Sekinat: Muted Voices

Chapter 2:Beginnings (Cont)

Most mornings depending on the planting cycle and harvest season, she was up at the crack of dawn to prepare for the day's slog. 

She worked the small patch of allotment in the nearby Savannah plateau a few miles from the outskirts of their town, planting tomatoes pepper and vegetables, onions and wheat produce which she sold in the local market with other farmers in her community once a week. They were an Agrarian community hence fully relied on this means for all their financial wants and sustenance.

 A few of the younger indigene however due to the alarming rate of insecurity, lack of opportunities and increasing danger of forceful conscription by the Boko Haram insurgents who had been plaguing their towns for a while now had begun a consistent train of migration to the main capital of their Borno state, others have advanced further even as far as Abuja and even Lagos state amongst other more peaceful and prosperous geographical areas scattered all over Nigeria. Where they engaged in menial jobs of all descriptions. Their migration came with its unique challenges, many which they learnt only after arriving in the cities they planned to settle in. Because of their lack of formal education nor experience in any form of vocation, they were only employed in those big cities doing the most menial jobs. For the women who migrated their only recourse often with their toddlers in tow was begging for alms all through the streets or in the popular traffic stops which dotted every area of the big, bustling and perpetually busy city. They made good money at least when compared with their small towns and villages in Borno but it was at the risk of the ethnic slurs, throwaway insults from the average inhabitants of those cities and even robbery from the area boys ensconced in the ghettoes the lived in. At times their children are kidnapped for rituals and even abused, but they had no recourse to the law or even any form of recompense due to their lack of education or exposure hence powerless to seek for help. They had little choice but to endure the bad with the good, after all what choice did they have other than returning to a certain death or conscription by the Boko Haram insurgents. 

For most of them they relied on the will of Allah being the ultimate sustainer and and finisher of their fate. If he places such challenges and tribulations in their path, perhaps it is a test in order to make sure they are worthy of certain blessings surely coming their way they reasoned. After all life as they knew it here in spite of the challenges could not be as bad as what they had left behind.

Next Sekinat slowly rose up stretching her constricted tendons, although careful not to make a sound lest she wakes up the sleeping children. She silently initiated her daily morning rites, utilising the arrows of pre-dawn light already perforating the small open netted window sill.

Sekinat slipped her feet into a pair of battered rubber slippers, as she hefted one of two plastic buckets half filled with water propped up by the door. She stepped outside and walked about a hundred yards towards the communal bathroom in the far corner of the small compound.

A quick wash ensued before she quickly dried herself, and dressed up in the half light projected by the overcast cloud. The shaft of light bore down upon the roofless shed encased in rusted corrugated sheets. The bent and rusty slates propped up by bits of discarded wood and discoloured six inch nails.

After she finished dressing up she left the bathroom and proceeded behind her room to a small sectioned off space used as a makeshift kitchen for all the inhabitants of the compound. Although the area was labelled as the kitchen area by the Landlord, it was little more than a shed built of mismatched pieces of wood and different green coloured plastic corrugated sheets tamped together and sectioned off for different tenants in the compound. Due to this confusing proximity within a small space frequent fights and arguments were normal amongst the tenants and yet they somehow managed to sort their differences and continued living and existing in that constricted space. 

One of the reasons Sekinat preferred to do her cooking quite early was to avoid the inevitable arguments which occurred when many of the other tenants were doing their cooking at the same time. So after her early morning bath she placed the now empty bucket near the entrance of the designated kitchen, and began to fiddle with her pots and pans.