#Air-Clinic Writing Contest: Air Pollution, The Rise of Fumes
‘Mama Mama! They’re coming again! Mamaaaaaa’ Seun cried out for the third time that hour and for the third time his grandmother ran to console him in his delirious state.
‘Omo mi, it’s okay. There’s no one here, only me ehn. Please try and sleep my son..that’s a good boy’ and once again he drifted back to what promised to be a sound sleep.
But promises do get broken.
Which was what happened when SunShine Co., set up their refinery in the Afefe community years back.
The scales soon fell off their eyes as they realized that the activities were making it harder to see the sun shine as the horizon seemed masked in smog and was becoming a little more difficult to breathe.
They lodged complaints at their Local Council Development Area (LCDA) but quickly learned that it was an exercise in futility as briefcases had exchanged hands. Staging riots didn’t work either as the company management had rented the local police force as guards to scare away the people, terrorizing them with guns and teargas.
The effects of the air fumes was tangible for all to see. The only government hospital was overwhelmed with the cases of breathing-related complaints both new and exacerbations of existing disease.
Researchers from the big university in the city had come on several occasions to conduct studies on the increase in lung cancer and asthma cases in the community compared to the neighboring towns. Recommendations regarding sanctions against SunShine Co. had been made but never saw the light of day as the submitted spiral bound projects continued to accumulate dust in departmental cabinets, eventually forgotten by the researchers after completing their degrees.
All of this didn’t really matter to Seun, except that for the past month, he had not been able to play his favorite game of football with his gang because of the headaches. Now that seemed like eons ago, what mattered was the present, which consisted of grey-black, monsters made of smoke and grit that wanted to throttle the life out of him.
‘Mama! Mama!!!!!’
This was his fourth episode.
(350 words)
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