I wasn’t asleep when Dele rapped on the iron bars, I’d been awake since 5am, kneeling and praying accompanied by the voice of the imam from the mosque outside. I turned and smiled at the younger man, my cellmates were asleep, I was the only one in this cell to have found God in prison, “Ekaro sir” Dele said in Yoruba, “Morning my son” I responded, from the first day he had got this job as a prison guard I have lost count the number of times, my advice had helped him. “the warden says you will be released today” Dele’s handsome face broke into a smile, I wanted to smile too, if only to give him something to be happy about, but my facial bones weren’t co-operating, “I will come for you in the evening” he said joy suffusing his face. When he left I went back to my kneeling position, but I couldn’t continue the prayers, my mind wandered…..

The prison had been my home for thirty two years, I was used to everything, the bad meals, the bedbugs in my worn mattress, the hard labour which changed with the season, from grass cutting to block moulding or carpentry, the stinking toilet staring me in the face and the screams of those, who found themselves at the end of the rope in the dead of the night. Now I was being told to leave home, again. I thought back to the first time I had left home……

I was fourteen when I first left home. The only boy in a family of five, we lived down by the water edge in a shanty, a cobbling together of bamboo, raffia and tarpaulin, thirty or so homes like ours were scattered in a rough U along the shore of the water. This was Kereku community, a slum by every definition. I had taken my sisters to Madam Kofo’s daycare, and was on my way to Oga Sule’s shop, where I was under apprenticeship, my father was somewhere drinking away last night’s proceeds and mother was preparing for market, that was the natural order of things, but today I decided on a quick detour home more due to laziness, than any other reason. I was at Uche’s door, whose shanty was next to ours when I heard them shouting, I walked in to see my mother gripping tightly my father’s singlet, I stepped into my usual role as arbiter, but something went wrong, father slapped her, she staggered back, then lunged for the knife, she used in cutting the watermelons she sold, she attacked like a demented woman, and soon they were struggling, by now I was screaming. When mother went down, there was a red stain on her left breast that grew larger, father threw the knife down, and ran, I froze, then knelt down and tried vainly to hug some life into her, I held her to me, I could still hear my self, screaming. When they pulled me off her, I was too weak to stand, I fainted dead away. I awoke later in prison. I was accused of killing my mother.

The views expressed above are solely that of the writer and not of Omojuwa.com or its associates.