We live in a world where trust is hard to get now, when I was a teen growing up my neighbors were like my second family, back then my family and I lived in a compound that had only four apartments including ours, to me Life then was really sweet and interesting, we had yoruba neighbors, Hausa neighbors and the other family was an Urhobo family while we Ijaws, then we lived brothers and sisters, we the children played together and ate from same plate sometimes, my family was even more close to the hausa family. We were so close that sometimes we slept at each others houses, that family consisted of the father, mother and two children, the father was shell police officer then, so anytime the company was throwing party, of course my younger and I would attend like Vips just as their children.
For the yoruba’s we were close too, I remember back then the mother in that home was a nurse and most times we the children would play football and end up scraping bodies on the cemented floor and trust the nurse to hold us down and apply spirit or iodine, and yes sometimes we play in their house and even sleep off only to wake up on my bed at home. But the friendships didn’t really last they relocated back to Lagos because their father was a pastor and he was transferred back to lagos, and for the other family, something happened between the husband and the wife so they went their separate ways and they moved out from that compound.
When I got into the university, I started staying with my elder brother and his family and then again where we stayed consisted of four apartments, Although my brothers children would sometimes play with the neighbors children but not often, sincerely life isn’t as it used to be with so many stories flying around, we only let them play together under our watch, sometimes children tend to copy characters and they don’t go for the good characters, this is true because one of my nieces decided to copy one of the children who was stammerer back then.
That family who has child that stammerers were good people though, I remember when our apartment almost caught fire and we had to run ouy from the house that night to stay outside as everywhere was filled with smoke, they were the only people that came out from their house and stayed with us, our Landlords house that was directly above us didn’t even bother to come out to check what was going on with his tenants, the wife was around and she was peeping from her window but that was all she did and after a few months the next thing we got was a quit letter from their lawyer without any explanation or reason.
So we moved to another apartment, and thanfully we got a sweet neighbor, a newly wedded couple who didn’t have children yet, they were kind to us as we were to them, they ate from house and we also did from their from the house, the children loved them so much, and when I started baking they were the first people to give me my first job and they even went as far as recommending me to their work place and colleges but sadly they needed a bigger apartment best reasons known to them so they moved out, and yes we are the kind of neighbors that we’d like.
All photos were Ai generated
