"Does Mere Chance Decide?" [Writer's contest 2]

I got off the taxi, stopped by at the apple vendor to buy some apples, when I felt a light tug at my knees from behind.

I turned around and lo, it was a little boy of five or six years of age with brown rough skin, a faded tattered shorts but dark with dirt, a swelled belly and black hair turning reddish - lack of protein, I remembered from biology.

With thin cracked lips and in a dry broken voice, “Auntie, my belle dey cry” he muttered, stretching out his small, cupped hand. Reluctantly, I brought out my purse and fished out all the change I could see; it totalled about fifty naira. I put them down into his little hand. The sheer magnitude of the offer was a glow in his eyes - maybe his first earning of the day. Without a second thought, I turned back on my way.

Glancing up at the large peak milk promo billboard in front of me while trying to decide on how I would spend the evening, I suddenly turned around again and there he was, right behind me counting his income. “A little malnourished child not in school, but on the streets; not enough clothes to dress properly and no one to take care of him,” I thought aloud.

Trying to ignore and put away the thoughts of the hungry boy in my head and looking forward to the arrival of the graceful evening, I looked up and there was another boy, also about five to six years wearing a neatly pressed grey shorts and white shirt. A young lady, the mother perhaps, takes the school bag from the child and gives him a small chocolate bar. He throws it away and angrily screams “Ice cream!” pointing away to the ice cream vendor on the other side of the road, “I want Ice cream!” The mother gets him a big one from the vendor as the chauffeur descends from the car and opens the door for them to get in. The car speeds away – a newly washed and polished dazzling green Honda.

I turned to this other boy; he was staring at me with a wonderful smile that lit up his dull face. “Wetin be your name?” I asked with a warm smile. “Matthew” he replied in a nervous tone, looking down to the ground while removing dirt from his crooked finger nails. Motivated by compassion, I took out my purse again, brought out a clean hundred naira note and gave it to him “Take am go buy food chop, you hear?” stretching out my hand towards him. He was more confused and amazed than ever. I turned back and returned home.

Being a citizen of this developing country, where a majority of the population lives in abject poverty - in conditions worse than that of Matthew, I could never justify the difference between the rich and the poor. Why is life so fair to some people that they have enough money to lavish on ice cream and candies, yet so unfair to others who can hardly afford to eat once a day? Why is it that some people have to sleep in the open air and on the footpaths, while others at luxurious ‘Home Sweet Homes’ find it hard to decide which side of the huge, soft, bed they’ll sleep on?

A dirty little child or an old hobbling beggar is something I never want to face when I go out into the streets of the city. It sets off thoughts in me. If the 170 million people of the country were to give one naira each, we’d have 170 million naira; that’s a lot of money.

No, maybe only sixty million people can afford to give just a naira each. That will be sixty million naira. That’s still a lot of money.

No, Why not just five million people give ten naira each, that’s fifty million naira; we could use that to feed a lot of the poor and save so many lives.

Nah, it won’t work. People don’t care.

Is it just mere chance that decides whether Matthew isn’t the one that goes to school and that the rich kid isn’t the one that begs?

Is it just by a mere game of chance that some are born in marbled palaces while others are doomed to slum-life?

Do we just let it go like this?

Don’t you think we could do something?

Sometimes I wait in the darkness to listen for an answer.

NAME: Ann Ogolo