You know when you are just a struggling young man in an unforgiving world, the best thing you can do is to do what you can even without success. This is what I have to do as a young man. I have to wake up in the morning to look for a daily bread and come home in the evening tired and defeated.
They call this hustle but to me, it is more than that because you will find little children doing the same to stay alive but what do children know? If it wasn’t South Sudan, children as young as ten years of age should be in school not on the street, but here, the story is different and we will never stop pointing fingers at our power-hungry politicians who sacrificed our future for a political seat.
These people are really careless and taking everything including the lives of poor South Sudanese is what they will never stop doing as long as they have power in their hands. But sometimes, as a human being, you don’t have to rob the public of everything and kill them on top of that because they are poor and have no voice.
This is the reason why Africa will always remain poor and trust me; the future of this Africa remains bleak. Look at America and China, these countries are at the stage of eliminating poverty and by the year 2040, most of these people are going to be financially okay and look at Africa with untapped resources.
This will tell you that our leaders don’t only beg but they don’t know what they have. Beggars, that is what we are but what never ceases to amuse me is the fact that our people steal borrowed money and stash this money in foreign banks. I don’t think young people will get anything from these people.
And it is true, sometime back, I met a young boy, he looked straight into my eyes and something within me froze. Before he could open his mouth to speak, the dark clouds had gathered in my naked eyes and already my tears were falling.
I know they say young men don’t cry, yes, they do but they don’t do it with a sound. He told me his father before his untimely death had told him, that children like him were the future leaders. He boasted how he couldn’t wait to be educated, get a good job and become a good leader and be the guy that buys the coffin for his father when he dies.
Something struck me to sanity when he asked me IF GOD WOULD PUT BACK OUR ALREADY SUCKED OIL to be exploited by future leaders like him. When he was done talking, I finally got my premature weeping justified and I wondered too.
IF THE YOUTHS ARE THE FUTURE LEADERS, HOW WILL THEY MAKE BETTER THEIR LIVES WITHOUT OIL when our current leaders have not exploited this wasting asset to better our country?
I held the young boy by his right hand and told him that he could make a good leader but he was in the wrong place. When he heard me saying this, he wondered too but I will continue to pity him for the rest of my life. Imagine, he wanted to have his father by his side as he grew up so that the daddy would support him in achieving his goal but the daddy was killed and the promises made by dad now hang in the balance.
The second thing he wanted to do was to go to a better school and become a better person but because our government is corrupt and doesn’t care about the children of the freedom fighters, his only destiny is now the street.