JOY IN A HARD COUNTRY - by Bolu Tifeh

This morning,I watched two children fight over biscuit.Not metaphorically.Real fight.Real offence.Real “I’m not talking to you again” energy. One stormed away dramatically.The other shouted:“Then give me my sweet back!”Five minutes laterthey were laughing together again like heartbreak has never existed before.And somehow, that stayed with me. Because children do this thing adults have forgotten how to do:they return to joy quickly. Today is Children’s Day.And while adults are busy writing long speeches about “the future,”children are still busy being children.Running recklessly.Laughing with their full chest.Turning bottle caps into toys.Turning ordinary streets into race tracks.Falling down.Standing up.Crying loudly.Healing quickly. Sometimes I genuinely think childhood is the purest form of faith.Because how else do you explain children still finding joy so easily inside a country that keeps giving adults anxiety? A child can hear conversations about insecurity at night…and still wake up excited about party rice the next morning.That softness?That refusal to completely surrender joy?That is something powerful. But still…this Children’s Day feels emotionally incomplete.Not after Oyo.Not after classrooms suddenly started sounding like danger instead of learning.Not after some parents discovered that fear can wear school uniforms too. And maybe that is the most heartbreaking part:children are learning survival too early in this country.Too early. Some children now understand tension before they fully understand multiplication.Some know panic before they truly know peace.Some are already growing familiar with fear when their biggest concern should honestly just be cartoons and homework. Yet,today, I still saw children laughing anyway.Playing anyway.Arguing over little things anyway.Dreaming anyway. And maybe that is the miracle of childhood:its ability to keep producing light even when surrounded by heavy things. So today is not just for celebration.It is also for protection.For attention.For responsibility.For the children whose innocence this country keeps testing. Happy Children’s Day to every child still managing to smile loudly in a hard country.May life not force seriousness into your spirit too early.And may your childhood remain something you remember with softness instead of survival.

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