Bobo go school today? I asked my first child Kare in pidgin English the lingua Franca in my home. No oh!, he no go school, na only me and Tonye go school, she replied. Kare was nine years old and looked so much like me, fair skinned, curly hair, slim nose, small beady eyes and quite petite for her age. This is not good but I loved her the most. When she came into our lives, mine and her mother's, it was bliss unbridled, a fruit budded in the heat of love, although (shrugs) all the adjectives were ante-natal. Maybe, it was because we were young and the reality of raising a child had not dawned on us yet because when it did, things took a drastic turn from good to worst, oh no! There was no gradual meltdown, it was astronomic. That is the love died, my okay paying job could no longer sustain us infact three became a crowd. I started taking out my frustrations in bottles of alcohol and it was in this state my wife conceived my three other children for me until....
I am here now, behind bars, do you want to know why? Yea, of course. The thing is I became what I thought was best for me in order to provide for family, I became a drug lord. But, before you think me international, let me clarify, I was just a local dispenser, the last man in the chain of the cartel.
Don't blame me, my wife was nursing our third child and pregnant with the fourth, I was fucking desperate, so fucking desperate. So in one moment of highness,(yes I smoked too)I said the wrong things to the wrong people that implicated that bastard at the top of the cartel. They framed me up, being a man with no connection whatsoever, "who be your papa?" They mocked.
My wife or kids never came to visit me in prison, I wonder how big Kare would have grown, Has she started receiving advances from boys?How was her mum?Did she miss me?Did she start seeing another man? Will she take me back when I leave here? Will my younger children remember me?I don't know. But now I just miss them, I just miss my family..

The end

#family#love#Nigerian#prison