Ela × The World (ON HOLD)

Chapter Two: With Dad

Youthful age is a very precious, delicate, dangerous and vital phase in a human life, it's human grooming and productive age and spending it in ignorant is the worst thing that can happen to a person.
I have experienced it myself so I won't blame my dad much for his frivolous youthful behavior, he lived in ignorant as a youth. I don't think he was properly taught moral values or ethics and Godly principles, if he was taught it wasn't enforced in him. Sadly the process is repeated in my life but I certainly plan to end the process with me. It won't be so in my children's life because I know better now.
He was just carried away by his youthful desires without caution or thought of its implications or consequences.

Dad lived in a public compound, a parlour and a room, he and stepmother sleeps in the bed while the children sleep on a mat in the cement floor.
Stepmother children slept separately in a good position while we sleep in a little uncomfortable position.

We ate from one plate of food sometimes especially when the food in the house is remaining small, if you can't eat fast you stand the chance of going unfilled when the food is finished. Eating to fullness was always competitive, a task until stepmother had to separate the big mouth from the small mouth.
Addition of water to soup before heating was a tradition in our house, no type of soup was heated without adding water.
We had black and white TV then with an outside antenna in a long pole that gives pattering sounds when we switched it on. The channels were never close to being clear after it's been switched on without one or more people standing outside to turn the pole to the direction that the antenna would attract a semi clear signal while there must be at least somebody inside to check on the screen to know whether it's cleared in order to report to the person outside, the reporting was always through shouts. It's a hectic process but we enjoyed it then.

Shouts from both young and old always accompanied the incumbent of NEPA light.
We rarely had light then and only a few knew something about generator.

Water used to be very hard to get when I was six. Bore hole water was the only available clean water then to those who cannot afford company distilled and packaged water and bore hole water wasn't found rampantly as it's today and those that used to sell it sold whenever and however they liked knowing that the poor do not have much option.
There was no government provided public water then, it's in the early stage of twenty first century that our state government made provision for public water and it's only affordable to those that can afford it not to people like us who live in a public compound that consist of almost forty five people.

Another problem was the distance, the distance was unreasonably far. It was like punishment whenever we had go fetch water. Even as we were young and full of energy, we couldn't help being tired at some point into providing water in the house due to distance.

We resulted to well water sometimes when pipe borne water wasn't available because it's not very costly or less available like bore hole though most bore hole was more cleaner than well water.
And some well water wasn't not too far fetch.
Stream water was very far from us but of course free. We liked going there on extreme dry seasons to swim, even though some streams dried off in dry seasons, most still flowed.

We made provision for a good number of water containers to fetch and store rain water in during rainy season. We fetched rain water anytime rain fell, morning, afternoon, night and midnight. We were not very afraid of the evil of the night then because crime rate wasn't as high as it's now.
We used to drink bore hole water, rain water and stream water, we excluded well water because it's not hygienic for direct consumption without treatment, even the ones we consumed directly wasn't very hygienic but we had to manage because we couldn't afford it treatment.