Growing up in Western Africa, Nigeria to be precise, it used to be every young boys dream to one day travel outside Africa and experience life for what it truly is.
I could recall day dreaming everyday, wondering what it feels like to hop on a plane and travel, never to return again. These thoughts kept me awake for most of the nights during my childhood, I was only 7 years old.
I would sit down in the parlour and watch American movies all day, envisioning myself in character, living my best life. But mom's voice always brings me back to reality, to the reality that I am just a black kid in Africa whose dreams could be crushed anytime.
I had little or nothing to fight for, at age 9, all I wanted to do was stay alive, and at least have something to eat. Should Incase you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of an African child, well, here you go.
Growing up was a maze of endless needs and wants, but this maze, I never made it to the end. All I had was a wish and a rumbling stomach. Unlike most, at age 10, I turned my wish into a dream and I promised myself that my kids would have a better life than this.
The problem was, could my country give me that better life? Corruption had spread throughout the political space that even as a 10 year old, you could sense it. The elites cared less about us or our suffering, and to shut us up, they sponsor wars and spread hunger in the land, yeah, it worked, we became 21st century slaves.
The hunger is not just from lack of food, but from lack of Knowledge, they know knowledge is power, and so to deprive us from having such power, they starve us of Knowledge. They take away that one thing that could spark a liberation. Even as adults, we remain as a child in the mind.
So what's exactly in the mind of an African child? Just struggling to live to see another day.