Hunger Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Hunger - Essay Example His hand idly lay against his empty belly. Another hand reached upward to wipe the moisture from his eye as he looked out from the doorway, his eyes scanning across the street. The sounds of children playing were interrupted by the noise of shouting that occasionally erupted from one place or another. He swallowed before stepping out into the dirt of the street, the scents and the crust of the poor part of the city having no affect on him as he had lived within it his whole life. The growl in his belly, on the other hand, is a pain one can never get used to feeling. He began the search for food, for a resource from which to gain his meal for the day. The result of colonialism within Nigeria has displaced the cultural sense of survival, creating urban centers where once the natural order of society provided for itself. Urbanization has taken shelter and food from cultures that once knew how to work their land and use their resources in order to provide for themselves. Now, the cities are filled with generations who struggle still to adapt and to pull themselves out of poverty. He closed his eyes for a moment before moving through the city. He thought about a woman he knew who might give him a meal if he talked nicely to her. He hadn’t gone to her in a long time, but she had given him food before when he had happened by when she was cooking. He had to cross the city a bit to get near her home, but it was worth it if he got a cooked meal. He moved quickly from place to place, waving at those he knew until he was stopped dead in his tracks for a moment. He looked up and saw the office of a lawyer that he knew, a man who had bought his way into the graces of the mayor of the town. He saw the son of the mayor going into that office, with his clean white shirt and black trousers, not to mention the shiny black automobile from which he had emerged. â€Å"Lagos, the current capital city and perhaps the most important urban settlement in Nigeria, if not on the We st African coast, typifies a case of urban development in a rural context. The settlement has grown from a 19th century fishing and agricultural settlement to become a late 20th century metropolitan centre† (Baker184). The mayor’s son walked into the office, the whirring of the fan creating a small breeze through the open door. He ran his hand down his neck, bothered that his father had sent him on this errand, his life interrupted by this chore. He grinned for a moment thinking of the women from the night before, their lithe bodies undulating to the music, his throat filled with the drink that made his eyes glassy and filled him with a wildness that he could not express without it. He blew out a small bit of air and focused on the office door in front of him. â€Å"I have it, I have it† he said, knowing that his position in the city was dependant upon giving this tribute to the mayor, the power of that man enough to give him access to what he needed to sustain h is business. He fumbled around with a key to a drawer for a minute until it popped open. He pulled out a big envelope and surreptitiously filled it until it was full. He locked the metal clasp on it had and handed it to the mayor’s son, his sweating fingers leaving a mark upon the paper. The mayor’s son sneered then turned and left the office, still annoyed that his sleep and his day had been interrupted for such a task. â€Å"In today’s Nigeria corruption has become a problem with implications for development planning, power positions, and balances, the