Eight years later, the voice still echoes

Dear Aunty,

I don’t know if you will ever see this letter or even remember me. But eight years ago, when I was seven, I met you at the gate of a school where you went to pick up some children. While I followed the kids with “kin rage?” You looked at how I walked barefoot under the scorching sun of Maiduguri. Lips dry, bowl empty.

You sat me down on a broken bench under a neem tree as you emptied your daughter’s leftover food into my bowl. I still remember how you asked me with a kind voice my name, my story and where I came from. I told you I came from a village in Katsina. You listened to my story patiently and before you left, you promised three things. You would look for my family, take my letter to my parents and be THE voice for children like me.

For many nights, I slept with your promise as the only warm thing I had. I imagined you knocking on our door, handing my mother the letter. I even pictured her crying and my father travelling back to get me.

Days turned to months, and months turned to years. But you never came back. Nobody came for me, not even on Eid. I waited every year, but it slowly became my culture to spend Eid with my malam, his family and a few other children like me.

I am fifteen now; they call boys like me “gardi”, caught between childhood and manhood, forgotten by both. My life hasn’t changed, it is still waking up at dawn, begging with my cracked bowl, returning to read, begging again and sleeping on an old mat that smells of sweat and dust.

It is the same hunger, same bare feet, same forgotten children.

Sometimes I ask myself if you ever found my parents. Or if you lost the letter? Did you forget me as the world forgets children like us? Or life simply moved on for you while mine remained the same?

Aunty I don’t blame you. I just hope you are okay. And if you are, I wish you knew that your promise lived inside me for eight years.

Last year, I entered a random house to beg for food. The woman is kind. She gave me food daily, bought me shoes and even some money for errands. Someone advised me to save the money and travel to Abuja during eid because “they give sadaqah in 500 naira notes”.

So since I never went home for Eid anyway, I followed a fabrics truck to Abuja. But Abuja is not kind. I never saw the houses to go and beg for food. Everywhere seemed far with only tall buildings and wide roads.

I slept under the bridge, begged in traffic for almost four hours and made almost nothing. So, I did what other boys did; I bought detergent, a scraper, a bottle and began washing windscreens.

One afternoon, I ran to a black car in traffic and sprayed the windscreen before the driver noticed. The horn blasted and the glass rolled down “wa yace ka wanke?”

The woman was angry but my heart stopped!

It was you, Aunty.

Eight years of waiting stood between us as I thought you would recognize me or remember my letter. But you didn’t.

You scolded me and I wiped the glass slowly hoping something in my face would remind you. But you drove off.

Aunty, I don’t write this letter to shame you.

I write because I am now old enough to understand that we children cannot survive on promises.

Eight years ago, I cried because I missed home.

Today, I cry because I realize many children like me may never find home again.

But still, I hope.

Not because hope works, but because hope is the only thing we are allowed to own.

Maybe one day, someone will look at boys like us and not turn away.

Maybe one day, our stories will not need rescuers who disappear.

Maybe one day, the cry of an almajiri will not be swallowed by the noise of the world.

Until then, I am still here.

Fifteen now.

Tired, but loud.

Hungry, but human.

Forgotten, but still crying.

Aisha Alkali Ajikolo is an advocate for children’s rights and reform of the almajiri system.

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