Must Read: The Abandoned Child - Season 1 - Episode 2

Episode 9 years ago

Must Read: The Abandoned Child - Season 1 - Episode 2

I happen to be one of the village’s little urchins, I lost my grandma four years ago at the age of nine, I had returned from school to see her still sleeping in her mat just the way I had left her before going to school in the morning.
I went into the hut we used as kitchen and saw the mess was still as it was since last night, no food waiting for me, I did not eat to school and I did not eat at school so I was starving, I changed my clothes into my worn out Buba and sokoto and left the house to look to food, I did not bother to wake grandma, she might have eaten some food before going to bed, it is all man to himself in the house. I did not know my real mother, and I did not care to know her because grandma uses everyday of her remaining life to curse her, especially when I have been up to my mischief, grandma would swear and curse my mother wherever she was, so I definitely knew that it could not be well with her where ever she was, for no living human being can succeed in any endeavor having his or her mother wake up every day and send curses to her instead of prayers and blessings.



I heard my mother had returned from the big city some thirteen years ago with me as a baby and a week later she had abandoned me with her Mother and disappeared.
Her mother, my grandma was blind in one eye and arthritis has seized her left leg so she stoops and walks about with a stick, she does not farm, she does not trade, so she had to survive on charity and my mother came to add me to the old woman’s burden.
People say my grandma bore only my mother when she was serving a big man’s family in the big city years ago. She was never married and had led a rough and careless life in the city before she lost an eye while fighting with a fellow woman over a man, the bad eye had left her unattractive to men and consequently she had to return home to the village when she became broke in the city, she returned with her ten years old daughter, my Mother, and before long, she became the mistress of all the widowers and randy men that want to satisfy their lust, her daughter joined in the trade eventually and when she came of age she had to leave for the big city to do what she knew best, she never came home to see her mother, until after eight years when she came and dropped me in the village.



On this faithful day, four years ago, after I changed into my Buba and Sokoto, I went into the nearby bush to check the snares I had set the previous day. Seven of my twelve snares caught bush rats, I collected the catch and went to mama Mulikat’s Buka to sell five of them, she paid me in cash and I bought some cups of Garri out of the money, I bought vegetable and palm oil and headed home to prepare some food and soup.
The food and soup was set, the aroma from the rat meat in the soup was supposed to wake grandma from her sleep as usual but it did not.



Even when I finished eating and cleaning the kitchen grandma did not wake up.


It was time for me to hit town and play with my friend and I told sleeping mama that I would be back.


I went straight to the market square with my nylon bag and as I had expected, I met Ajanaku and Sola already there with their bags too, these boys do not go to school like me so they beat me to market square today. The market is set every three days, people from surrounding villages and ours bring their wares to sell at our village market, the next day they all move to another village’s market, I greeted my fellow scavengers and I left them as I saw their bags were already bulging with goodies.
Goodies? Yes! We pick up anything edible that the traders throw away, ranging from fruits to food stuff. Rotten tomatoes, withered vegetables, infected mangoes or pawpaw. We move towards the butchers stand and pick bones from beneath their tables. It used to be competition between us and the local dogs at the butcher’s end, once a butcher is cutting up a bony piece of meat, the dogs and us stand in readiness to dive for the bone once it is thrown away, I had been bitten a number of times by Pharaoh the most notorious and strongest dog in the village. Pharaoh is easily the father of eighty percent of the dogs in the village.
We always pray for the Butcher, to mistakenly throw away the actual meat instead of the bone. Sometimes our payers are answered.
At the close of market on the fateful day I went back home at 7:00 pm with a full nylon bag, mama had not moved from the sleeping position, I emptied my nylon and boiled my collection of bones and meat fat, I turned this into my vegetable soup and the pot was full. I was happy, I was happy because when mama wakes up and sees what I have prepared in the kitchen, she will be happy too and say nice words to me at the least for a while before I commit another offence that would make her curse and swear at my elusive mother.
I washed up the fruits I gathered and I cut off the bad portion from the pawpaw as I ate it up for dinner, the rotten tomatoes and withered vegetable will be taken care of by mama before I return from school the next day, at least we will have food to eat until the next market day in thee days time.
I went to sleep with a full stomach. It rained that night and I dreamed of bathing and playing in the rain, I dreamed that I was urinating in the rain as I was bathing, when I woke up in the morning my mat and cover cloth was soaked with urine. At thirteen I still wet bed once in a while. I packed up the mat and cover cloth and spread them on the line behind the house as I dressed up and dashed for school, mama had not changed for her sleeping position, she did not even snore as usual and I wondered why.
I returned from school later in the day to see a crowd gathered in front of my house, I was not allowed in to see mama immediately, they said she had died and maggots were already in her mouth and eyes, the women were cursing and scolding me for not realizing that my grandma had been dead for over two days and I have been sleeping under the same roof with her corpse.




Every one present had an unkind word to say to me. I later went into the house to see mama as she la!d in state. The youths had dug a grave by the side of the house and she was unceremoniously buried at mid night, I did not cry, I was simply indifferent. It was when I went into the Kitchen after everyone had left that I realized that my pot of soup was empty and washed clean. The fruits and vegetables were all gone! That was when I ran outside and started screaming and shouting. Some people came to hold me and sympathize with me but I ran from them, they did not know why I was screaming. This was some years back