Will Writes

Have you ever thought of running from home to a different location?

That was the thought that crept into my mind after just receiving ten lashes of cane from my dad for coming home late.

I decided that I would leave the house that night when everyone had gone to sleep.

I started packing my clothes into my small bag.

I had no location in mind, I just wanted to run to a place where I will be free to play all day.

I never thought of what I will be eating.

So after packing my clothes, I was now ready to leave, but I was hungry and I had no money to buy anything.

I went to the kitchen to eat for the last time.

I started opening the pot to see what had been cooked.

I opened the first pot and saw beans with plantain, I refused to be tempted.

I opened the second pot to see stew and plenty meat.

I scooped beans with plantain, mixed the Stew and started eating.

While I ate, I thought of all the things I will be missing, the free food, friends and family.

After eating the last meat in the food, I went to sleep.

That was how I dreamt that the government were taking street children to the refugee camp. In that dream, I was wondering on the street with my bag when they caught me.

I woke up and ran to my father to ask for forgiveness.

Back then in secondary school, precisely, my senior secondary one and two, I was a friend to one of the finest girl in school then.

Because of our closeness, many people thought we were dating.

What brought about this suspicion?

When I came to the school newly, I was told that she was a girl of high principle. She never really played with boys and so on.

She was also popular in the school.

For someone to be intelligent and beautiful with all the feminine qualities in the right places, all attention was on her.

I was not the type that could talk, especially with the opposite gender and so I decided to be on my own.

One day, after our teacher had marked our assignment on narrative essay, one of my guys came to tell me that Deborah was looking for me.

I had to ask which of the Deborah and he told me that it was the popular Deborah.

I thought I had done something wrong because as at then, we were not on talking terms and I saw no reason why she would be looking for me.

I decided to go and meet her since since I was convinced that I had done nothing wrong.

I got to class and saw her holding my English language note and I approached her.

She said she was impressed by my essay and told me that I could publish books in the future.

That was it.

We got along so well and fast that it raised eyebrows.

I actually asked her out but she was like

"I want to face my studies and don't want any distraction".

So we remained friends. During the time of our friendship, I never knew I had brought attention to myself.

Wherever I went, people would tease me.

My friends, my classmates and even my juniors.

This often made her uncomfortable and she was always scared, of what ? I never knew.

We remained friends until something happened and our friendship ended. I wouldn't want to talk about it.

The thing is, this episode of my life in school always amaze me whenever I remember it.

Anytime there was sunlight,we were always happy. We would run around the neighborhood shouting and playing until we get ourselves soaked in dirt.

Then we would always go home with a frown because we know mother would scolds us and threaten to tell father.

One day,we left home for school leaving enough sunlight at home. When we got to school,we had a playing spree.

We tried not to get our uniforms to be dirty but all our attempts to keep our uniform clean were futile. Then something happened as we were playing.

The sunlight suddenly disappeared and the clouds started to gather. We paused our play, looked up and frown. Then the rain came and we all ran back to our classes.

That day, when the school closed,we went home with tears in our eyes because we knew that mother would finally report us to father.

When we got home, mother wasn't back from work. We all ran to the store and took our sunlight detergent, poured it in a bucket with water and dipped our uniforms in it.

Although there was no sunlight in the sky, we had our sunlight detergent at home.