WE JUST WANTED TO BELONG...

A glimpse of the childhood i really do miss....

Mama says, you are not one of them, you have to be better

They curse and swear…but we wanted to fit in… we needed to belong

Mama says you can play with them but don’t get too close for you are not one of them…

But we could change them, we said

You are still in your formative years, Mama said and sheep may eat faeces if they associate too closely with dogs

But we invite them to the house, all 15 of them, we sit and slot in the movie into Father’s vcd player

We watch, we laugh…but we keep watch…looking out for Mama’s return

So, we usher them all out through the back door because we caught a glimpse of her at the end of the street…oh! And we do a quick rearranging of the house…

But Mama always knows… then scolding and spanking…but we just wanted to belong

So, we follow them from school to learn to ride bicycles at that place close to our primary school

Hahahaha…Mother laughed when we told her of those days

We were business women, K&I, selling that cabin ‘panbolabola’ biscuit Mother always buy

No money, so Mother says take 4 each to school every day, But we take 6 or 8 depending on the demand

We sell, our classmate buys….demand was more than the supply. No voodoo involved, it must have been love… business was good…

So we buy ‘baba dudu’ or ‘fisibije’ from the proceed of sale

Mama never knew… she thought we enjoyed the biscuit so much…

They always buy fried fish and eat on our way home from school…so we bought for the first time

Just as we were lifting the fish to our mouth, we saw Mother standing there and watching quietly

So we threw it away and went home wondering why mother chose that day to visit the shoemaker

It was our first time, we cried to her…but mother would not hear of it

You are not one of them, she says as she spanks us

But Mama, we just wanted to belong….