POVERTY WILL SHRINK YOU

Tolúwalàṣẹ looked at her father. He was a small man. No, not short, not thin, small. Her father was tall, he was built the way labourers are. But the

man he kneeled before was a stubby man with a beer belly, and a hostile demeanour. He wore a well-tailored tunic. He was the big man. Tolúwalàṣẹ contrasted her father’s yellow lace that reminded her of malaria urine with the big man’s senator shiny and smooth material, he looked like a throwback come alive.

She looked at her siblings and their mother, all kneeling before the big man and felt like throwing something, like squeezing something, doing anything but grovel before her Dad’s employer. The big man had laid her father off after accusing him of stealing from him. The big man said he had put the #500 change in the car safe to test the small man. The small man had seen the loose change and taken it because the big man always told him to take the change from the safe. But the big man said, “I did not ask you to take it THAT day. That is stealing. I am a very principled man and I will tolerate pilfering”.

Pilfering!!!! He kept screaming until Tolúwalàṣẹ began to feel like her father had done more than keep the change.

Eventually, the big man asked the small man to get up

“It is because of these children and this woman. I don’t tolerate Pilfering”.

They all stood up and went home. They did not talk about it. There were no words to articulate the indignity they felt. They all knew that if they did not grovel before that man, they would grovel before many others to survive. They were small. That is the nature of poverty. It shrinks. Poverty shrinks.