Living in the Trenches
Sometimes, I think about how comfortable I've gotten to staying in the trenches, that I don't even see it as the trenches anymore.
I come from a family that isn't exactly wealthy, but we stay in a nice apartment with enough rooms to make I and my siblings feel comfortable. So we ain't exactly rich, but we do okay for ourselves.
But then I had to move to school and the hostel I've been staying in hasn't exactly been the best of places to live in. It's not bad, it's just a place a typical Nigeria would call a "face me I face you" which basically just means that when I come out of my room in the morning, the first thing I see facing me is my neighbour's door... And that is where the name is gotten from, because each door is facing each other down the hall.
Anyways, today was one of those days where I found myself thinking about the struggles of having to live in a place like this, a struggle that I no longer see as one because I've gotten used to it and all of a sudden it feels like it's something normal.
You see I had woken up very early this morning to do some laundry and that wasn't because I felt like doing my laundry early in the morning, but because I had to, in order to get enough space to dry up the clothes.
Now in as much as that might not be considered as a sign of living in the trenches for you, having to wake up early just so that someone else doesn't beat you to it, does. And this is because if you happen to live in a private neighborhood with constant power supply and a washing machine (all of which cost money), you wouldn't even need to look for space to dry out your clothes.
Also, another sign that I've come to overlook is having to fetch water on time whenever there's power supply, just so that I could have enough water in my room before the power supply goes off and the water goes dry. Although, unlike what the majority of you believe, we do have enough water over here in Africa (Nigeria to be precise), we just don't have steady power supply to actually pump those water from the ground.
So what most of us do is try to fetch and store in gallons whenever there is power supply, so that we don't have to go out to buy gallons of water just so that we could have water at home. Another option when there isn't power supply is having to turn on your generator, but then again, not every hostel has a generator here.
So there are other many other factors that reminds me of being in the trenches, but this two just stands out for me. I guess it's good to get a reality check every now and then.