From Shadows to Steel

My name is Jack Morris. I was born into the world with the breath of death clinging to my first gasp of air. My mother never got to hold me, never whispered my name, for she had given everything in bringing me into existence. I was left with nothing but the absence of her warmth, a void that seemed to echo with the cries I could not remember making.

My grandmother Naomi took me in, a woman with hands like leather and a heart that could weather storms. She was my father’s mother, a beacon of stability in a world that already felt treacherous at its edges. Naomi was a woman of faith, her Bible worn from years of thumbing through pages that promised hope. She raised me in the way she knew best, with a strict Christian upbringing, the kind that comes from knowing both the light and the dark in life. I learned to pray before I could properly speak, and by the time I was eight, those prayers had become my anchor.

It was around that age when the world began to dim. Naomi, once so strong and unyielding, grew frail. The life she had poured into me seemed to drain out of her with each passing day. I would sit by her bed, a boy too young to understand but old enough to know that something was slipping away. I prayed like she taught me, desperate and pleading, because what else could a child do? But no matter how fervent my prayers, they couldn’t save her. Naomi died, and with her went the last piece of warmth in my life.

After her death, I was left with Peter, my father. A man who should have been a pillar but was instead a crumbling mess. He was a blacksmith, a man whose hands were strong enough to shape iron but too weak to hold onto the important things in life. He was known for his skill, respected even, but that respect didn’t extend to how he lived. Almost every coin he earned was traded for beer, his eyes clouded not just by the alcohol but by a disinterest in anything beyond the next drink. He was careless, and his carelessness spilled over into my life.

School became a distant memory. There was no one to see that I went, no one to make sure I had what I needed. Peter didn’t care if I was hungry, didn’t care if I was cold. His indifference was a sharp contrast to the love Naomi had shown me, and I began to drift, lost in a life that offered nothing but hardship.

By the time I turned thirteen, I had had enough. The small town(Chamba) where I had grown up seemed to shrink around me, suffocating in its familiarity and hopelessness. I decided to leave, to search for something better in the urban sprawl I had heard about from others. The city(Accra) they said, was full of opportunities, a place where a boy could make something of himself. So, I packed what little I had(two old khaki shorts and a shirt) and set off, my heart heavy with a mix of fear and hope.

The city was nothing like I imagined. It was bigger, louder, and far less forgiving. The streets were crowded with people who didn’t care about a boy like me, people who had their own problems and no time for mine. I quickly learned that the only way to survive was to fend for myself, and so I did. But survival came at a cost.

It wasn’t long before I found myself slipping into the shadows, joining others who had also been left behind by the world. We became street boys, thieves in the night, taking what we needed because no one would give it to us. I learned the art of stealing, of moving quietly and quickly, of blending in until I was invisible. And with each theft, with each day that passed, I felt myself changing, hardening.

I wasn’t that boy who prayed by his grandmother’s bedside anymore. I wasn’t the child who hoped for something better. I was becoming someone else, someone I didn’t recognize. The city was changing me, shaping me into something new, something darker.

And it was in this darkness that my life truly began to change. But that’s a story for another day...