these, I was intelligent. My science teacher in secondary school often calls me the “Einstein of our time”, I had no idea what that meant, but because she always smiles when she calls me that and it often sounded nice, I had to motivate myself to believe it meant something positive. After all, what would be her gain if she was being cynical, and even if she was, for so long?.I wanted to further my education, I really wanted to. To create something, make something, to be relevant in the society, to help “mama na” and take care of her, to provide enough to cater for my younger brother through school, even up to becoming somebody greater than me.

But once again, like a prick to a blown balloon, like a bruise on a healing sore, I was reminded about how poor I was, betrayed by my own thoughts. All I had in my possession now was God, all I had in my possession was prayer. So I often prayed fervently, that something would happen to tilt my fate, that something somehow would happen, necessitating a possibility of the furtherance of my education. Something should just happen, maybe what I was expecting was a miracle. The way Jesus changed certain negative situations to positive happenings like in the stories we read from the bible in Sunday school at church, I wanted something like that to be my portion. Maybe that was why I prayed at every given opportunity I had, prayed while having my bath, prayed while running errands, prayed while performing my chores, in a bid as I thought to motivate God to perform a miracle in regards to my situation. Time sluggishly passed, minutes felt like hours, days felt like, well! days still felt like days but only slower and I was beginning to lose hope that any miracle’s going to happen to my situation. I frequently thought  God was probably busy solving other people’s problems too, after all, like I read in the school library once, the world’s population is over 7billion, and every one of these people call upon God I believe. Mother always cried when she sees me in thoughts, for she often knew what it is I always think about and so knowing she evidently couldn’t solve the problem made her often feel weak and vulnerable. When everybody’s hope was beginning to dry up like the well in the village square upon whose belle the whole community water wants fell on, when my hope was beginning to dwindle,I sought for strength only from that same God whom my mother always paints to be the only source of the will power which I relied upon to extinguish the problems erected before me. when I thought all hope was lost,my mind got instantly renewed,God ushered into my mind,a leading way that was oblivious to my blurred vision,a way I had not imagined before now...

 Next Episode comes up next Sunday

Written by Oladeji Mayowa Olusegun.