mines of the minor millionaires

welcome again to my blog; a place where i share the things i see everyday on the street.

but before i proceed with my imageries, i want us to do a little magic with my pictures. ideally, #everypictureisastory is a series of pictures i documented just to tell a complete story from my own point of view. but today i will be doing differently. i'd love you to see my pictures from your own agle. and be possessed by the assumption that you are the subject in that picture. 

to do that, all you just need to do is to put off yourself, and feel in-into the lives of the people that i will be showing you soon in succeeding sequence. fit into the shoe of a kid; that shoe of a kid from a living water ghetto! and, until you begin from the intrologue, and outrologue, get out of here and don't  spoil the magic! 

[lights out]

action!!

intrologue:

'row, row, row you boat

gentle down the stream;

merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

life is but a dream..'

call me the slum dog millionaire, because i will become a millionaire someday. though i look and smell like the slums in your hood, trust me, this heart has seen the future and i know what it holds. my humble beginning is only a reign keeping me from danger and a boastful attitude. i fear that some will pity me while they are the ones who need the pity the most.

i row away every morning, humming the fisher man’s song. i cast my net with confidence, it comes back empty at times but that doesn’t stop me. i spread my net and mend the torn parts then i cast my net again. this process has only strengthened my hope in the future. it ain’t rosy right now but i know i’m a millionaire, a minor millionaire at the moment.

nights when it rains like third world war, i fear that the wind will blow my family’s roof off. you could smell the sea and taste the salt in your throat as it rises to almost the entrance of your batcher. some nights, i wonder how we made it through. while you carry pity in your eyes for me, i worry about how you can have all you have and not have hope in your heart for a great future?

call me the slum dog millionaire; i’m a minor with the heart of an adult. i do not let the slum decide for me, i might never sit within the four walls of a school or visit a big library but i will be great. i will row and row till something change. i will take my family away from this slum; my fish with the gold box in her mouth will find me soon. my integrity will keep me till i make it.

these are honest words from the mind of a minor millionaire who’s patiently waiting for his time.

outrologue:

we dey find am hard to eat,  wear body for cloth,  flex like other pikins from the urban wey we like to  call them “ajebuttas”  because dem  don eat wella, come dey form join am.  but who that one epp? we too get our own local style and standard.  we na who we be “ajekpakos.” we too don weave out our pattern of living, feeding, clothing and flexing call am wetin you like – our papa and mama don create our own culture – “ghetto culture.”

when rain fall, me and the others go commot body for cloth go outside naked go bath and dance, this na opportunity wey the other ajebutta pikins no dey get.  unlike them our own shaw no need to get served for dinner table. we eat anywhere, any corner,  wey we see ourselves, whether na for ground o;  we fit dey waka dey eat for street; na slum be our hood, our own dining table. the gutters dey stink but we dey use to am already. 

my name na isaiah. this is my ghetto gospel: “being from the ghetto doesn’t make you’re a criminal nor a saint. it only gives you an edge against the others. i am a real “ajekpako and the street is our school. the faster you pick up you’re surely on the ladder of becoming a professor."

i am a ghetto child. we are a gang of five amos, ezekiel, jeremiah, and hosea. call us a prophet, a priest or a king, we are all three put together. we have got our likes and dislikes. together we would stand and fight.  but if it gets fiercest we know when to take a flight. nevertheless we’re ready to sacrifice. we have sown an oath even if it means we die. 

i was born a ghetto kid. i knew i was in for the ghetto life. at the tender age of five, a man in my compound burnt weed on my lips. i screamed like hell. the scar is there. i swallowed all fears. he said “son you’re re-baptized.” “go ye into the street and proclaim the ghetto gospel. what doesn’t kill you make you stronger.  

buckminster fuller said: 'every child is a born genius, but the processes of life de-geniuses some'

sometimes the experience we encountered was way too much for our age. but who send?

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c r e d i t

intrologue: maryanne poet

outrologue: ebuka okparauzoma

photographs: neec imagery

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#neecimagery #everypictureisastory #minesoftheminormillionaires #makoko #documentaryphotogography #streetphotography