"If I was a boy" Omalugo

The cold breeze flogs droplets of rain across her smiling face. This is her best season of the year and though she is now seventeen years old , she enjoys sitting out in the rain still. With her eyes closed as she looks towards the sky smiling, she remembers her wonderful childhood. Life was a beautiful movie in which she was the adored and most reverenced princess, loved by everyone and cherished by her parents. She knew no wrong or right or any form of evil until the dark storm arrived.

October sixth nineteen seventy five was going to be the day that changes everything the opposite side for her. Her parents left her at the care of her uncle and aunt as they embark on this ill-fated journey to the west, a journey that ended their lives in a fatal plane crash. Omalugo was only thirteen years old then and though she felt the agony but she really couldn't grasp the depth of her reality until this recent times. No one would call out her name in a melodious music tune every morning anymore. Yes , she knows she was loved but hearing it over and over again reassures her and makes living a total bliss. No sibling, no mom, no dad. Just an uncle and an Aunt. At least she still has a relative, a family she reassures herself.

Like the sound of a bus colliding with a metal stone, a hot slap returns her from her fantasy and stray wishful thinking. It was her aunt. She and her Brother, the Uncle to Omalugo has turned her life into a living hell since her parents passed. She literarily dropped out of school before it was time for her junior secondary exams and ever since has been slaving in her fathers property under the tyrant supervision of her fathers relatives. The aunt points her to the house demanding she returns to finish her chores. Before she was done speaking, Omalugo was already half way down the house running terrifically. Her uncle who was standing by the entrance to the house added his own slap on top of the one she already is crying from and pushes her recklessly inside the house. They both curse and rain verbal abuses on her as she runs upstairs.

Omalugo reaches for the mop stick and bucket of water in the room she ran into and horridly begins to clean the room. She stumbles on her mothers nightgown and in an instance pauses as she picks it up and smells it with tears on her face. She walks to the window and can see her uncle and aunt making merry at the garden lounge downstairs, laughing out loud. Tears and bitterness fills her up and she thought to her self... "Maybe if i was a boy I will grow up someday and fight for my right. Maybe I could take my rightful place in my own house. Maybe i could make my uncle and aunt pay for thier ill treatment towards me. Maybe I would have completed my studies and gone to the University. Maybe I would have travelled overseas and become a great person like my Dad. If only i was a boy" She holds tight the cloth in her hands and weep bitterly. Then she begins to smile as her face brightens up, her smile soon turns into a laugh, she falls backward on the bed exhaling as she wonders at the ceiling.

" You are a princess with priceless worth and inestimable value. Nothing can stop you from becoming anything you think of. You are enough, This world is yours. Don't look down when you walk because the world is standing up for you. Your kingdom awaits you my angel. Carry yourself gracefully . Carry you. You are deserving" Those were the words of her Father. They often always interrupts and arrests her sorrows throwing her back into her majestic awareness. " I will rise. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next but surely i will rise. I will become. I am princess. I am priceless" She echoes.