BORN THIS WAY, DESTINED TO LEAVE THAT WAY.

Your first cry as a child was either celebrated by a few or 'shushed' by a woman with a face covered with sweat and tears. You grew up to know that man must work extremely hard to live. Probably the nature of work did not matter to those who raised you. All they cared about was its ability to put food on the table and probably a few thin clothes on your back. As you grew older, you were initiated into this life style. 'Street' was the name and 'Survival' was the game.

At that point, you had grown to understand the fact that if you don't do something, you would die. You learnt to use make up and body revealing clothes as a means to get what you needed. Learning how to use a gun was probably the best means of scaring those people to get what you needed by force and even a little more to satisfy your want.
Every time you sat in front of a computer and hacked into peoples online accounts, you could swear you heard a small voice telling you 'You were made for something better than this'.
You stop short in your tracks just moments before you vandalised those pipes. You thought of how many people would suffer from the pollution but then your thoughts of compassion were over shadowed by memories of you siting outside in the middle of the night waiting for your single mother to finish talking to a certain 'uncle' who did not respect the fact that it was a single room and you also needed to sleep. You saw yourself being insulted and called a beggar when you stood on the bridge asking passers by to give you something to eat, how you and your mother were eventually kicked out of the one room you and your mother occupied because the rent was due and she could not afford to pay it. And then clouded with the anger of your suffering and deprivation, you hit the pipes so hard and took what you wanted. Depriving other people of good life and plunging them into the same cycle of suffering of which you are a part.
You sit down alone in a quiet place after all these years of trying to survive. You think of you life and what it has become and just when you are about to reach your point of conviction, you get up in anger and do exactly what has kept you bound all this while... You blame your plight on poverty.
But if only you had sat down a few minutes longer, you would have realised that one of the guys from your 'area' who you laughed at, has become a great carpenter and one of the girls who used to cook and sell by the road side has opened a restaurant where you enjoy a meal or two when you wanted to eat out. Others have begun selling the produce from their farms to markets both outside and inside the hood. If you had sat down a little longer, you would have realised that the real problem is you.
Blessed are those who do not let the situation they were born into define their lives henceforth.
Blessed are those who choose to stand out against all odds. Those who recognised that Oprah did not start from the top, but chose to be at the top. Realising that you don't necessarily have to be educated to be the C.E.O. of multiple chains of successful businesses like Aliko Dangote. Knowing that like governor Fashola the prevalent poverty can really drive a man to make a difference and ultimately a change. Indeed there are people who were freed from the cold clutches of poverty. Even though they were born this way just like them, you also are destined to leave that way. #SayNoToCrimAndPoverty
Written by: Osione
@Missosi