Читать книгу The Invalid Citizen And Other Stories - Foraine Amukoyo Gift, Gift Foraine Amukoyo - Страница 7

Mudlark

My brother and I sat in front of a local pharmacy. My feet hurt from walking about. My mother came out of the drugstore. “Mama, I am tired. I feel so weak. Can we not stay home today?” I said to my mother.

Mama swallowed some pills and drank water. She sat on a crate and massaged her hands and legs, “we must work hard, or else there will not be food for us to eat. Come on, we have to hurry to make some money. The pain will disappear once you walk around,” Mama said as she tagged us along to the big market.

As much as I could remember, it had always been hard work all day if we must survive. Things only got worse after our eviction from Ileoda. The turbulent sea had threatened to submerge our community. The government marked down the waterfront and issued an eviction letter to residents of Ileoda.

The Minister of Housing and Environment had said it was for the good of its dwellers. The government said the reason was to build better houses for us. We tried to fight against it because these decent structures would not have a place for low lives like us. The restructuring roadmap of Ileoda did not include avenues for the poor. The government only wanted to get us out of the waterfront with no plans for settlement and they succeeded.

We were miserable and powerless to fight the government. Later, we were happy to get a court injunction, but the battle won, was short lived. The demolishers ignored the court injunction. They brought bulldozers to our homes and destroyed everything.

The demolition of houses and properties caused displacement of over fifty thousand residents of Ileoda. Many had nowhere to go. Some people expressed their displeasure by committing suicide. My family and I slept under different bridges for weeks until we were able to rent a room.

We reached the big market. My brother and I carried goods on our heads while Mama stacked customers’ items on a plank sitting on her head and walked toward the motor park. As Mama was crossing the road, a speedy ambulance vehicle hit her. She died on the spot. We became orphans.

The caretaker threw out our merger belongings from the daily rented one room apartment, “go live in the slum. That is where you belong. Get out of here you scums of the earth.”

The apartment was in the bowels of a slum. I wondered what other slum the caretaker meant. My brother and I became homeless. We moved to the shantytown where other children like us lived.