The Travail of an Almajiri Child
By Ozumi Abdul
AREWA AGENDA – Never despise or treat him with utter aversion or derision. Love but don’t loath him, after all there wasn’t an assemblage of raw-calls or heraldry queue meant for teens who are in desirous avidity and rapacity of responsible parenting, and in a nugatory and trivial manner chose to abscond on AWOL. His parents fail him, which made him look haggard and pale, while the society compounded his woe, thus degenerating the poor gamin to a societal unfriendly foe, who is biologically patented, but socially orphaned. His parents fail him as well as the society, leaving him to his fate with little faith,as he wanes.
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Infact, if the mythic tale of reincarnation is anything truth, then he will never go back to sit on the same wall (sired by the same) parents again. Still in his adolescent age, he was naturally meant to be housed by the warmth of the nest on the wall; but the wall fell apart even without thunderstorms, and then the nest scattered into shreds and fragments, leaving him to betroth all manner of mephistophelean weathers, while the weathers in return betray him without a scintilla of mercy.
When it rains, he gets drenched by its heavy downpours, and during the sunrise, his tender skin gets peeled by the rays of the sunset. The son of the sun who is also consistently on the run from rainstorm.
Growing up without known biological parents and parental care, he adopts everyone as his parents, while his “everyone parents” in return treat with disdain, suspicion, aspersion without attention.
He is a “jaki” who works all day for his “everyone parents” like the proverbial elephant, while his much adored gratification for his gigantic labour is usually several days stale food which had hosted maggots and other harmful microorganisms as a party ground.
Most times, when the hopes of dowsing the raging hunger in his belly seems slimmer, the street comes to the rescue. He struts the street barefoot ; cladded in his rag-tag almajirinci regalia, while plastic bowl adorns his hands the way irukele adorns the hands of an Oba.
He scavenges on anything that suppresses the ire of his intestines’ devouring hunger, knocking from door to door around the neighbourhood with the semblance of the sound of an armpit talking drum, accompanied by “fisabililah” rendition and supplications.
His life is mortgaged without gain or advantage as he labours for survival ; but still in a dearth of hopes like debt till death.
He is sold out to politicians by his mallam during elections, instantly seen by the politicians as their builders’ cornerstone, while becoming the rejected one during elections aftermath.
He is a threat to one, and a friend to another. He does the hatchet job of being a harbinger of ethno- religious violence to politicians with just derisory penny as gratification; but hounded out of the state by still the same politicians when the angst of Covid-19 was raging because of the fear of its easy spread by him.
He is only a tool used by politicians to achieve goals, and get dumped after the task on the same task ground with a disdainful negligence.
Some call it culture, but he is only tortured by not being nurtured, thus turning him to societal vulture in every his in his quest for knowledge in an inter state adventure.
Abdul writes from Kano
