JOHN CHIZOBA VINCENT - THE CHILDREN IN THE STREET

John Chizoba Vincent is an writer and a filmmaker. He was born and brought up in Aba and later moved to Lagos where he had his tertiary education . His works have appeared on allpoetry, Voicesnet, Poetrysoup Poemhunter, Africanwriter, TuckMagazine, Gaze,naijastories, Praxismagazine, Nairaland, black boy reviews and forthcoming in BrittlePapers. His writings have featured in many anthologies both home and abroad. He has five books published to his credit which includes Good Mama, Hard times, Letter From Home, For Boys Of Tomorrow. He lives in Lagos where he writes.

​THE CHILDREN IN THE STREET

​Their tears are the mountain of hell. We climbed on their purity without knowing that we have offended them. Their life is the epitome of lost and pains trailing the vest roads that spell their names backward. It might be very obvious that life itself is a calamity that fell upon itself. We try to make mouth swell to the direction of the wind but ended up pushing our own in to the den where going and coming becomes terrible and unbearable to their kind. We watched hell on them yet, we try as much as possible to frustrate their efforts in Lagos traffic, we made them chase after our car with lots of loads on their head. Sometimes, they receive this money for their efforts in chasing cars to collect their money and the other times, they don’t. Some of them get killed during this hot chase. Some get brutalized by others. Many things happened to these children in the street because of poverty where as some of our leaders have this money perfectly stored in their account abroad. Our children are in pains. They need our help! They need the best advice from us. They need shoulder to lean on whenever they are in trouble. They can’t do without having you as a back up to them. We need our children back to school and be taught how their life live in maximum.  We need these children back to school to be brought up in a way that could be more important to the society at large. We may not help them make choices but we can help to pattern their life to the right channels for a better future.
Breaking and arranging back these generational plights is possible when we gather our hands together to get those children off the street where they smell pains always is possible. I would have the template of this atmosphere utilize when the principles of Love is applied. In love and aspiration, we could drive fate into the palms of fortunes. We could hold up the rivers into patterns, we can faithfully return peace in the heart of those boys and girls left in the street to suffer. Don’t take a child out from the comfort of his or her parents and bring him or her to Lagos to sell Sachet water for you in the street of Lagos. Don’t convince their parents that you can take care of them and you bring them to the city as sex workers. These children have emotions also. They have feeling just like you have. They have right to be treated as humans just as your children also have.  Don’t treat them less because they are not your children. I have seen children under the bridge battered. Some raped and some killed in the process of searching for reasons to live a reasonable life. I know how it hurts because I have been in the same shoe. I have been humiliated also. I have been made to see life as being worthless.  The street made me weird and wild clearing the rushes of who was yesterday. I have made mistakes as a boy growing up where love is not found but I found the other side of me trying to hold my fragments together. Same as these boys and girls acquainted with life in a miserable way. Nothing is given freely I know but life could smile on them when a handful of mercy is parted to them through the love we show to them every day. I think we have come of age to revise these abnormalities passioned in the leveled arms where our future is traded in the eyes of greediness and selfishness. If these dreams are murdered before our very eyes, then, the future is certainly blank and without hope of these ones defining who they are when tomorrow comes. Truth be told, when we gather those firewood of greediness and revisit our yesterday to pick up those fragments of those dreams wasting in the grave yard, if we hold unto those fears that betrayed our yesterday , we would faddishly name ourselves failures because we have failed to do the needful. Our future is in danger. The government of the day has ruined our brain.  They blackmailed all of us with the economic situation in the country.  
A neighbor of mine once travelled to the village. She was looking for a girl that could help her in her restaurant. So, she travelled down to her village and brought this small girl to stay with her. According to the small girl, she convinced all parents with the story that she would send her to one of the best school in Lagos so that she would be useful to the family and to, herself. Her parents were reluctant at first to release her but when she pushed on; she was allowed to bring her to Lagos. When they got to Lagos, she could not put this girl in a school rather the little girl spend all her days in Lagos in the restaurant. Not only that the little girl was spending her precious time in the restaurant, she also became a modern slave to the woman. She always got beaten on slightest mistake. Life became miserable. No one cares for her. Sometimes, she would not eat throughout the day but; she must work.   The little girl got tired of this and saved some cash which she used as transportation fare back to her village. The lady woke up one morning and could not find her again. And many other stories like this happen every day in the street and in our different homes. Then, if the future is this blurring in the eyes of these children, what does the future holds for us? What do we stand to gain if we have nobody to hand over this history to? The children is our future, let’s take care of them.
How do we define ourselves without tracing those people we shared our love to? How do we call ourselves humans if nobody can boldly point at us as people who made them smile? Life is paradise if we could look backward and see what we have done or who we have made to smile. They are children not stones to be kicked here and there. These children have emotions just like those ones you cherish at home. They are so important to their parents just like yours are very , very  precious to their family just like yours are very precious to you, so, why kick them here and there? Why use them as sex worker every Night? Why trade their destiny because of money? If they happen to be your blood, would you have thrown them out in the cold because they pick a meat from your cooking pot? Why are you so heartless touching the most vital part of their life? Why do you have to sleep with that little girl in the street because you just wanted to satisfy your sexual urges? I am ashamed of you and the society is also ashamed of you. You are one of the cause of our problems in Nigeria. You are also the reason why the leaders are heartless to us. If you can plant thorns for these little ones to walk on that mean, when you are up there as a leader, you can see us all just as the government of the day is selling all of us. They put us all for sale. They value the cows more than us and you value your sexual urges than the feelings of these young ones. I must commend your effort Mr. man. Many things lie in the eyes of those little children you made to cry every day. They may not fight you but so9me where, somehow their god is not blind to see what you have been doing to them. And you woman who have modernized these children into modern slaves because they have no mother or father to fight for them, because they are helpless in your hand; because you don’t have your own children, god watches from behind. Karma is alive and would never die . it will surely come fully on us when the time comes. 
Some days ago, I was in a bus going to the Island when I saw what happened. A boy who was hawking sachet water was chased by kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) men on the road. He was running with his bowl of sachet water perfectly on his head. The men ran after him. Suddenly, a fast moving car hit him and he fell on the ground struggling with his life. He was a little boy of 12. The men stood on the side of the road s speechless. They turned back and started moving drastically so that they would not be lynched by the people around. They entered into their vehicle and zoomed off. People gathered to have a glimpse of what was going on. When his pulse was checked, he was long gone. His chapter closed in chaos and misery. I cried in the bus as other cried too. This boy probably should be in school by that time of the day but who knows what transpired between him and his family or his guardians.  He died and his dreams gone with him. How on earth would you take granted the  gift of Life? There are many people who seek for this but they could not find or buy it. And now, god in his infinite mercy have handed one to you and the best you could do was to send him to the street t to learn in the hard way. I know the economy of this country is not favorable to anyone. I know you need support to feed the family. I know it is not easy carry the burden of the family all alone. But, it is not also easy for these children. M it is not easy for them at all. I could remember when I was hawking in the street of Aba; I could remember the pains I passed through each day the sun made mockery of me. I could remember the abuse in the hands of men and women who supposed to encourage me then. I could remember how the rain drenched me and mixed together the tears and sweat that dropped from me. I remembered everything. How I was made to cater for my school fees. It wasn’t easy for mother that was why she had to put us in the street to help. Father was not there for us. He was good in impregnating than taking care of those who were born for him. Same thing I suffered are the same tales in every mouth of some children found in the street hustling to help  the family welfare which is certainly not their work but the society has made it so.  How it hurt me to see those children at Eko Bridge chasing after buses and cars in traffic, how it hurts to see those children in the street of Lagos looking for a mean in life, how it hurt trying to be you when you look every street in Nigeria and you see most children who ought to be in the school being left to the merciful hand of the street and we dream of a better tomorrow which they would hand. We have to call back our senses that have been corrupt by the problem this country have in us.  Try to visualize how tomorrow will be when an idiot handle it. It may be of passion and dreams trying to figure out what we have planted with our hands to grow and germinate another thing which we never planted. Until we keep these young ones in mind, until the thought of these children deny us sleep, until we give a helping hands to this ones who need our shoulders to learn on; things won’t be in it rightful place in our life because, their life is tied to our lives.
When I knitted these feelings together in the middle of the night, I remembered that God that created us said in other for us to be pure and holy, we should be like the ch8ildren. I housed my thought in the skeletal dreams that one day we would like remember that nothing is more precious than those children we neglected in the street because we needed more and more from life. This is my dream that one day we shall bring honest advantage closer to their bosom. We shall link up their feelings with ours and depend on what they have to tell us and which way they have to walk us to freedom. I think that day shall be a perfect match of feelings and emotions knitted into drives of understanding. Let’s have a new world of children who were not made to spend their entire life in the street but in the forefront of the society because they are our future generation holding the fragments that build this country and the world together. Let’s have a world of smiling children in a happy mood. It begins with you and me. It begins with our understanding of who they are and how to help them achieve their dreams.