Young Hustler

The moment I saw today’s contest prompt, I couldn’t help but smile a bit. This isn’t because the topic was funny to me, no. It was because it brought back memories. Old memories came flooding in, unfortunately I only will be able to tell one of these many stories in my head today.

The first time I made money was basically my first job and it was at a young age, sometime around 14 years or thereabout (maybe not so young age). You see, I and a couple of friends started hustling around that age not because our parents were poor and couldn’t provide for us, it was simply because we just wanted to hold our own cash, at least that was my reason.

_{Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel}

There was three of us and we did almost everything. We worked at construction sites where we helped them to carry mixed cement or sands and blocks to the professional workers. On days where we weren’t working on construction sites, we were in the bush, looking for firewood to sell to women who cook with firewoods. We basically were doing every menial job that came our way and in every job we did, I got paid.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the first day I got my first pay because they were a lot of days with a lot of jobs and not so much money but the one job I do remember was one that I got punished for.

One of my friends had informed me about a particular building where someone was looking for a painter to paint his room. The owner of the room had asked my friend if he knew anyone and my friend immediately told him that he would do it himself with the help of his friends and the man agreed.

When the three of us got there, we immediately got to work but because of how little we were back then, we didn’t finish until it was dark and when we were done, we quickly washed up and waited for our friend (the one who told us about the job) to go get our money from the man and that was when things started taking a turn that we didn’t like.

You see, prior to that time, we had been so excited about the job that we didn’t bargain a price with the man, so when my friend went to meet him for our payment, he gave him an amount that can’t even be given as bribe to a roadside policeman these days, he gave him N100 (hundred naira) to share among the three of us.

For those who don’t stay in Nigeria and don’t know how little N100 is worth, it’s about 0.24 United States dollar, if not lower and this was what he gave us to share among the three of us.

I ended up going home with N30 that day while the guy who told us about the job took N40 and our other friend collected the remaining N30 and when I got home that night, I received the beating of my life.

I remember my dad asking me to show him the money I made after I told him I went out for a job and not to go play with my friends like he thought but when I brought out the N30, it sort of doubled my punishment.

So there you have it, my first earning that I can remember.

_{This is a contest hosted by the Hive Learners Community, if you want to participate in it, please read the post below..}

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