photo by mika on unsplash, edited by teechizzy
It was a bright monday morning, the morning was still cold, leaves were seen dripping of the early morning dew.
Kunle was taking hot pap and bean cakes, it was another week on a site where they were building a storey building belonging to one of the princess living overseas, either in london, japan or wherever only
God knows.
Kunle was a labourer, he usually went to building sites where he was most useful on daily basis, he mixed cement, arrange blocks and plastered building blocks for different parts of the house.
At times too, he helped the carpenters in making roofs and ceilings on almost finished structures.
Even though there were so many house being put up.
Daily paid labourers and workmen like kunle are not well paid.
Can you imagine a grown up family man being paid two hundred naira at the end of a full day’s work.
All his colleagues at work were buying and eating bread and beans, a good food routine for workmen but kunle couldn’t afford to buy that.
Things were not good, in fact he felt life has not been good to him.
As he sat on a cement block eating his remaining bean cake, he tried to recall everything about his life.
It had been very hectic and full of struggles.
Kunle was just six years old when he lost his father and mother and he became an orphan.
They were living in a hut built by his father who was a small scale farmer.
He would buy cassava, yams and other farm products, take them to ibadan and lagos to sell, come back after a week to his wife and two kids.
Kunle was the first born and his father had just enrolled him in the only school he found in the remote village and so he was very happy while the mother was caring for the baby girl,
Yemisi, one year old.
There was a day kunle’s father went on a journey which he usually embark on with a lorry of yam and never came back.
Rumour had it that the lorry had an accident with another one on a hill where both lorries rolled into a valley killing everyone but then nobody survived and nobody saw the wreckage to confirm the story.
Months after people in the village still did not know how to greet or even confront kunle’s mother who kept hoping and praying that her husband would walk in one day as usual but nothing like that happened.
Kunle’s mother did not have any work so, with time all the money and food in the house was finished and she had to care for two kids.
After a while, she started selling vegetables, pepper and tomatoes.
Things were never the same again, like stew with no salt, her life had no direction, they live in abject poverty.
Things became worst from worse when a snake bit yemisi while her mother left her at home.
Her mother came back from the market rushing the child to the hospital at night was too late she died before the next day.
Her life was now totally chattered.
She became depressed and developed high blood pressure, she could not go to the market daily and so could not afford to eat a square three meals a day and live well.
Exactly a year after his father’s death, kunle’s mother also gave up the ghost and was buried without ceremony.
Kunle was moved to uncle bayo’s place at the other bend of the town.
Little did he know that the worst awaits him.
To be continue
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I feel the situation kunle will need to live by, it never easy living a life without a little push or support. Looking foward to the next phase of this nice work.
Watch out for it
Very sad story, that is a reality for many. But, the hope never dies.
Truly the hope never dies