She needs more than a step to make it work where only a step works for her peers. She’ll overtax her voice to be heard, she’ll love to play and be equal with peers. She’s got their nature, not their nurture.  

What different is it if they were dead; after all, parental care is a dream, a fantasy she longs to have. She is an inseparable friend of Physical and emotional ill treatment. She thought they were foster parents because to them she’s a burden.  

Orphans are still starving and languishing around the place. Abandoned here and there, striving to taste life at least, if good life is a luxury. Who would now listen to the story of a child with living parents? I think many ‘strangers’ would, with a truck-full of advice. “You need to appreciate your parents, they gave you life; they can’t provide all your needs”.  She didn’t ask for their heads. “You should be thankful to God, some people just want the presence of their parents, nothing else. You don’t have any problem, all you need do is persevere and make them see reasons that you are a good child!” Hmm…so easy to say! People know her shoe hurts but the degree is what nobody can tell except her. 

A pawn. Sorry a child whose father is a celebrated philanthropist in all the local joints in the neighborhood. “Serve them round, we spend money, money don’t spend us”. In fact if he decides to be a responsible and a responsive father tomorrow, Mama G’s beer parlour and other beverage stores around would experience a drastic decline in sales and possibly wind up after a short while. Her mother is not the social type that goes out drinking. She has a deep repugnance for ‘Owambe’. She’s a good moth…hmm…No!...a good woman. She respects and honours her husband. Tithe, offering, vigil, and prayer meetings cannot wait for anything. “Prayers can solve it all.” 

Her parents could not stand the shame of seeing their child getting her own education only by doing chores and hawking while their friends’ children are in school. Only on this basis, she got dumped in a public primary school. A school where teachers embark on self and general strike at will. Compulsory Holidays on rainy days – special thanks to dilapidated school structures. She learns more of her teachers’ merchandise than the school curriculum (that’s if there is any). 

She’s got a big map of ‘God knows where’ on the back of her school uniform - the best aunty Obioma, the 'cut and patch' expert on their street could do to rescue her aged and pale school uniform.   

One day - one of those days that our thoughts are perfectly interpreted in Acts and scenes - her mother showed her so much love and affection. Her father joined the chorus, he cuddled and kissed her; they gazed into her tears-friendly eyes that now embrace a great sigh of bliss as they all merry together. Whoever wrote the script of that dream is a fan of happy ending …and they live happily ever after. Not yet! The dream bounced and became an unforgettable nightmare. In reverie of a sweet dream, they could read happiness in block letters on her face. This is considered a big threat to the family, especially the mother whose pastor had earlier proclaimed that one of the ways to pick a witch in the family is when their sons or daughters laugh or smile indiscriminately. That day, she got the beating of her life!   

She’s vulnerable, naïve. She ponders about several happenings as every little thing turns out to be a misery; she has a long list of disturbing and unanswered questions. She’s growing with a strong feeling of isolation and alienation from her folks. For now she’ll choose freedom over love. She desires an open door to see a new dawn. New beginning blessed with joy and a more assuring future only that her elder brothers are still out there trying to make a living as their background had inflicted a great deal of hardship on them. They drip to earn a penny.   

Who is SHE? She is any Nigerian Child subjected to physical, emotional, and mental ill treatment of any sort. She lives everywhere in the country. She's a child not a burden! The other Money spinning cause dwarfs her cause so nobody is paying attention to her plights. Her parents are mere public smokers who get pardoned every time because there are murder, looting, kidnapping and other ‘serious’ case files pending. It’s a pity!