The Child in your house, is someone's child. Omo odo is pikin too!!
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By Omolola Olakunri.
No child selects their parents.
There is no selection process in heaven where children queue to choose their pedigree. If there were, no child would volunteer to be born into rape, into war, into a room with an empty pot and a leaking roof.
Yet some parents act as though they did the choosing. Especially those blessed with wealth, titles, a gate, and a generator. Because of status, they begin to believe their children are anointed. Special. Different. Chosen.
The latest headlines caused an uproar. A mother allegedly tied up her domestic help for weeks, simply because she could. Simply because she thought there would be no consequence. This is one of the extreme cases that make the news from time to time, but we have all witnessed milder versions of this cruelty almost daily.
At an eatery, the heirs eat fried rice with barbecued chicken, with sides of salad, ice cream, and doughnuts. The househelp gets a dehydrated meat pie and a sachet of water.
We have seen it unfold on family outings. Parents decked in designer labels. Their children in the latest Jordan sneakers. Then the househelp comes along, the same age as the middle child, dressed in cheap ankara fabric and thrift shoes.
Same sun on both heads.
Different value assigned.
When do we flip that switch? How do we turn kindness on for our own and off for the children of others, knowing fully well that circumstance, not biology, separates a prince from a pauper?
What drives us to treat other people’s children so poorly that we sometimes forget there is a God who sits over the affairs of men? Perhaps we suffered to escape lack, so anything that remotely resembles it must be kept outside the gate. The househelp becomes a walking reminder of where we came from. Cruelty becomes distance.
Perhaps culture taught us the class reality that ‘omo odo is not pikin.’ Rank over relationship. Status over compassion.
Or perhaps the issue is not wealth at all, but power. Cruelty is not always a product of affluence. Sometimes it is simply the misuse of power. Give one person complete control over another, and character is revealed. What makes this even more painful is that many of these children are not in our homes because they lack parents who love them. They are there because poverty forced difficult choices.
An omo odo is pikin too..
A child with dreams, with talents and ambitions that stretch beyond sweeping compounds and washing plates. Poor parents place their children with families that have the financial wherewithal to provide opportunities they cannot afford. Some ask that their children be paid a salary. Others ask only that their child’s service be rewarded with an education, vocational training, or an apprenticeship.
They hope their daughter will learn tailoring, hairdressing, catering, or a trade that can change the trajectory of her life. They hope their son will go to school, learn a skill, and return home with a future larger than the one poverty offered. None of them send their child away to be physically abused. None of them send their child away to be starved for days on end. None of them send their child away to be tied up, humiliated, denied an education, or treated as less than human.
Behind every househelp is often a mother praying, a father hoping, and a family making the best decision they can with resources they do not have. Their poverty may have placed the child in another person’s home, but it did not reduce that child’s humanity..
We forget how far we have come, and all the elements that helped us on our way. The phone call that opened a door. The introduction to an Investor. The Uncle who took a risk in our future. Much of what we become is shaped by relationships, opportunities, and the grace of people who chose to help us. Why then do we not extend that same hand to the less privileged child in our household?
Before we ask how anyone could tie up a child, perhaps we should ask smaller questions of ourselves.
Does the child in our home eat with dignity? Sleep with dignity? Learn with dignity?
Speak without fear?
Perhaps part of the problem begins with language. We use the word, ‘househelp’ so often that we stop seeing them as children. The task becomes more visible than the person performing it. Wickedness becomes normal when people believe they arrived where they are, solely through their own effort. Those who cannot match their wealth, education, or opportunities are seen as lesser mortals.
The boy tied up at the back of the house, with lacerations from various beatings, is a reminder of what happens when people forget that every child, regardless of circumstance, deserves dignity and decency.
Thankfully, this is not the whole story of us, even if it is often the loudest.
There are too many good people in Nigeria for that.
Quietly. No cameras. No philanthropy posts. They simply do right.
They reach out and mentor. They stand in the gap. They register the househelp for examinations, they pay for vocational training, tailoring, hairdressing, catering. Not just sweeping and cooking.
There are families who quietly sponsor their domestic helps through university, take them on family vacations, and expose them to opportunities they may never have imagined. Some of these children have gone on to build remarkable lives of their own.
These people remind us that kindness is not complicated. It is simply costly to pride.
Being good never diminished anyone.
And when we look with compassion at the poor child in our house, we are really remembering ourselves. Remembering that the breath in our lungs, the roof over our heads, the children at our table it is all grace.
The child you didn’t choose, God did.
Treat them like it.
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