My boys. Our boys? Whose boys?

As a fairly frequent resident of the Eko (not the suites oh. I beg $400-$500 per night for wetin?) I occasionally feel the need to escape the secure surroundings and saunter outside the gates into the big bad world of V.I. Most times I turn left and make my way to the Oceanview restaurant to satisfy my obsession with all things sweet and calorific but other times I turn right to head to the roundabout to satisfy my obsession with all things sensational and unbelievable - Naija newspapers and magazines.

As always I run the gauntlet of the phone card sellers at the gate who believe that my eyesight is failing and as such they must hold, and wave and sometimes actually thrust these brightly coloured delicacies right in my face before I can recognise them for what they are.

I generally ignore them and make my way merrily along oblivious to the carnage around me. I wonder how many okadas end up under 4 x4s in a typical day in Lagos? Surely this area would be a good place to start such a study.

Anyway on one of these journeys I was surprised to see a group of boys sitting with their backs against the wall of the hotel basically having a laugh amongst themselves. One of them was lying prostrate and did not seem at all well. Busybody that I am I called one of the boys over and naturally they all came. What are you doing here, I enquired? It turns out that this is their home\office where they run their windshield cleaning business and also where they live. By the way good people of Lagos (and anywhere else) there is no need to switch on your wipers and spray these kids with water as they approach your car. A wave of the hand and a stern look should suffice. Aba. I gave them each enough money to get through the day plus some extra for their sick friend to go and get some medicine and moved on but the image stuck with me.

Staggering. Think about it. A suite in the Eko, $400, which is usually the preserve of people who are not actually paying for it themselves i.e - politicians (and other criminals), businessmen etc and yet outside the gate homeless children living on N100-200 per day. Am I making too big a deal out of this?Is it just me? I mean I don't see any homeless children outside any of the hotels in US, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Ireland etc that I have visited.

So what can be done? What should be done? I do not recall children sleeping rough in the streets when I was younger. The only beggars then were the people from Chad (who also seem to be returning to our streets with their multitude of children. Hey, if you don't have DSTV you have to entertain yourself somehow). These kids should surely be in school at least to get the rudimentary principles of education? Or is it better for them to be put into a programme where they can learn skills such as auto repair,plumbing, electrical etc. I don't know. Do these programmes even exist? Should the hotel be doing something to help them since they are practically neighbours?

After an encounter like this it is always difficult to return to the sanctity of the hotel with any kind of pleasure.