A place so many call home but so little is going on to improve human life. Sunset came and darkness fell, and I could feel my hair standing on the back of my neck. What will take place tonight? The smoke of coals coating the streets means no one would know who is coming until they are near you. Inhaling dries out the throat and sight is blurry. We are now being hunted by our own kind.

As I waited in fear to fall asleep, a loud disturbing scream was echoing in the silent night. Quickly I thought it was just kids trying to make fun outside. There was a long pause and again it started, this time the voice is that of an older woman screaming: “My son please don’t leave me”. After this scream there were boys running in the street, then the engine of the car and a gunshot. The whole of Lime Hill went silent and the barking dogs were only heard.

Someone’s child had just died on this innocent day and no one could go in search of the killers. Everyone was too scared to even breathe let alone step out of the door. This is an ultimate hood where killings happen and drugs are just normal things to the people of this helpless community. People are drunk during the day and life seems to pass them by. With no dreams coming together, from a distance the smell of booze strikes your nose.

Some of the people here work to try make an honest living and there are those who depend on favours and handouts from those in power. What has this wonderful place of mine become? We go down on our knees to we pray and it seems that all that is in vain. What now? Where do we go from here? My hood is the future your children will inherit from you. A generation of suffering, filled with sorrows and tears running like the Nile. Your heart wishes for no more tomorrows, because it has just become another day with no meaning.

The funeral draws closer and we are hoping that there are no more catastrophes leading to it. A mother’s child now lies in the cold, never to be part of Lime Hill. He is just a victim of circumstance to this pitiful world we still call home. As we get to live, the faults of life are displayed to us and we witness them. On Saturday the funeral takes place and the people come from the church. When the service commences, people keep asking themselves why the body that lies in that coffin today is not one of the known criminals of this Hood?!

Do we not have a future? How I wish to write you a happy script out of the movies only known to Hollywood, where dreams come true, everyone wears a smile and life goes one. From the mountain tops where we receive our salvation, we look for tomorrow more than anything. A hood with kids having fantasies where they are able to play in the streets and feel safe, that is my ideal Hood. But this is what we are confronted with; a bloody one.