SLUM

SLUM

Every day in the last two months, I walk past this place such a dwelling doubted if people really exist there. It not like every other place, it different, bizarre and spiteful, uncomfortable but comfortable for them. It a slum, dirty, and neglected. A squalid place where hungry, gloomy, unhealthy, dark, and skeletal children adore since it the only place they know. They play, run, laugh, and enjoy with all these unpleasantness unnoticed but there was this kid muddy and dirty like every other kid in this place.

She is mostly not seen even among other kids perhaps she is not comfortable being in this place, but then everyone living in this place seems uncomfortable to passersby. These kids run naked or sometimes in a worn-out cloth. They are trained by themselves with no parental care resulting in being disrespectful and arrogant to elders and others. She is special from looks but not different from the others. Always muddy and dirty, quiet with a face wrinkle, she must have stolen that face from the elders living in the place.

This slum is inhabited by mostly kids with unclear destinies and uncertain future like hers. Living an unpleasant lifestyle in an unsafe and hazardous place, a place only the neglected poor possesses with no troubles of sending out by humans but only by nature. A place not only possesses by the poor but also by filthy ugly animals who chill in dirty water, such nice people that allow animals to dwell with them. A place with unseen parent who hides themselves in corners afraid of the unstoppable agonies befalling their perhaps precious kids. At a glance, one will consider these kids as abandoned orphans with no guiding angel or guidance.   

As kids they know not the plights they are living, always dirty but hardy sick even without proper health care, always hungry yet they care less about food for even if they do, it trouble for parents to get them a proper and healthy meal. A nice cloth, good shoe, and play toys are like a taboo unaccepted in this slum, I never saw a single kid in a proper neat dress or with a play toy like other kids. These kids always look hungry, gloomy, and unhealthy but yet they run tirelessly playing in the neighborhood with an empty stomach and a forceful smiling face.  They are exposed to danger from nature and humans yet they care not because protection comes from God their creator.

The slum is a short story written by Esther Caulker

It prevail the life of typical slum kids.