I am at home this quiet morning, after having just medicated myself for heartburn. My friend and adopted sister Isi is with me.
We are shooting the breeze and waiting for my pain to subside so we can head out to our destination; the set of a short film which I’m acting in. The gate that leads from the stairway to my flat rattles. Someone is trying to get in.
Before I reach the gate my guests have already come through it and they are on their way to the next flat. Immediately catching my eyes are the threadbare sandals at the gate; threadbare and perhaps from another century.
‘Why did you leave your slippers here?!’ I query as I regard the guests.
They are children. Dark skinned from where I’m standing and carrying rusty, banana-laden trays on their heads. They turn around and the bigger one flashes me a toothy, tired grin. He points at the floor of the balcony where we’re standing. It is tiled.
‘Abeg, make una come wear una slippers! Which kain tin be dat?’ I shout back at them in local ibonics about how ridiculous it is for them to take off their slippers to walk on tile.
Giggling, the boy walks on, disobeying me. His sister follows. She doesn’t bother with the toothpaste-ad smile though; just turns around, her blue long-sleeved shirt ballooning as it follows her movement.
I stand there staring; shocked that she can even walk. My God the girl is as thin as a reed. No metaphors. She looks like a brown skeleton. My first instinct is to reach out and hold her hand. It feels like a ruler. A quick look at her torso also shows a bulging tummy which doesn’t need to be touched before I decide it is definitely hard as a rock or an overstuffed pillow at least.
‘You dey sick?’ Are you sick?
She blinks tiredly and with an unhappy smile in her eyes, touches her tummy lightly before giving me an almost imperceptible nod.
By now Isi has gotten up to join me on the balcony. The boy has also reached his destination; my next door neighbours’. The girl is darting her oversized eyes at her brother -at least that’s who I think he is- and I know she’s worried that she’ll make no sales at this rate. So I let go of her hand and she staggers away. Still no smile.
‘Nky, this is no sickness. This child is hungry!’ Isi, whose eyes are already brimming with fully formed tears, chimes in.
‘I don’t think so’, I reply. ‘It’s got to be some very severe illness. This can’t be hunger’.
And I’m not being deliberately ignorant. There’s just a part of me that is unwilling to accept this as a case of starvation. A chronic illness would more explainable and excusable. Maybe she has a liver disease or something and her family cannot afford to pay for hospital. That has to be it. I mean, I know my neighbourhood has reached ghetto status but we’re not a war-torn country with kwashiorkor-ed children. So what is this?!
Still, it is painfully obvious that this is a typical Nigerian story of child-exploitation. Their parents are probably too poor to send their children to free schools, so they push the kids out to earn a living with and for them. Terrible. But not unheard of. So what’s with my righteous indignation?
I stand at my door waiting for the conclusion of the banana commerce down the corridor. Finally the kids are passing through on their way out. I stop them again just before their scaly feet find their ancient sandals.
‘Come’, I signal to the boy, ‘Is your sister sick?’
The girl nods. But the boy flashes his grin again. ‘No o. Na because we no dey chop.’ She’s like this because we’re not well-fed.
Isi gives me a polite ‘I told you so’ glare. I ignore her, and determined to prove that nobody can let a child who lives with them be so malnourished, I begin my inquest.
After a series of carefully broken down questions and answers delivered in less than basic English, I’m able to piece together the stomach-hurting story.
Grace and Moses are actually not brother and sister but are distant relatives who live in the same ‘compound’ in their village. They were brought to Lagos by their madam who had earlier promised their families that she would give them an education in exchange for house-help duties.
Evidently, those were empty promises. The only school they’ve known since they came to Lagos is the one were they go to sell bananas to their fellow children at the close of the school day.
Okay, so what if he’s exaggerating a bit and their madam is not as bad as he paints? Let us even say child exploitation is not a moral or social crime. Let us further assume that it’s okay for children to hawk bananas while their mates are in school reading books by famous writers. Let us just say.
But for the love of all things good, who plants a tray on a very malnourished kwashiorkor-ed child and sends her out into the street to die making a living?! Before you think it, don’t even assume that this child’s hazards are going to be sex-related. I don’t think so! Even the most conscience-stripped paedophile will not look the way of this scraggly little girl; except perhaps in pity.
‘If she no dey give una food to chop, why una no kuku chop the banana?’ If she doesn’t give you food, why don’t you just eat the damn bananas!
I’m almost yelling. I know that my advice amounts to asking them to steal, but at this point I don’t care. I could even become a thieving person for one night and help them steal the bananas if that would help matters.
The boy finds my question amusing. He glances quickly at the girl and laughs. She doesn’t share his mirth. Or can’t. Maybe she’s saving her strength for the job; the bananas are not all gone, yet.
‘If we chop am she go kill us!’ he croaks. If we eat them she’ll kill us!
And the way he says it, something tells me the poor thing has already suffered a few blows and slaps for the thing I was advising him to do. I also get the feeling that being older; sixteen, and more physically able, he would have devised a few smart ways to survive from day to day. Pocketing some change now and then. Running errands for neighbours for a token. Things that the girl may never be able to do because really, where would she get the energy? But I do not pry further. The girl’s eyes are now scared. Like I’d been given too much information already.
I rush in and get some little money to give them. Moses grabs it hungrily, perhaps already envisioning the soft loaf of bread and crunchy groundnuts they would buy as soon as they leave us. I can’t resist the temptation to caress Grace’s face. It feels like leather. Taut against her skull. I can feel her bones and this makes me even sadder.
Before releasing the duo, I’m able to get their address from them in case I get the urge to follow their story and find out who this woman is that they live with. Isi and I also take a few photographs of them. No matter the angle and mobile-phone photo-editing modes that we use, we however cannot make them look like any random children on the streets of Lagos enjoying a spontaneous photography session with two jobless aunties.
It is not the first time that I am meeting abused or exploited children. It is not the first time that I am meeting malnourished or sickly children. But It is the first time I am meeting a combination of AN OBVIOUSLY SICK child who is VERY MALNOURISHED and BEING EXPLOITED at the same time. And then this is also my first time of meeting people so humiliated by life that they don’t know it’s no crime to wear shoes on stupid, cheap, ceramic tiles; especially if the bloody tiles are on a balcony.
Maybe I haven’t been around much, right? Well, maybe. But now all I can think of when I remember these kids is… what if one day as they go about hawking those damn bananas, Grace just falls to the ground and…dies?
What then?
Nk’iru’s curiousity got the best of her and she decided to visit these kids home to confirm their story. She indeed meets their madam who tells her that Grace is a witch that she is trying to help. The children have requested to go back to the village stating that it is better to suffer at home with their parents than in the hands of this woman. Let us keep these kids in our prayers and support organizations like International Justice Mission that help rescue children like Grace.
Nkiru Njoju is a freelance writer living in Lagos, Nigeria. She is currently preparing for her first book project.
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