I want to introduce to you a young boy, Happy, the oldest Kingsley's son. Happy is 16 years old and lives in Nigeria, Edo State, Benin City.
Happy's dream like every other Nigerian young boy or girl is to be able to break out of the shackle and limitations placed by nature on them or man made with regards to the bad policies of the ruling class.
It is the dream of every young child to move to the city like Lagos or be a Doctor, Engineer, lawyer or a football star or musician. Happy had such dreams. But for the rich kids, this is a tough journey not to mention a poor young kid from the slums and ghetto of Nigeria.
As a student, you can wake up by 5am in the morning, do the house chores and trek to the stream to fetch water to bath and trek about 10km to and from school daily.
No free education in Nigeria. parents have to pay for everything and the high rate of inflation isn't helping matters. you can buy a notebook 80 leaves for 1 PLN today and in 3 days time, it is 2.5PLN.
The dream of every Nigerian child is to be a self reliant citizen but the bad leadership of the country is making things harder. killing dreams of youngsters and making us settle for less.
Happy will sometimes close from school, walk the long distance back home on a hungry stomach and find nothing to eat at home, this is the reality of the average Nigeria child. As a child, we assist our parents after the close of school. We carry trail on our head and hawk tomatoes, pepper and other vegetables in the streets just to be able to generate a little token for food hence we die of hunger and starvation. Our parents are trying their best, we as the kids have to contribute our quota to the home. So we grow up with responsibilities even as kids.
You can ask how does he spend his free time. Well..., unfortunatelly there is no cinemas, pubs, disco parties, video games for such a child. Maybe only sometimes, when there is electricity in the house, he can watch TV, but it lasts no more than an hour a day.
Instead of the entertaintemt he has duties. He spends all days after school in the house store helping to sell some goods, some crops from the fields or little items his mother bought in the cheaper place. This is the necessary condition of buyinga little food for the next day to provide even one meal a day for the family members.When he is alone in there he can read his books to prepare to next day school or to sit an exam.
And Happy has three younger brothers. He must be very responsible now when his father is in Poland, not earning much but trying to save his leg and restore his health instead.
Happy's day is full of responsibilities then, but even that he is always smiled and kind and laughs aloud when he hears something funny.
