One Morning In The 3rd World. By O.b.i

Ebupa, that's what they call it, or sand fly, that's what google calls it, Nwanneka unconsciously threw her right palm with the swiftness of one half asleep to the bare skin on her left forearm, in a futile effort to kill the ebupa  that was by now long gone. She stirred almost immediately to the right, now facing the big aluminium pot that stood opposite the bamboo bed she shared with her younger ones; Obiajulu, Nkoli and Adaku, just then the sleep vanished from her eyes and she jolted into full consciousness. One would think it was the sharp bite from the ebupa that woke her up, only that this was Olo, where you have to go to the farm and do the usually tedious farm work, go to the stream and fetch the first water for drinking and then for bathing, sweep the ilo, bath the children, make breakfast; which is often garri and soup from the previous night or seldom roasted yam and salted palm oil, and walk 7 miles to Community Secondary School, Olo before 7:45 AM. This was Nwanneka's routine on most mornings, so it was not the bite from the blood sucking ebupa that woke her up by 4:15AM that morning and every other morning. And like every other morning too, she arrived school late, 8:17 AM. But she was not alone in this lateness, almost all the students in C. S. S Olo are perpetual late comers, they all lived in Olo or farther and they all had different variation of Nwanneka's morning. Mr. Ikem, the school's disciplinarian will have none of that, if you came to school later than 7:45 AM then a cutlass was waiting for you at the entrance, you will cut, if he (Mr. Ikem) is in a good mood, about 15 meter square of long overgrown elephant grass or if he was in a bad moodwell, lets just hope he is always in a good mood.

So by 9 AM when the buzz must have died down and I walk into Nwanneka's class and start telling her and her class mates about atoms and electrons and Pauli's exclusion principle, and 15 minutes into my class they tell me they are tired, I beg them for a few more minutes to teach because I understand, I understand that it is not Chemistry that have tired them, in fact it is because they are tired that is why they are seated in a class room. They are tired of the 3rd world and the class room was their exit strategy. They came into the class room to get out of the 3rd world...and I hope it works, I hope I can help them, I hope we have not all been lied to.