My Nightmare

As the taxi drove past shacks, shops and buildings; past familiar homes and friends’ stores; past the salon where I was learning to become a hairdresser; past the spot where I sold waakye with Ima; more tears rolled down my cheeks. Zongo was a slum and was notorious for its filth, criminality, and deprivation; yet, this was where i was born. This was home for me. This was where most of my friends were. Whereas people in other parts of Accra saw filth and degeneration in Zongo, I saw love, hope, and beauty. I knew all the good people in Zongo and they were more than the ‘bad’ people I knew. I knew the honest hardworking people in Zongo, many of whom moved from the North to the South in order to build good lives for their children. People like Baba and Ima who left their birth place to come to the South so that their own children would have a good future. Where others saw Zongo as a den of thieves, I saw it as a safe haven. Nobody in this world could man handle me as long as I remained within the safety of its womb.