The African Prince.

EPISODE 2: Under The Bridge

Episode 2

The street that morning smelled like wet dust.

Mama and I walked without knowing where our legs were taking us. When life has thrown you out so many times, after a while, you just walk. You don’t even ask where anymore.

We ended up under the bridge again—the same one we had slept under two years ago. The noise of cars overhead was like thunder that never stopped. The smell of urine and smoke from burnt tires mixed in the air. This was home now.

I spread the nylon bag on the floor so Mama could sit. I stayed standing, watching people pass like ghosts. In Lagos, everybody is in a hurry. Nobody sees you.

My stomach started making noise, but we hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Mama opened her wrapper and brought out two small pieces of bread she had hidden. She gave me one. “Eat, my son.”

“Mama, you eat too,” I said.

She smiled. “I will manage. You need the strength more.”

I hate that smile. That smile that pretends everything is fine. That smile that hides the pain in her eyes.

As I chewed, I kept thinking: is this my whole life? To grow up and die on the street?

That was the day something snapped inside me. I decided that even if it killed me, I would find a way out.

In the afternoon, I left Mama under the bridge and went to the motor park. I begged the bus drivers to let me help call passengers. Some of them chased me away, but one agbero looked at me and said, “Oya, try. If you sabi bring passengers, I go give you fifty naira.”

So I started shouting like my life depended on it.

“Oshodi! Oshodi! Enter with your change o!”

The first time I got fifty naira, it felt like I had touched gold. By evening, I brought one hundred and fifty naira back to Mama.

She hugged me so tightly I thought my bones would break. “My son is a man already,” she said softly.

That night, we slept under the bridge, holding that small money like it was a key to a better life.

But Lagos doesn’t let you dream for long.

Two days later, I came back from the park and found Mama lying on the ground. She wasn’t moving.

“Mama!” I shouted, shaking her. Her eyes opened slowly. “I’m fine,” she whispered, but her lips were dry, her skin was hot.

“No, you are not fine,” I said. Fear climbed my throat like smoke.

I begged a market woman for water and poured it on her head. She tried to sit up, but her body was weak.

For the first time, I realized that if anything happened to Mama, I had nobody.

That night I didn’t sleep. I just watched her chest rise and fall, praying silently.

The next morning, I knew I had to do something. Hustling at the park wouldn’t be enough. I needed more.

I decided to go to a part of Lagos I had never been to before. Maybe someone there would give me work.

I didn’t know that this decision would change my life.

Because at the end of that day, I was going to meet someone who had been looking for me for eighteen years.

And when he found me, nothing would ever be the same again.