This is not fiction.
My family moved to a 3-bedroom flat on
the street I currently stay, two weeks before my second birthday. Almost all
the houses in the estate were storey buildings of several 3-bedroom flats.
However, there was this building that looked out of place in the estate. It was
the only unpainted building, and the only face to face building.
At about five years old, I was already
conscious of the difference in our status in life. My friends and I referred to
the kids living in that house as 'children of the uncompleted building’. It
wasn’t that the building wasn’t completed, but for us, the building just looked
to out of place for us to see it as ‘complete’.
We went to private schools, there barely
made it through public schools, we went to universities, they learnt trades or
became miscreants. We had cars, they did not. We gossiped about them, they
gossiped about us. We said they were unruly, they said we were proud. That was
the normal life we lived.
It was Blessing I first heard the word
'Bad Generation' from. I don’t know how the name came about, but I think her
family must have started referring to ‘children of the uncompleted building’ as
the Bad Generation kids, because of the little mischief the caused here and
there. They played on the streets, their clothes were dirty, they rolled
bicycle tyres with sticks, they could not speak English, they talked without
respect, etc. So I guess no one argued when they heard them being referred to
as the Bad Generation kids.
Before long, this name caught flame in
the mouth of every single person in the estate. They were no longer the ‘children
of the uncompleted building’. They were Bad Generation, everyone’s father
called them Bad Generation, everyone’s mother called them Bad Generation, every
single person called them Bad Generation. It was their label, it was normal. Whether
the bad generation kids were aware that we called them by this name, I am not
sure. Even if they knew, I am not sure they would have understood the meaning
of the name.
My estate was quite peaceful and free of
violence and the likes. This is because, when I was young, there was a period
when armed robbers tried tormenting my estate, so our parents formed a
vigilante. Our fathers had guns, and they took rounds to protect the estate. If
a thief was caught, he was shot in the leg and then handed over to the police.
No arguments! After a while, robbers never came to the area. They were scared
of my estate.
By the time we were teenagers, some of
the Bad Generation kids dropped out of secondary school. Blessing and her
family moved to their house in Ikorodu. Ada, my second friend, moved out of
area with her family and later moved to their own house. A lot of my childhood
friends left the area. But not my family... my father built a fourteen bedroom
mansion directly opposite the three bedroom flat we lived, and so unlike my
friends and their families, I was stuck on my street, at least, until a man
decided to change my surname and move me out of my father’s house.
But....
Many fathers moved out of the area, the
former landlords we met there grew very old. There were only two middle aged
landlords. My father and a man we called Mr Glory. Because of this inevitable occurrence,
the vigilante started losing its protective hold over the estate.
At this time... the Bad Generation kids had
grown. For most of them, they had turned out to be bad, just like we had spoken
negatively into their lives. Their numbers had increased, because they had
brought friends of theirs to live with them. Some of them became vocational
workers, some of them became miscreants, one of them was a confirmed armed
robber, none of them was educated. But at least, my estate was still peaceful. Then...
My father died... mid age...
My house is like this very big dead
house. Loads and loads of rooms, with no one to sleep in them. I live in the
house with my mother, brother and sister. My mother gets home earliest, which
is 7.00pm. The rest of us start getting home around 10.00pm. We live in a
monumental waste. The Bad Generation kids cramp themselves in their face to
face rooms, rooms smaller than the smallest room in my house, approximately
about seven people in each. The gap between my family and theirs has grown wider
over the years but no one blinks at this. It was normal. We all kept minding
our businesses.
After my dad’s death, this left Mr Glory
to protect the area. Somehow, the new set of young fathers who had moved to the
estate were not as active as our fathers had been. Maybe it is because thought they
had nothing to fear.
Mr Glory had seven children, but one of
them refused education and home training, and turned out to be a thorn in his
flesh. He became just like the Bad Generation kids, caused problem for his
family, smoked weed, destroyed his father’s properties, beat people up and did
every kind of bad thing one can think of. No one said anything, it was not our
problem, it was Mr Glory’s problem and he would do well to sort it out. Then
again...
Mr Glory died... mid age...
The Bad Generation have multiplied...
they torment the estate. They organised robbers to steal the cars of estate
residents. After the incident, guns and hard drugs were found in the building
beside Mr Glory’s, something that could never have happened if Mr Glory were
alive. We now live in fear, the cause of our insecurities resides with us, but
there is nothing we can do about it for now.
In the past, when we were young, we
laughed at them, we called them names, they were the Bad Generation kids, we
were the good ones. Now we have grown, we are educated, we have good jobs, we
have cars. They torment us, rob us and steal our cars. It seems the sins of our
past have caught up with us... poke their fingers in our eyes... laugh at us...
right in our faces.
* The name of Mr Glory has been changed
to protect the identity of the person
