To live in this world is to accept the truth that nothing is perfect. When you were still a child, maybe you were told to believe that everything in this world is beautiful and happy, that everything is blissful and no harm will come your way. And I will not argue. In many people’s eyes, a child’s world is the perfect world. In his world, a little boy can play around the park as long as he wants. He will seldom be hungry because his mother will be there to feed him. And when he wants to, he can sleep and dream about his heroes, his toys and everything he could think of. But not everyone will have the chance to live a child’s dream. I for one did not experience that world. In my world, I was a boy forced to be a young man. In my dreams, I was working late at night carrying fruit boxes.

    I started working at a very young age. At seven, when all of the other kids were busy tinkering with their dolls and toys, I was out in the street grinding my bones. I did everything that other people in the neighborhood didn’t want to do. I washed cars, fetched water, carried boxes of fruit for selling - jobs that a typical seven-year old boy would not even think of. My mother left us to work in a foreign land because the pay she received at her local job was simply not enough to support me and my two little sisters. My father, on the other hand, was a womanizer who left us for another woman.

    At seven years old, I started my mornings with only one thing in mind: to make money. Before my mother left to work abroad, she entrusted me with taking care of my sisters. We were lucky that our relatives took us in; we had free shelter to at least keep us out of the streets. But my mother had to pay my relatives, and all that was left with her money went to our education. I needed extra income from part-time jobs to feed my sisters, so every morning, I hastily went around the neighborhood to find work.

    The very first job that I did was to fetch water for people. I will never forget it. Mainly because it was the hardest job of all the others I have ever done. Under the heat of the summer sun, I carried buckets of water as big as my seven-year-old body, some were almost bigger than I was. I filled them with water from the town well. The summer season cut the water supply short in my neighborhood and people needed someone to fetch water for them.

On and on I went, lumbering and clumsy at times. Sometimes, I would spill the water container I was carrying and people looked down on me with pity. But I never cried. I needed to be strong because I had two little sisters to feed.

When the summer season was over, I took another job as a store helper. The old lady in front of my house needed someone to carry the boxes of fruits that she would sell and I hastily applied for the job.

Because I was used to carrying heavy things, carrying the boxes of fruit was an easy job for me. Unlike fetching water, I only needed to walk a short distance from the storage room to the fruit shop. The old lady was also very generous to me. After each day of work, she would give me 3 apples for free. I would then run home as quickly as I could and give the apples to my two little sisters. I could not help but smile when I remember them hugging me after a long day of work.

Sometimes, during nights when I feel restless and I watch my two little sisters sleeping by my side, I think of my mother who was working alone in a foreign land. Was she as tired as I was? I knew that it was harder for her because she had no family by her side. For me, at least the hard times were tolerable because I had my two sisters to go home to after a long day of work. When nights like this came, tears would start to flow from my eyes.

     I continued doing part-time jobs until I eventually reached high school. I was larger than most kids my age because of the muscles I developed from doing hard physical labor. Some of my classmates were intimidated by me and I do not blame them. But one of my classmates, a pretty girl at that, was not. She told me that the examination for the school’s scholarship was already open and I should apply for it to save money. She knew that I was working because she saw me doing part-time jobs before and after school. That girl, as it turned out, ended up being my life partner today.

    I took the scholarship examination and I passed. Because of it, I was able to go through high school without paying a penny. That was one very happy moment for me. I studied hard for four years until I eventually reached my graduation day. Slowly, I was able to reach my dreams. I finished as one of the top 5 students in my batch and I graduated with several awards. But the best thing was, my mother went home to see my graduation. She finally decided to stay with us and start a small business instead of working abroad. Truly, that moment is one that I will never ever forget.

    Today, I am still finishing my second degree in college. I have many dreams to date and I am still on my way to fulfilling more of them. My two younger sisters are now professionals and are earning much more money than they had ever imagined. I stopped fetching water and carrying fruit boxes a long time ago. But there is one thing that I never stopped doing since the day I started my first job - to strive in reaching every single dream that I have and not succumb to life’s hardships and challenges. As the saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…”