“Rashidi!!! Rashidii!!! Check inside the boot of that red BMW make you carry spanner come for me quick quick”
“I dey come Oga”
I rushed to the car, got the spanner and rushed back to where he was.
“Oya stand there make you dey look as I go loose this engine because next time na you I go give the work do”
So I stood beside him and looked on till he was done.
“You don see as I do am abi? When I dey couple am back you go dey my side as you dey today so that when e reach your turn you go fit do am well. You hear me so?”
“I hear you Oga”
“You don chop today?”
“No, I neva chop anything”
“Ok, take this N200 make you find something chop and if you finish make you keep all the tools, make sure sei all the cars dey locked and clear everywhere before you close. You hear me so? This one wey you dey do like person wey wan faint. I don go house be that, bye bye”.

My name is Rashidi Akinyemi and I’m a mechanic at Onyedika and sons mechanic workshop. I moved to Lagos 5yrs ago from Ilorin at the request of my mum’s sister, Aunty Tanwa who promised to train me and send me to school.
My parents didn’t think twice before agreeing to let me go as they saw it as a good thing and I was also excited about it especially the fact that I’d get to go to school and do something to better myself.

Exactly a week after my aunty made the request, we set out on our journey to Lagos. We got into Lagos late that day because of an accident that occurred on the express, so as soon as we alighted from the bus at Ojota garage, she hired a cab to take us to her Kano street, Ebute-metta abode which she shared with her husband and three children.
When we got to the house, having met her husband and children, she gave me the key to one of the rooms in the boy’s quarters and said that’s where I’d be staying.

I was overcome with joy and happiness as it had everything we didn’t have in my home town in Ilorin…air conditioner, DVD player and most importantly a bed assigned to me. After a big meal of fufu and egusi soup I retired to my room to sleep.
At about 5am the following morning there was a loud bang on the door. I struggled to wake up and when I got myself together and opened it, it was Aunty Tanwa at the door. She wanted me to sweep the compound at that time of the morning without prior notice. I was still very sleepy, tired and angry but I couldn’t say no to her so I picked a broom and went on about the chore.

From that day onwards, it was chores, chores and more chores. If I’m not sweeping I’d be washing, or going to the market. She always made sure there something for me to do to keep me busy even if it meant loosening her hair.

The first time I asked about school and when I would be enrolled, she got angry and told me “ko ori buruku oshi e kuro ni ibi bai, ki lo mo nipa skul to n kigbe lori mii” meaning get your good for nothing self out of here, what do you know about going to school that is making you shout at me?
Then the whole thing started making sense to me, “she didn’t bring me to Lagos to get trained or get an education, she brought me here to serve as “omo odo”.

And as I washed the heap of clothes she had ordered me to wash earlier in the day, I couldn’t help but think about how my life would have been better off if I stayed back in the village. It ticked me off so much that I decided not to do any other chore throughout the day and instead opted for sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night hungry, so I went to the kitchen in the main house hoping to get some food from the cook when I bumped into my Aunty.
“Where are the clothes I asked you to wash”
“They are on the line ma”
“Is there another sun coming out to dry them this night that you decided to leave them outside till this time to get infested by bugs”
“I will go…..” She cut in
“Did you sweep the compound, clean the children’s room and mow the lawn as I asked you to?” She asked in an angry tone
“No ma I was tired”
“You were tired?”
She grabbed me by the neck, pulled me close and beat me like a thief so bad that when she got tired of using her hands, she decided to use the pestle on me.

I had taken enough of the ill treatment and I couldn’t bear it any longer, and out of annoyance and frustration, I picked my nylon of clothes and ran away from the house
Without a destination, security not guaranteed and less than N350 on me I set out on the streets of Ebute-Metta looking for a place to lay my head for the night. Having walked for over an hour, the saw mill facing the sea and over-looking the famous 3rd mainland bridge seemed like the best place to spend the night.

I made do with a bench in one of the mills and covered myself with one of my bubas when the cold started getting to me. The following morning, the sawing, milling and grinding of machines from the mills woke me up and when I checked around, I found out my nylon was missing and so was my money. I asked some men around about it but no one could offer an explanation. With just the clothes I had on, and the buba I used in covering myself at night, I left the mill.

I walked around aimlessly, playing with saw dust, and not knowing what the next minute had for me when I came across a field where some boys were playing soccer, so I joined one of the teams and played with them. I could tell with the look of things that most of them were either homeless or just had parents that didn’t care about them but Sikiru and I seemed to connect on many levels, having spoken to him I figured we shared a similar story only in his own case, it was his step-mother that frustrated him out of the house. He was much older than me and had been living on the mill for eight years and so had become popular in the area.

He bought me lunch that afternoon and also ffered to allow me stay with him and some of his friends in their shack. The following day he took me to his workshop on Kadara Street to see his Oga, and that was where I first learnt the basics of being a mechanic before getting my freedom. The living condition here isn’t so different from the way it is in Ilorin except over here the sea is closer to us unlike over there where we had to walk many kilometers before we get to the nearest stream.

It’s always very cold at night because of the closeness of the sea and on some occasions when the rain comes down hard, it washes the shack away prompting us to build another one immediately it stops raining. We bath in the same water we urinate, defecate and do our laundry in. I had the same shirt and trouser on for weeks so when I came across two tee shirts and a khaki trouser at the refuse dump I didn’t hesitate to pick them. I soon got used to life on the street and learnt to take each day one step at a time.
Some of the boys around wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was new there to bully me, but I always put up a fight and it wasn’t long before some of them started calling me “onijongbon” which means I’m a trouble maker but it’s not true. I only fight people that trouble me.
The older folks called me “Cicero” and Gani because to them I look like Bola Ige and acted like Gani Fawehinmi.
A few months after I moved in with Sikiru, he was killed by a trigger happy policeman after engaging him in an argument. Leaving me to fend for myself as I hardly used to relate with the other occupants of the room.
I walk from the shack to the workshop in Adekunle every day spending at least 45mins on each round trip to and fro. Sometimes I go days without food and survive on just water.
Before today for instance, I had not eaten anything since two days ago so you can imagine how happy I was when Oga Onyedika gave me that N200.
I haven’t seen or heard from my family now in 5yrs and even though I miss them, in a way I feel indifferent about it. Sometimes when I think about them, I feel they knew about Aunty Tanwa’s plot to turn me into a slave but I’ve since moved on from that now.
I still want to go to school, I still want to get educated and even though it doesn’t look feasible at the moment I still hold on to the quote “when there is life there is hope”.
These days the only thing I think about is how I would make money to build another shack for me and my new family as my girlfriend Lola alata is carrying my child, and this thought clouds my head whenever I’m working because even though my future might look bleak, I don’t want my child suffering the same fate.

I sleep every night and wake up every morning hoping and praying to God to send a Good Samaritan to me, but everyday just ends like the previous day.

Written By Ajayi Oyakhire

Courtesy of Prisoner of Class