A SAMPLE ESSAY ON REM'Y NGAMIJE'S STORY "THE NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH"

Godwin Siundu (Ed), A Silent Song And Other Stories.

"Street life is dehumanizing."Using illustrations from Rem'y Ngamije's story, "The Neighbourhood Watch," validate this statement. 

In Rem'y Ngamije's story, "TheNeighbourhood Watch ", the street families are forced to settle for inadequate and bad food, poor shelter, bad stench, diseases and pessimism. These challenges attempt to derail their humanness. 

Firstly, there is inadequate and bad food on the streets.  The Neighbourhood Watch, the ad hoc family on the streets wake up to a chorus of yawns sprinkled with stretching to suggest hunger. Elias, the senior most member of the family, uses his amiable nature on the kitchen staff in city's hotels and restaurants to beg for food. Sometimes, the staff leave out almost decaying produce for them. These include some potatoes with broken skins, mangoes which dimples at the slightest pressure and wrinkled carrots. On most ocassions, the Neighbourhood Watch forage for bins with the hope of finding some semi-fresh morsels. By morning, the sun turns the morsels into rotting heaps so they have to wake up early. Elias and Lazarus flashback to a time that Elias had to run away when he found a thrown baby with an umbilical cord twisted around its neck. Such trauma accompanied by foraging for food, also includes finding used condoms, women's things with blood on them, as well as bad food.

Secondly, the street families endure poor shelter. In the Neighbourhood Watch, the bridge's underside is their precious real estate. The exposed and outdoor shelter is envied by rival posses  as it remains dry when it rains, and wards off some cold during the winter. The NW family has been forced to defend  such a deplorable shelter from other groups implying that this 'Headquarters ' as the NW calls it, is even better than other street families' shelter. To barricade it from the other rival groups, the 'NW' is sprayed on the bridge's supporting column and has the same effect  as musty pee at the edge of a leopard's territory. The complacency by the NW at being sheltered on the the bridge's underside and the fight over it highlights the dehumanizing effect of the streets.

Thirdly, disease attack and no medication thereby is a commonplace occurrence on the streets. Elias has a racking cough, probably from the poor sanitation in foraging through the bins for food  and sleeping  in cold at the bridge's underside.  He pulls the mucus through the back of his mouth and arcs a dollop away where it lands with a plop oblivious of the possibility  of even transmitting  the same to other members of the family. The cough becomes worse each day and sometimes  there is blood in the gunk from his chest but the street life having numbed his sensibilty, he waves everyone's concerns away. This illustrates the recklessness and indifference with which the street life has made Elias and his ilk to face their health with.

Fourthly, the life on the streets has pushed its victims into pessimism.  Elias, the senior most member of the 'Neighbourhood Watch',  seems to have his experience  on the streets make him resigned to this kind of life and has a disdain for emancipation.  When Elias first met the second member of the Neighbourhood Watch,Lazarus,and they decided to team up to make their lives bearable, Elias  holds to a maxim that the street snacks on those who regret and those who dream of a tomorrow  that still requires today to be survived.  He  adds that the street has no future and that there is no today. And today they need food. Today they need shelter and today they need today to take care of today. This pessimism  also shows when Silas asks Elias why he has not tapped into his good talking terms with a Mrs. Bezuidenhout, who on Sundays, sits on her porch early in the evening  with her son, waiting for the Neighbourhood Watch to come by and give essentials, to ask for at least a space in her garage to settle in. Elias responds that in her generosity, Mrs. Bezuidenhout  takes from them more than she gives to them. While they need all of the street to survive the streets, he adds, Mrs. Bezuidenhout  takes the street away from them. This is a clear illustration that the street life has broken its victims  to a point that they show utter contempt to any attempt to emancipate them into dignity.

Other dehumanizing effects of the street life are: children and women's exploitation (Omagano as an example), police brutality and harassment  (Episode at Khomasdal), and constant fights and chaos.

The inadequate food, poor and no shelter, diseases and pessimism  on the streets have attempted to derail the street family members' humanness leading to their undignified lives on the street.