Before the Chaos

Chapter Five: When Hope Got Expensive

The teenage years are supposed to be that sweet spot between innocence and awareness — when you begin to imagine the life you want, without yet realizing how hard it’ll be to get it.

I was a teenager when I started dreaming big — not just about school, but about the kind of man I wanted to become. A responsible one. An engineer. Someone who would lift his family, build a career, and maybe one day, change the world.

It wasn’t a fantasy. It felt logical.

There was a clear formula back then — at least, so we thought:

Go to school. Study hard. Avoid distractions. Graduate. Get a good job.

That was it. The system said if you ticked all the right boxes, life would reward you with comfort, or at least stability. And because I was a bright student, I believed it.

But the thing about being a teenager in this country is that life starts hinting at the truth early — very softly, almost politely at first. Then louder. Then painfully.

In my teens, I thought hope was enough.

I believed my hard work would be noticed. That excellence had its own gravitational pull. I imagined walking into a job interview, being asked what I studied, and impressing everyone in the room with my answers. I thought success was something you could schedule — like a flight you just had to book early.

I didn’t know the system had its own language.

I didn’t know that it favored noise over knowledge, connection over competence.

That you could be excellent and still invisible.

At the time, I looked up to people who “made it” and thought I just had to follow in their footsteps. I didn’t realize many of those footsteps were carried by privilege, influence, or bribery.

Some people were born at the finish line. The rest of us were still folding our shoelaces.

Reality doesn’t slap you all at once — it taps you over time.

I remember watching the news one day and hearing that billions had gone missing from a government account — and nothing happened. Nobody resigned. Nobody was arrested. By next week, something else had taken over the headlines.

That was when I began to understand:

In this place, corruption didn’t just survive. It thrived.

And that realization changed how I saw everything.

I started noticing the little bribes in school — to register for exams faster, to get the attention of lecturers, to get “assistance” during practicals.

I heard stories of classmates who got into departments not because they passed the cutoff mark, but because someone somewhere “made a call.”

At first, I was angry. Then confused. Then numb.

The more you stay in this system, the more you learn to lower your expectations.

Because the higher your hopes, the harder they fall.

It wasn’t just school or the economy. There was always something else lurking — fear.

I was a teenager when the bombings in the North got worse. We’d hear about students in other states being killed, schools shut down, entire towns emptied.

And even though I didn’t live in those areas, the fear still crept in.

What if it comes here?

What if one day, I go to class and don’t come back?

We didn’t live in a war zone, but we lived with war on our minds.

Fuel scarcity became a regular event — not a crisis, but a routine.

People queued for hours. Generators roared louder than televisions. Our studies were often lit by candlelight, or by the battery of a dying phone we weren’t supposed to be using.

Our parents rationed everything — fuel, money, food, emotions.

We didn’t think it was strange. That was just life.

Until we heard how people lived elsewhere — how power was stable, food was affordable, and public transport worked. That’s when it started to sting.

That’s when the air got heavier.

And hope? It started to cost more.

We rarely talked about mental health.

Nobody sat you down to ask, “How are you coping?”

We just… kept moving.

But it was there — the anxiety, the pressure, the fear of a future that seemed allergic to planning.

You’d hear things like:

“Just do your best and leave the rest to God.”

And that sounded comforting — until you realized “the rest” was doing most of the work.

We masked our worry with jokes.

We laughed at the news.

We turned our pain into memes.

And when the lights went out — again — we sighed, opened the windows, and just went on.

I remember one day, there was a total blackout for almost four days. No light, no fuel, water tank dry. The generator man said, “Fuel don finish for my supplier too.”

I sat outside that night, watching the sky — not for stars, but for any sign that tomorrow would be better.

That’s what teenage hope in this country looked like:

Sitting in the dark, still expecting light.

By the end of my teenage years, something shifted inside me.

I still wanted to be great — but now, my definition of “great” had changed.

I no longer dreamed of luxury. I just wanted security.

I wanted a life where things worked.

Where I wouldn’t have to bribe my way through the basics.

Where merit mattered.

I didn’t stop dreaming — I just learned to dream cautiously.

To attach my hopes to things within reach, and avoid heartbreak from the ones beyond my control.

Some people will call that settling.

But to me, it was survival.

Hope had become too expensive to waste.