To Hilary, hunger was not a stranger.
"I know the voice of hunger very well, it's a hollow echo in my stomach that no amount of laughter can silence." He confided in me one afternoon while we were playing football.
" I'll try and see if I can get you something from our kitchen." I replied.
Hilary's Mom, Florence, and my mom grew up together in the same neighborhood, and though they were not related by blood, they grew into very close friends.
Florence married very early, and when her husband died years later, she was left alone to cater for five children with nothing but subsistence farming to fall back on. They soon became impoverished. Eventually She secured a cleaning job at a school, but the salary was so meagre that she could not adequately provide for her children.
Hilary was her last child and since he was the closest to me in age, we became very good friends. But they were so poor that even the poor considered them poor. They were always sent out of school for one unpaid fee or another.
My Mom and Dad lived in the city, and though we were not wealthy, we were still better off.
The bond our mothers had shared since childhood, drew Hilary and me closer, almost like brothers. Florence and her children often came around to beg for food and clothes, whenever we visited the village.
My grandma served us food in one big plate—a chipped enamel dish with blue edges, dented and scratched from years of use. She would say that boys ate a lot.
When she set it between Hilary and I. “Share it well,” she’d say, and we always did. Except that I forfeited my own ration several times, just so my "brother" could have enough.
“Take the bigger piece,” I’d whisper so many times.
“Thank you very much,” he would push the plate toward himself, grinning.
At night, we would share our dreams and aspirations— and everything we wanted to become in the future.
“One day,” Hilary said once, pointing to the old enamel plate, “we’ll have our own plates. Each one filled with meat and rice.”
I laughed. “Rice every day?”
“Yes, I love it alot because we don't get to eat it regularly in our home. I'll eat it with lots of meat, assorted.
I liked him because he was ambitious, always dreaming of going far away, making money and becoming very rich. I had no doubt he would succeed because he was intelligent and a suave talker.
Years passed. He managed to finish secondary school. Hunger gave way to ambition. Gifted with words, he began mingling and eventually worked his way up to becoming the personal assistant of a notable politician. That was his breakthrough. He soon became a politician himself, with cameras trailing him everywhere. He rose—just like he had always said he would.
But wealth changes the air between people.
At a gala in the city, I reached out to clap him on the back. “Hilary, my brother!”
He gave a stiff smile, then turned to a group of men in suits. “Gentlemen, ..... ”
The way he dismissed me, made me so ashamed. I stood there, a stranger in the crowd, my heart heavy.
He completely ignored me, like I never existed.
Later that night, I went to meet him again. “Hilary, am I no longer good enough for you, because you are now a big man?”
He frowned, loosening his tie. “You don’t understand. We live in different worlds now. I've left the old one behind, moved on. You should too!
“Really!” I snapped. “You bite the finger that fed you?”
For a moment, his eyes flickered—memory tugging at him—but he turned away, choosing not to remember the past. “That was then. This is now. This success story has always been written in the stars."
Months later, the village hosted the harvest festival. I returned to visit Grandma and watched as Hilary's convoy kicked up the same dust we once ran barefoot through.
Grandma’s old house sagged with age, but inside, one thing remained unchanged. On a wooden shelf, covered in dust, sat the enamel dish.
When I saw it, I froze.
I stepped closer, “The plate…” my voice broke. “It’s still here.”
I stared at it for too long as I remembered how Hilary and I used to eat from it.
I smiled cynically. “Then he had nothing.” Now success has made Hilary forget where he started from.
That night, under the same starry sky of our childhood, I thought to myself;
Why is my own success not written in the stars?
Why is it being delayed?
And in that moment, I felt that true success should not divide friends — rather it should remind them of how far they’d come, together.
All images are AI.
Thank you very much for reading.
