We never choose where we are born, we never choose the life we are born into, but we try to change our stories. As simple as the one sentence I just wrote, it is similar to many others who live in this part of the world. As children, there are two things we learn that we eventually almost forget as we grow older: patience and discipline. As children, we are always told to brush our hair and make it straight so we can look good and have good grades, and we try to keep it clean every day.
I have looked at the lives of numerous Nigerian children whose parents live below the poverty line, and I can tell you for free that it is very difficult to be born and live here. You have to walk miles before getting to school, but before then, you have to do the house chores, which are often difficult. Some children even have to care for their sick parents who do not have access to good healthcare, before leaving for school.
You can imagine, after making this sacrifice to get to school because they want to have a good future, some politicians, either of low or high rank, decide to play with their future, making it difficult for the students to learn. They sometimes use their head teachers, principal, and all other accessories they find. In a nation of corruption, deception, and massive inequality, those at the bottom of the food chain are the ones who suffer. Interestingly enough, even the tools of these corrupt governments are usually sidelined over time if they are also at the bottom of the chain.
The people who live below the poverty line do everything to survive, and when they do so, they use the little resources to create a very small system, but this becomes a problem when the government sees that it is working. They use their big feet to crush the little that has been created. Still using a slave-master type of dealing, they send one of them to scatter the flock. You see, at the end, these people just want to survive, but how would they do that when they do not have access to good food, clean water, and a proper place to stay? These things I just mentioned are basic needs, if I am correct, but then they look very unbasic since they are very difficult to come by.
People at the bottom try to help themselves, but then there is the crab effect, where they try to help themselves up, but still manage to drag themselves down when one of them tries to climb up the ladder. It isn't their fault, it's just how they have been programmed. I know about this because I have been a part of it, and I am still one of the people who live below the poverty line.