A story of a boy from Ampara a reflection of the state of our ‘Rural Youth’ Part 3

Continued from the previous blog entry

Then it was the case of how much liquid cleaner one could mix to mop the floor; it was hard enough to explain why a capful was needed and not any more. Once this had prematurely run out due to overuse, I said use a dab of Dettol and lo and behold I found the whole bottle used in one bucket! I had the bottle for years unused till that moment! Then there was an unopened bottle of Listerine mouthwash in the bathroom cabinet. I think the curiosity must have got the better of him, and he had opened it and swigged most of the bottle. When I came home and asked him there was only an embarrassed grin, and no attempt at explaining what had happened. I was so curious to know if he had drunk it and said it was fine, and I just wanted to know what actually happened to it, still no owning up that he even knew what I was talking about!!

One day he complained about a headache and I gave him two Panadols and said that should clear the headache. When I came back from work he had taken 2 every hour saying it was continuing and he thought that the more he took the better he would get. I was about to take him immediately to emergency to have his stomach pumped out as he could have died with the overdose. Mercifully he survived!

I took pains to teach him how my clothes should be washed. He had never washed clothes as his mother had done all that. So that was quite a learning experience for him. There again he had mixed a new trouser he had bought with an expensive sarong I had recently bought to wear to work as my stomach cut as a result of the bone graft did not permit me to wear trousers. Surprise surprise the color ran and the sarong was ruined. His trousers were black so that was fine.

I got him a new phone, something I had promised as I also needed to be in contact to give instructions and check his whereabouts, as I told him I had given his parents my word that I would take care of him. He wanted to listen to music all day when he worked so a chip was bought music, hundreds of songs were loaded. Then one day he came with another phone, he had been played out as it was exchanged for another phone that looked good but was an Alcatel which in his neck of the woods is a big name, but this was past the use by date as the battery was malfunctioning and new ones were not available for that type of phone. Imagine my fury at the stupid exchange!

My mistake was in giving him a post paid SIM with strict instructions that he could speak to his parents for 5 minutes each evening. Lo and behold he ran up a bill in two weeks that was double my monthly phone bill, by chatting with his friends all over the Western Province, working all over, security guards, working as farm laborers and construction site workers. The flip side was that once his exchanged phone stopped working, I could take my SIM back as he had no use for it. So I got out that problem with little grief.

To be continued in the next blog entry