"I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle upon his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him"-- Richard Rumbold

ONE
I steered lazily with no option than to drag myself away from my sweet sleep, lazed with a free sweet dream. Part of the two things we still enjoyed freely in our harsh tormenting world. Apart from the free air, breeze, sun and moon that our fellow uncaring citizens have been naturally forced to allow us enjoy, every other thing, I tell you, is ever hard on our side. And the best liberty was the autonomy of our souls, were none of them have control over, apart from the creator who created all, including our tormenting fellow beings that over the decades have turned most of us and millions of other weak northern Nigerians into almajiris.
In the western definition we are called child beggars, but in real sense, we are more like slaves and desecrates in God’s free land.

I yawned at the moment, and steered up my closest and most trusted friend, Sani Hanchi, who slowly forced his eyes open and also yawned up lazily from his short guarded sleep.

“Wake up lazy bone – time for prayers” I announced in a low voice not to draw the attention to the fact that we had both missed the early morning (Subh) prayers by almost ten minutes, this I calculated from my precious rubber wrist watch, a fortune I had slaved six months nine days of hard labour to own.

“Oh! – What is it again? I am bellyful. Please allow me to sleep.” He said lazily with a sleepy voice and dragged his old blanket to cover his fray frame again.

I chuckled covering my mouth with my hands. Remembering that food was the most prominent thoughts in our daily strives. We like the other hundreds of thousands of almajiris scattered across the country, prominently in the northern part, hardly ever had enough of this essential ingredient of survival in our tough world. We struggle and live for food. We sleep and wake up daily thinking of food. Why shouldn’t we, when we don’t know where and when the next day meal would spring from with surprise, just as we have always survived by surprise in our tough environment.

“Ga Mallam” I evoked the revered magical words slowly, watching to see the reaction on Sani, who jumped up hurriedly from our lice infested mat, and stared wide-eyed, his sleepy eyes suddenly coming awake and alive.
I chuckled again and silently led the way to catch up with the last rakkah(prostration) of the early Morning Prayer.




TWO

I think it will be proper to take a pause and briefly introduce myself. My name is
Ado Ido, though ‘Ido’ is not my real surname, but a name I got from my fellow hungry colleagues, as a result of my sharp eyes and the luck to always see a possible potential of source of food or odd jobs to do.
I am ten years old, slim, with big eyes and thick round lips. I am what you will call light in colour, but for the harsh condition I have come to found myself, I now look more of a tan black, with a clean skull and always dress in tattered old clothes and half eaten rubber slippers. To complement my description is our trade mark logo: the bowl.
See me or any of my colleagues anywhere; be rest-assure to see our begging plastic or aluminum bowl held proudly in our hands. This is our trade mark and we have come to respect it the way a farmer would respect and be proud of his hoe.
I am what our people have come to be labeled as an almajiri. I belong to a group of young innocent Nigerians who live as parasites on others, knocking and banging on their gates or doors to beg for food or money to survive, amidst the plenty that our eyes could daily see. I am a member of the neglected and abandoned village boys roaming our rich expensive urban cities, pleading and crying daily for help from our uncaring fellow citizens who see us as aliens from other planets, despite the fact that we all came from one village or the other in the same country with them and equally share the same sky, sun and moon.
Our day is always shrouded in mystery and end with the aid of God our creator, who always ensures that one or two good Samaritans among our fellow humans had pity on us and give us something to feed our always unsatisfied stomachs as we plead with the worms who constantly scream night and day for more food.
I belong to those group of promising young men with no hope of going to western school, nor being part of our civilized country, where only the educated ones seems to be having it all. We are blind and innocent to democracy, neither do we know how to search and get our rights. To me and my other fellow almajiris, the only authority or fear we know is the authority of our revered Mallam (Teacher) and his teachings. His words were lord and his command final. Even the words of our biological parents had long abandoned our thinking, neither do we have much fear of them than our one and only known master –the mallam.

I was ferried away one sunny day from our village when I was still a six year village kid, struggling daily from farm to home with my aged parents. Though nobody had informed me that I would be leaving my beloved village, friends and family behind at that early age, I just woke up one day and I saw the mallam and his entourage in front of our house. I had stared strangely at the gathering, made up mostly of eight other boys of my age group, three of them I knew, but the other five I was later to know were from a neighboring village. I watched and listened confusingly as the Mallam, an old looking man, thin with a white long bead and unsmiling eyes, stared quietly at my father, gazed thoughtfully at me, and then finally nodded his turbaned head to the satisfaction of my father who look happy with the verdict of the stick chewing stranger.

I was ferried away few hours later inside a yellow rickety bus with the other eight boys, only stopping in a village to add two more boys, who also had sullen faces like most of us, a sign of crying and sadness from being forced to leave their homes and parents in search of traditional knowledge in an unknown world.
Four years later we were now part of those street kids roaming and scavenging our land in search of an elusive knowledge and food for survival. Though we live under our revered Mallam, who make sure that we build up our moral with the teaching of the unquantifiable Islamic knowledge, the best gain of our four years sojourn in the cities, but we were more or less outcasts in our country, even in the house of our master, where discrimination is not far gone. We normally sleep crammed in a room with hardly ventilation or space to stretch our bodies, and sometimes clean our dirty bodies ones in a while in a stream not too far away or in any other free water our feet’s could carry us to discover. As long as we did not break the set laws and regulation of the Mallam, because to us the fear of the Mallam – is the beginning of wisdom, unless one is not yet satisfied with the countless of hard whipping from the always available hands of the Mallam and his carefully selected and appointed lieutenants, who always derives pleasure in flogging a stubborn ass or a rigid back.

So you would understand why my trusted friend Sani Hanchi, though not is real surname, but named for his strong sense of smelling any kind of food from a distance, had jumped up frightfully that morning when I mentioned the magical words “Ga Mallam”, the truth is, that was the only word that could move any right thinking almajiri to change course and behave properly in whatever he must have been doing at any particular given time.

“Where do we start from this morning?” Muntari Kunne, a young lad with thick long ears and a round big head, asked, yawning and scratching his lice bitten body as he stared hopefully around the long stretched road we were all standing thoughtfully.

We were all had been staring admiringly at three well dressed school kids in uniforms as they strutted towards school with their filled food flasks and rich looking water bottles. They all stared strangely at us, and the only girl among them pulled her brother by the hand and quickly stepped away from our direction then headed hurriedly towards their school gate not too far from where we were standing, deliberating on where to start from in our daily strive to find food to eat, clothes to wash or a home to sweep. All these to earn the little pittance we occasionally get from a hard day labor. The three school kids had, as expected, steered our minds that morning and reminded us that we were part of the rejected in the society, something we have all come to accept, but learn to forget in our daily strive for survival. But occasion like this always brought out that revolt in all of us whenever we see kids of our own age, dressed in school uniforms and heading peacefully towards schools, while we, our trademark bowls in our frail hands, shuttled desperately to the north, west, south and eastern part of our environment in search of food and means to survive.

“Where do we start from?” Muntari eased out again, his frustration of not wearing a school uniform already subsiding and same with the rest. They now stared quietly at me with hopes in their eyes.

Yes – hope on me to lead the way as usual. I was the oldest and the elected leader of the group. “ Okay lets split, two – two as usual” I announced finally . “ Bala and Ismaila – go right , Sani and Muntari you go straight, while I follow you behind”

I instructed the squad like a commandant and arranged our first home to be invaded for the day. This was when our voices would be heard loudly chorusing helplessly begging and pleading for remnants of foods or odd jobs to do.




THREE

The Almajiri system if not for the uncaring attitude of our masters and those saddled to look after us as authority could be said to be a very good initiative and one of the best ways of impacting the Islamic knowledge to young kids like us. But the idea since its introduction has been left to rust away by conservative attitudes with personal goals and greed taking over the hitherto traditional system of education more dominant in the northern part of the country, where I found myself biologically.
Our Mallams lacking the resources to see us through this hard teenage lives, ferried us from our villages and brought us to urban towns, where they squatted or live in old molded houses mostly in villages, towns or ghettos. Here we are cramped into single rooms or entrance to the Mallam’s house with our iron boxes in different shapes, sizes and makes competing most of the space with us at the end living us with ample legroom to spray our lice infested mats every night before dropping our tired weather beaten frames for a short guarded sleep to await the next day when the cock crows or the voice of the muezzin is heard announcing for prayer and a new day. And every day we must go out in search of food and goodwill otherwise we all get some spice of the cane or wait to starve to death.
Our clothing is nothing to write home about, because we are always conspicuous among hundreds of people. We are easily identifiable in any setting with our tattered clothes that might have not seen water or smell a detergent or soap for close to three months or more, depending on the circumstances we find ourselves. Our feet are detectable from afar from our old patched rubber sleepers or painful rubber shoes always adoring our tired cracked feet and arched toes.
I tell you once you see us – you don’t need to be told that we are hungry human beings living under the same planet with you. And if you are the sympathetic type, you might ask yourself, why should this be like this? Or what responsible God fearing society or system could leave its own young innocent citizens like this in this 21st century? but if you are the- I don’t – care- type, then you might just stare miserably at us and keep pretending as if we don’t really exist, which could be hard for someone with a God fearing conscience, which only few among our country folks still possess.
We are found mostly wherever we know something to eat would be available, part of the reasons why we are noticeable at food canteens, where we scavenge for remnants or occasional generosity from a customer or from the proprietress of the food joint, who might give us something to fill our starving stomachs, after we must have done some dish washing, fetched drums or buckets of water from long miles or scrubbed a dirty floor.
You can easily pick us out in naming, wedding or even burial ceremonies, depending where our hungry stomachs pushed us to. All we just want is something to pacify our shouting stomachs. And most times we are not always a welcome sight in these various occasions because of our looks and our shameful ways of pleading and grabbing for leftovers, even though most invited guests might have had their fill or stored plenty hidden or conspicuous takeaway in their bags, polythene bags, pockets or other safe places.
Still we are sometimes chased away like dogs, but if lucky made to do one form of labuor before we were allow to scavenged for remnants or get some piece from the over budgeted foods and drinks always given with regret sometimes written all over the faces of the celebrants or those in charge.

It sometimes perplexed and surprised us whenever we come across some spoilt free kids who were sometimes pampered by their parents to eat food or forced to eat rich luscious meals, while we salivate nearby on hungry stomachs, silently praying to have their leftover or half of what they were being implored to eat, or wishfully to be invited to teach them how to devote grateful time to good food like the ones they were being pampered on. Again, we were baffled by those lazy ones with all the opportunities, but hate going to school, instead they find joy in playing around or hanging with other spoilt lazy kids like them, away from school, where their parents or guardians must have spent a fortune sending them to. And here we are, always on the street, come rain – come sun or come even the coldest harmattan of the season, searching for food or where to lay our heads.

“Let’s move on” I commandeered my hungry squad as they split into two groups and we all made our ways in two different directions in search of our first meal of the day. And today like all other days for the past four years since most of us left our villages and parents behind we were once again out in search for food remnants and probably some odd jobs that might luckily fall our ways. We were out in search for food and our tool is to shout out in our tired hungry voices to any conscience human being who might be kind enough to give us our rightful shares from the free bounties of the creator, the owner of everything.



END

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These names are damn hilarious
very nice write up, a reminder, an eye opener, as wrll as an emphasizer for the need to conquer the almajiri system with love rather than hate, id really like this piece