Living In Chains And Bubbles Of Life ( 1)

TO millions of poor people, how to break away from the gnawing pains and shackles of poverty remains a mystery to them, and they continue to battle and fight the glaring sight of penury and lack, looking for every means to get rich.

Oriyomi Oladeinde was no exception. Sincerely, he was a very poor man. He could be called Mr. Poor if one should compare his condition in the class of poverty- stricken people. If prayers and fasting could bring the solution quickly he would have become a multibillionaire overnight and instantly. Oriyomi, along with his wife had fasted, did several vigil worships at various houses of prayer and climbed and prayed on many mountain tops for a solution to their nerveracking hunger and lack but the breakthrough seemed not to be in sight and was obstinately elusive.

His landlord had threatened to eject him out of his one- bedroom apartment at No. 5, Nathaniel Street Ojuelegba, for the fact that he was owing about three years rent. Oriyomi was a building contractor, a business he had been doing even before he met his wife. But, honestly, business was very bad in those early years of his marital life that he faced real hardship of survival without no known remedy. In his one- bedroom apartment, there was nothing that could make life comfortable in a little way- no television, no radio or sound system and fridge. Really, his life was miserable to say the truth. And he had three young kids from his young wife at that moment. To be factual, Oriyomi was handsome, dark- skinned and tall and his young wife was really pretty too and affable. He and his wife slept on a tiny, bug- infested mattress and his children slept on a completely torn mat.

He had been running from pillar to post looking for ways of solving this perennial problem and harrowing experience but all to no avail. At times, he would sit down on his plastic chair and muse heartrendingly to himself,

“God, if there be a God, rescue me quickly from this condition, this abject poverty… I am tired of life…” he would say with painful tears streaming down his brows.

“It would be well very soon my dear husband… be patient…” his wife would say to soothe, assuage and calm his nerves.

There was a particular Wednesday morning when the first child of his landlord, who was a stern- looking, arrogant and vicious mobile policeman suddenly entered and burst the canister of teargas in Oriyomi’s apartment. It was very early in the morning, around 5.30 am, his entire family screamed in pains, agony and hysteria and ran out of the room in panic and desperation. They were almost choked to death that early morning. They just wanted them out of the room they occupied because they were obviously poor in all ramifications, they should just leave either willingly or unwillingly.

In that very house, there was actually nothing edifying and showing comfort and convenience.

It was a house of about 38 rooms all clustered and arranged together. In local parlance it was called, ‘ Face me- I- Face- You’ kind of building. The whole 38 different families in the house had and used just one toilet and bathroom. Tenants would queue for several hours trying to use the toilet or bathroom, which were made of old ramshackle and rotten sheets of pans. There was nothing like pleasure and comfort in the whole building, still the occupants kept swelling and increasing on monthly basis, not wanting to leave the dilapidated and unkempt building.