Looking through the window that overlooked the highway that passed behind the high-rise apartment building where he lived in Benghazi, Libya, Aliyu noticed how cars were passing each other. It was already 3 in the afternoon, and I had been standing there looking at these cars for an hour. He could see his other two stepsisters whose parents were foreigners in his mind. He recalled how one day Patricia’s European father came to Ghana and took his daughter back to his country. Six months later, his other sister, Cecilia, was also kidnapped by her Chinese father back to Taiwan. During these two occasions, he could see his mother’s face distorted by pain each time one of them said goodbye to his mother.

The departure of Patricia, her older half-sister, was particularly cruel to her mother. Tears ran freely down her cheeks as she held Patricia’s wrists tightly, saying goodbye. Back then, Aliyu had worked hard for several days to ease her mother’s pain and bandage the wounds in her aging heart. Being the youngest and the darkest of his two stepsisters, he had to clean up the emotional mess left by his stepsisters who left.

Growing up, Aliyu’s mother and two other stepsisters lived in a room under a leaky tin roof between four brick walls. Every night before going to bed, they first had to place the empty Milo cans in strategic places to detect leaks when it rained. Aliyu was never attracted to going abroad just to get rich. He was driven to leave Africa by the pain of the past. ‘

“I’m going to work hard, Mom, so I can have something.” Aliyu assured her mother before deciding to travel by road to Libya. His dad was drunk and irresponsible, he was mean and violent when he had too much. He dated early in the marriage, but visited his mother once or twice a year, drunk and demanding sexual satisfaction. When their visits stopped, Aliyu’s mother had had another baby, who died in childbirth, her jaw broken by the relentless blows of her father.

Aliyu was told that her father left her mother for another woman when she was only two years old. He returned to his mother’s fold when it broke up and Aliyu was six years old. He left her again for a younger woman when Aliyu was thirteen, came back when she was 21, left when she was 22, and came back when she was 24. It was really irritating to see Aliyu’s dad get rid of his mom, once the fortune began. to smile at him. him and, only to get rid of her in hard times. There are some women who will forgive a husband for his sexual sins as long as he appreciates and supports the family. Aliyu’s mom was that kind of woman. Dad was an older man; it was old-fashioned, but he often tended to regard pretty young women as luscious young ladies.

The pain of Aliyu’s past led him to become a slave in post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya. Aliyu was just one of many young Africans whose parents and the societies in which they lived had failed them.