DESPERADO
Today I woke up feeling weak.My mind was travelling far, but my body wanted to stay longer in my bed.
Thinking of what I'm doing everyday : getting to work, do some papers,everything lost meaning.
Just another routine.
At last, I forced my self to get up and take a shower.
Water ran measly, barely enuff to rinse off my moisture-rich shower gel.
Life is tough and uncomfortable in this country.
You practically have to fight for every little thing and it seldomly paysoff.
It took almost an hour to fill up my water bucket, washing my clothes woud probably take half the day...
Getting out of my room, I stepped slowly to the walkway.
The sewer filled with what looked like rat droppings.
I saw it last night, the ugly black rat, my heart lost a beat when it ran through the walk way and into the sewer.
I mustered my courage several times to clean up its nest, shoved up the pileof garbage it puts to clog up the water.
Swept all its dried droppings and flood the area with kerosene andmothballs.
It stayed away for a while.Then the stupid girls staying on the neighboring room bought a small dustbin and put it in front of their room.
Throw food wrappings in it and invited back the rat.
Senseless, those village people with their thick accent.
They're too used to live in filth to bother about rats.
I saw the lopsided huts just in several feet across our rented rooms.
A family with three kids live there.
I don't pay much attention to them but they know me by name.
When the mother was there she fought constantly with her 10 year old daughter.
The daughter's foul mouthed, always argue about everything but mostly about her pocket money.
Most mornings she would wail loudly, ranting in local dialects and faked tears, calling her father in a make-believe anguish.
Several months ago, the mother left to open a small canteen.
The fake wailings died instantly, only bursting on the mother's rare homecoming.
But now it's the baby who's constantly weeping, missing her mommy.
One particular morning, he started crying desperately at 5.
I actually pitied him, but he wailed on and on for an hour and a half.
It started to annoy me that nobody in the family paid attention to him.
Impatience took the better of me and I got out of the room, carefull to slammy door loudly.
I went to and fro several times and slamming my door each time.
Finally her big sister picked him up and he stopped crying at once.These ignorant people!!!!How can they let a baby crying for so long and do nothing to soothe him?
On remembering this, my heart felt heavier.
I kept walking on the alley.
Children running naked along the street, their face and feet thick with grime.
Their ever-pregnant mothers gossiped about carelessly.
Their sagging breast protruded from their lanky night dress.
If they're lucky to live to be sixty, and got married at their late teens,it means that they spend forty years doing the same thing days over.
The most exciting things to ever happen would be occasional weddings,circumcisions, independence day and the end of fasting season.
Are they content?
Have they ever want something more in their lives?
Mean while their lazy husbands are lying around with their exposed potbelly.
He had a job at a factory back then, but quit cos he was not allowed to smoke during worktime.
He chose to pull pedicabs instead, where they're free to take their nap.
To smoke and spit wherever they want, spent their hard earned thousand notein illegal lottery draw.
Sleep the night away in open air, spoiling their already weakened lungs toTB.
Have these people ever realize there are so much more things in life?
Arriving on the road side, I cross the railway.
I waited for my bus to come, mind still wandering.
I look along the railway sides, here and there a pile of junk emanate foul smell.
Flies buzzing noisily.
As I got on my bus, I noticed that not one single patch of land are free of junks.
Plastic wraps, cigerette butts, empty bottles, rotten food.
They have enough money to build a mighty fly over but can't spare their budget to provide gargabe bins.
Maybe in a hundred years time this town will swim in junk.
While in other side of the world people have cutting edge tech to convert junk to energy, these people don't care if they shit in their home-front sewer.
I feel weaker and helpless.
I lost all hope.
The more I know of the world, the more I want to flee from here.
I've little left to hold on to.
Every trickle of my blood want to fly free.
But so much things are holding me back, draining my what little strength I have.
I know the world are outside, thriving and throbbing beyond my walls.
And yet I find no door....
posted by Nemot @ 9:33 AM
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