I undid my tie and left it hanging from my collar. For
the umpteenth time, I tugged at the air con button,
hoping that by some miracle it comes on. Because it
was usual for Sango to greet me with a seemingly
endless queue of static cars in an unapologetic traffic
jam, and only the comfort of the AC succored me. I sighed, unwind the windscreens and tried to relax,
when I heard a scream of panic just beside me. “You
better watch it!” hollered a concerned onlooker to a
pedestrian, who in meandering through the cars,
collided with a commercial cyclist, who sped off,
notwithstanding. “Fool, your life will never be good!” cursed the
infuriated pedestrian. This would be my first exposure to the coals under the
tongue of an average Ibadan resident. For it was with
screens completely wound up and my soul deeply
immersed in my favorite music that I plied the Mokola
Roundabout en-route Dugbe, for six whole months. I had no contact whatsoever with the beggars who
lived under the Ajimobi overhead bridge. Even though
I have overheard my colleagues talk about the smell
of deformity, diffusing from the belly of Sabo to
Mokola and how Sango tells stories of disabled
parents, deploying their children to beg, I often drove passed, too blinded by gloom to see any of those. Today as I stared out through the window, my eyes
fed my mind with such thoughts that melted my heart.
Haggard beggars perched on skate-like boards, hands
tucked into a pair of slippers as they wheeled
themselves. Each had his malleable limbs crossed and
tucked away in the opposite elbow yet they seemed happy. I wondered how they managed a smile. “Uncle” I heard a voice call out to me. I turned.
And there stood by my car, a boy, one palm sitting
beggarly atop the other, yet grasping a bowl firmly.
He didn’t have to say much. His eyes were as
flickering flames pleading with the winds not to put
out its light. On the boy’s shoulder rested a blind man’s left hand, whose shoulder blades shot out
through his flimsy jalamia. He was muttering some
words- mumbling what seemed like a prayer in
Arabic. I saw the semblance in the two; only that my mind
would not let me call the child, the man’s son for he
was but eyes to his blind father. Another look at the
two, and I remembered one of Jesus’ miracles (John
9:6) and made my inference: this boy’s conception
and birth was the mud and spittle that nature rubbed on the blind man’s eyes! And then “kiikikikprakprakpa”, my mind replayed
the familiar sound of that silent night when dad trailed
me to a theatre, ripped my costumes apart and
delivered my remains to his chambers. From that
night and throughout my varsity days and months
spent in law school, my dreams wandered in the wilderness of wishes, until it got trapped by fate.
Every single day, I fear that in becoming a man, I
might live till old age, yet die without living one day of
my own life! “Uncle” the boy called again, with a voice that
dripped with an irresistible innocence.
Slowly, I turned, looked at his face, littered with
eczema, and his head- a congress of ring-worms,
emboldened by whitish circular patches. Unable to
bear another second of the stench exuding from his tattered clothes, coupled with the disgusting sight of
greenish mucus hanging from his nostrils, I dropped a
note in his bowl. Some kids are like a fine tune trapped in the throat of
an unfortunate flute (the one that finds itself in a
place), there is neither a willing mouth nor skillful
fingers to play it.

By Ogwiji Ehi-kowochio.
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