Who cares about us in Kankali, Buji?

God's eyes are retreating and our time remains in destitution. The local elders would say, "Allah yasa mudace." Maybe God is good as they say, but he doesn't speak Hausa every day.

My father had just sold his second farm to help me further my secondary education. With a little money left to buy dry baobab leaves, my mother made my favorite soup, Miyan Kuka, on the last Saturday night of the month, as she always does. A day my little sister, Faiza, and I would have put in our breathtaking strength on the farm to warrant the hot and sumptuous meal served under the garden shed while we stared at the stars. 

"Umar, wake up," my early morning alarm to go to the river. Bashiri stream was a long kilometer from the village. If you don't start your journey before dawn, you will be drinking settled mud. A spiteful blow dealt by the morning breeze coming from the desert. A warning to always make haste and honor nature. Lucky for the next village, they only needed a stretch of their leg to fill their water pots. We always ended up with mud. 

You might want to ask why we didn't have water in the square. The last Politician that visited promised us a touch of heaven. My father would always tell his friends, "Don't trust Senator Abbam." No one listened. And it looked real because the gigantic drilling machine arrived in the village a week later. "We will give you good water if you vote for our party," the tall and well-dressed spokesman kept on making promises. 

The machine went into the earth as we cast our votes. They drilled and drilled for days. The borehole machine didn't touch the liquid side of God's footstool. Bashiri's mud became our only hope. 

Who would come down to save us now?

The children are ill-fated with unnamed ailments. Eating a meal a day was a miracle. The one who had enough to spare would invite everyone for a feast under the Oak tree in the square. Sometimes, my father would do the same. That was the love we shared. 

Stories only flew around in the thick air. My father had a cell phone that could wake the entire village up when someone called him. He always kept it in his brown skin bag and carried it anywhere he was going. The few times Faiza and I got our hands on it, we left unrecognizable fingerprints in its memory. 

I was 15, and my little sister was 10. My father didn't allow my mother to bring another child into the world to suffer penury. But their folks kept producing offspring like a seahorse. We only get visited when they need food and money. "The parents of the big stomach children are here," my mother would say when their trail and scents were caught from afar and we would keep the valuable things we had under the dried palm leaves in the backyard.   

We do not have much to spare. My Uncle who lives in Lagos stretched his benevolent hand to my father some years ago and we are reaping from the little we preserved as assets. Aside from that, we had to make a long journey to the remote area of Buji to access our local healthcare system. When Faiza fell sick, I wept bitterly because she almost died. I have seen many children die in my environment due to poor hygiene and material deprivation. 

When the representative for the United Nations visited Jigawa State, we thought it was a twist in the tale. Mrs. Gwede Volsë, a gentle soul whom we thought had brought our redemption. She spoke about helping the local villages and eradicating poverty. The town gossip has it that she fulfilled her promises but the higher authorities in Buji embezzled all the money. 

I was supposed to enroll for free education but the whole burden is on my father. Many children all over Nigeria are experiencing hardship. How do you expect people who haven't eaten a meal at home to think about education? How can families who are ravaged by ailment think of becoming a lawyer or a doctor? There seems to be no way out.

Has God heard any of our prayers? Or HIS eyes are turned away from us? The wailing of the little children and screams of the old women, where do they go? The government has abandoned us and the universe has moved on, but I will shout this out to the world even if it is for the last time. 

These words of mine call upon the ones who hold power to come to our aid. Children are dying and youths are giving up. The dreams we bring with us to the earth follow us back to the grave. I, Umar Gaffar, want to make my community better. I want to go to school like every other child and help other people.

My resounding voice might not echo hard in the air because I am starving. But today is the last Saturday of the month and I hope that my mother prepares my favorite soup tonight to give me strength while I continue to seek the change we all deserve as humanity.