My Ghetto Life Is Killing Me

I crave for the days when as children we used to line up to fight. Yes, I mean “fight!” And, it was real rivalry. One group did not like another; one group challenged another. We got together and matched up one versus the other. Yet, we had to be fair. Usually there were leaders, older guys who chose who fought whom. And, the two contenders had to be about equal in size and strength. We would hold each other, punch each other, kick each other, and not much damage to be expected. Even when there were melees, it remained fair. This was then in villages on the countryside.

My ghetto life is killing me. There was this news a few weeks ago about this thirteen-year-old boy “grazed in the head by bullet.” According to the details, the teenage boy was walking along with a friend about 7:30 in the evening when some guys approached in a car and opened fire. Luckily the kid did not die. I have read so many headlines of young men murdered in the greater Miami metropolis all the times that we could consider this good news. He did not die.

I imagine that something is very wrong with my ghetto life. Where is a child fighting another without expecting to be killed? Where is a young man or a young woman going out and sitting in the park without expecting to be mugged? Where is an elderly person in his apartment without expecting some criminal breaking in and brutalizing him? Oh, I know. This nice life is left in the suburbs with more well-to-do people. It is left in the countryside with people, well, with people not so different and poor.

In the ghettoes, it is Black killing Black. Maybe it is minorities killing minorities! Who cares? It is poor people killing poor people. My friend got into an accident deep inside the ghetto once; and, the other driver had no insurance. My first reaction was why he had to go there at all. I mean. Our general approach is the abandonment of our poorer brothers inside the ghettoes. We don’t like them. We don’t want to be with them. We don’t want to be caught in their lines of fire. I don’t think that is far wrong. Who want to be shot? The problem is. How have we ended up with this ghetto life in the first place? It is by this very same abandonment. The more well-to-do people have abandoned the poor ones in the inner cities. And through ignorance, necessity, and the instinct to survive, our young people especially our young men have become violent destroyers of themselves and their environments.

In my village life was simple and rather nice. As kids we fought each other without causing major damages to ourselves and others. We never even once imagined the word killing. As young men and young women, we played, we walked, we held hands, and later we formed families. Most people there were far poorer than people in our cities today. But we had one core value. The young individuals did not feel abandoned and left alone to fend for themselves. Our parents and extended families were always there to lead us; our lives were monitored as if with a scope; and we were instructed to live for a better future. We were severely exhorted and even got spanked when we stepped out of line.

In my ghetto life, I am my own men. It was mentioned that the injured young man above knew his assailant. Why would somebody want to just waste a kid like that? We don’t know. But, in the ghetto we are our own men. We have no parents; or, they are powerless vis-à-vis our “ghetto lives”. We have to struggle to survive on our own, defending ourselves and our turfs. We therefore must possess the ultimate societal defensive weapon – the fire Arm. When the government intervenes, it usually means the end of us. They shoot us. They imprison us. Any which way, we are dead.

By E.C. GRANMOUN
E.C. Granmoun is the author of "The Social Worker" ebook on amazon.com
Join E.C. Granmoun on Facebook and Twitter