BRICK BY BRICK

You can be born with a silver spoon in your mouth and still end up eating with your hands. I learned that before I was old enough to understand what a silver spoon meant. I was ten when my father died. Ten. At that age, my biggest problems were supposed to be unfinished homework, cartoons I wasn’t allowed to watch, and whatever punishment my mother had waiting for me when I misbehaved. Instead, I learned that adults could cry too. I remember looking at the people around me and wondering why everyone suddenly looked different. Why were they whispering? Why was everyone moving so slowly? Why did nobody want to look me in the eyes? Nobody sat me down and explained what death meant. Maybe they thought I was too young. Maybe they were trying to protect me. But children understand more than adults give them credit for. I knew something had changed. I just didn’t know how much. My father’s death didn’t only take my father. It took away the version of my life I thought I was going to have. And somehow, that wasn’t even the hardest part. Because after he was gone, everything he had built began disappearing too. The money. The comfort. The security. The future everyone assumed we had. Gone. My older brother, the first son, eventually squandered much of what my father had worked so hard to leave behind. I won’t go into the details. Some stories are better told without turning family wounds into entertainment. All I knew was that one day, we had something. And the next thing I knew, we were starting again. From scratch. That was when I learned one of life’s cruelest lessons: Nobody is coming to save you. Not always. Sometimes, you have to save yourself. So I started building. Not with money. Not with connections. Not with some grand plan. I started with whatever I could find. At thirteen, I was carrying blocks for ₦2,000. Sweeping floors in bookshops. Stocking shelves in supermarkets. Doing whatever work would put something in my pocket. While other children were figuring out who they wanted to become, I was figuring out how to survive long enough to become anyone at all. I didn’t know it then, but every block I carried was teaching me something. Every long day. Every rejection. Every time I came home tired. Every time I looked at my life and wondered if this was all it was going to be. They were all bricks. And without knowing it, I was building something. Not a house. Not yet. I was building me. Years later, I would pick up a camera. And somehow, the boy who once carried other people’s bricks would discover that he could build worlds with a lens. That is where this story really begins.