The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 1

Taiwo had always felt that poverty had a stench. An unmistakable one. It was an identity. A stench that precedes the poor individual. Her family was a typical example. They reeked poverty. They reeked lack. They reeked the absence of the basic necessities of life. She was the first child and was determined to see that her family was lifted out of the quagmire of poverty.
She would watch with round eyes, as a child when her mother’s employer and their family were at table, eating( her mom was the cleaner). They ate all manner of foods that would make her mouth water. All manner of foods beyond the reach of her family.
Patiently, her mother, who did the dishes alongside house cleaning,  would scrape off the left overs, left overs which were never really much, and transfer them into a black polythene bag. That would serve as the family’s dinner. Ofcourse, by the time they got home, due to the action of the saliva on the food, it would have turned sour, but it would be eaten, nonetheless with gusto.
She remembered quarreling over a piece of chicken bone with her brothers, a chicken bone that had fallen to the ground and was liberally coated with the sand in the room of their unfloored shanty.
Hunger was Taiwo’s companion. She grew up hearing “ drink more water” whenever she complained to her mom, she was hungry.
Very quickly, when she was old enough to know better, she made up her mind, to break the jinx of poverty. She would be the saviour her family needed. All six of them.
In the public school she attended, she would walk with her tattered slippers to school and back. She bore the jeers and contempt of her peers with a measure of equanimity and resignation but she would cry buckets upon getting to the room, they all shared. Her uniform was worn and patched in several places. A testimony to the poverty that appeared to be their sole reserve.

To be continued..