Chapter 1 – Dust on My Feet
I was born in a place where the sun rose early, not because it loved us, but because it wanted to burn away what little hope we had before noon.
Ajegunle — that was the name of my world. A place where roofs were made of rust, walls were made of cracks, and streets were made of stories no one wanted to write down.
Mornings there had their own sound: the metallic clang of buckets being lowered into wells, women's voices calling out prices of bread and akara, the cough of old men lighting their first cigarette. Chickens darted between puddles of muddy water, chased by half-naked children whose laughter was the only thing in that place that didn't cost money.
Our one-room home sat at the very end of Olanrewaju Street, a corner so narrow you could shake hands with your neighbour without leaving your bed. It wasn't a house — it was a stubborn idea that refused to fall down. The zinc roof had holes the size of my palm. The wooden door had long been replaced by a faded blue curtain that flapped in the wind, letting in the smell of the gutter outside.
When the rain came, sleep became impossible. We would sit upright on the mattress — my father, my mother, and I — surrounded by bowls, buckets, and plastic containers, catching the drops before they soaked what little we owned. The sound of rain was supposed to be calming, but in our house, it was the sound of another sleepless night.
My father was a shoemaker. Not the kind with a shop and a signboard, just a wooden stool, a bag of tools, and a stubborn pair of hands that never gave up on a piece of leather. His fingers were blackened with shoe polish, his nails chipped and bent like the metal tacks he hammered into soles. He was the kind of man who measured his words the way he measured leather — carefully, slowly, as if afraid of wasting any.
Every morning, he would stand, straighten his back as best he could, and say, "Ehn, Michael, I am going to make people walk today."
It sounded like a joke, but I knew he meant it. Shoes were his way of keeping the world moving, even if the world never noticed.
I loved him. I respected him. But I hated his life.
When I looked at him, hunched over a pair of dusty sandals, I saw the future I refused to have. I didn't want to work from sunrise to sunset only to come home with enough money for garri and maybe a piece of fish if the day had been good. I wanted more. I didn't know how I would get it, but I knew I would.
School was supposed to be my escape. But school had its own ways of reminding me where I came from. Poverty was loud — it followed you into the classroom, sat next to you, and answered roll call on your behalf. My shoes had more stitches than the Bible had verses. My uniform smelled faintly of smoke because we cooked with firewood, and my notebooks had belonged to my cousins before me, their old names scratched out on the covers.
There was this boy, Tunde, whose father owned the bakery down the road. He was always neat — shirt tucked, hair brushed, shoes so shiny you could see your future in them. He liked to point at mine and say, "Michael, when will your father fix these properly?"
The others would laugh. I'd laugh too, but my laughter was the kind you give when you're holding your breath in pain.
One evening, I came home to find my father sitting outside on his stool, tools on the ground beside him. His eyes weren't on anything in particular. They were just… far away.
"Papa, what happened?" I asked.
"They took my space at the market," he said quietly. "The new rent… too high. They gave it to someone else."
The words hit me like cold water. That market was his battlefield, his pride. Without it, he was just a man with tools and no customers. I didn't know what to say. My mother was inside, stirring a pot of soup that smelled like it had given up halfway through cooking.
That night, as I lay on our thin mattress, staring at the water stains on the ceiling, I made myself a promise. I would not end up like him. I would not spend my life bending over other people's broken shoes. I would climb out of Ajegunle, even if I had to crawl on my belly to do it.
At the time, I thought my fight would be clean. I thought success was just hard work plus patience. I thought the world would clap for me when I made it.
But I didn't know yet that sometimes the road to success has no signpost — just a whisper in your ear asking how far you're willing to go.
And some whispers are loud enough to drown out everything else.