The boy from the hood

He defiled all odds by rising up, like a Felix, from the hood covered by slums. Like many other boys, he too had a share of how life equated to lemon taste like. He grew up from a family where life seemed more better from outside(neighbours and friends house) than it did in his own house. Majority of those who went through the same hurdle of life as him turned out to give up at their youthful stage or primary stage. Indeed, he rose against all odds.

Unlike you, who maybe had people who coerced you from persevering be it in your studies or life at general, he never had anybody who motivated him. Giving up to him was more than an option,it became a daily confrontational thought. Whatever made him not to entertain that thought remains the mistry which only he can explain. At times, he said he would go to school in an empty stomach, not that he could not choose what to eat but there was nothing to choose from. He said.

He seems to have experienced poverty from all its angles: he did not have money, food, clothes etc. Unlike today where government hands out food parcels, that’s if indeed it happens, because the government today seems to cater only for its employees, he said with a soft voice. Government might have institutions such as Social Welfare and Development,but provinces have bad if not careless employees to implement the proposed policies by the government. Ward councillors tend to avail themselves only during the voting times to canvas for their re-election and after that they vanished like a smoke in a thick air, says the boy from the hood.

Asked if he likes how his life has turned out, with a smile on his face he chuckles and said, I really do not know if I was supposed to have had another life except this one, but one thing I am certain of is that I love who I am today. Maybe, I could have been somebody else in life but we only get one life to live and I guess God has given this life to me. So, in short, there is nothing to like and nothing to hate about my life, concludes the boy from the hood.

“I had parents like anybody else you know...” please go on
TO BE CONTINUED...