Age is just a number - Adulthood is defined by actions

He lifted the 2 kegs filled with 25 litres of water and began making his way slowly up the stairs. I watched the muscles in his shoulders bunch, perspiration forming little glistening beads that highlighted the darkness of his skin.

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As I followed behind with a 20 litre bucket balanced on my head, all I could think of was how much this baby of yesterday had grown into a man. Even though he was yet to be one by the law.

I had watched this particular child being brought into the world, even then he was as resilient as he was now, not shedding a single tear until he was spanked on his behind by one of the midwives.

We grew up together in the same house, I watched him receive the biggest plates of food and have all his requests granted because he was the last child. I used to spite him then, I was the one who usually helped my older siblings get certain privileges but their loyalty shifted when I got pushed to 3rd child.

He dropped the 2 kegs and wiped sweat off his brow. I noticed that his arms were getting bulkier by the day, my mother had said just the day before that it was because he carried 50 litres of water up the stairs almost every day. I thought it was because he was becoming more mature as the days went by.

“Are your arms paining you?” I asked dropping the bucket from my head and going over to inspect his arms as if I expected them to fall off from their hinges. He towered over me by a full feet so I had to look up at him as I spoke.

He shook his head in response to my question.

“My shoulders hurt. I think I'll take some painkillers when we're done” The water situation in our house had made us climb the 2 flight of stairs that led to our apartment just to get some water that we would use for chores and cooking.

I rubbed his arm fondly, “I think we should stop fetching now. You still have to prepare for work. Just go get some rest. When I'm done cooking, I'll wake you up”

He nodded and lifted the kegs into the house while I followed behind with my bucket of water.

If it were left to me, I would have declared my brother and all the teenagers who were like him, adults. I wasn't a fan of the “Adult at 18” mentality as required by my country and many others because I believed maturity could never be successfully gauged by age. To me, if a child had grown past the stage where he was emotionally, physically and financially independent, then he could be considered an adult.

I noticed that my brother had picked a sense of responsibility since he was 10, sneaking to the market after school to help people heft heavy goods for a pay. On my mom's 45th birthday, he had singlehandedly organized a house party for her with legally acquired money. He was far from the last born child I knew him to be before I left for boarding school.

Then my mother had tried frantically to stop him.

“You children are the reason I go out every day to work, if he keeps trying to fend for himself like this it would make me feel like I'm not doing enough” she complained severally to my older siblings and I. When he wasn't listening, she eventually gave up and assisted in getting him a job with a prominent cleaning agency.

After his secondary school education, his drive to become successful became dangerously high. He registered himself for an animation class with a foreign school. At this time, he was already handling light and water bills in the house. If not that my mother forbade him from buying foodstuff, we were sure he would do that too.

And he was just 17.

At 17, I had just finished secondary school and didn't think of working until my neighbor asked me to take her children on extra lessons for a small fee.

But my younger brother was from a totally different stock.

When I was finally done cooking, I tapped him gently on the shoulder and handed him two tablets of painkillers before handing him his plate of Jollof rice and fried fish.

Now that he was finally approaching the standard age of maturity which I thought was long overdue for him, I wondered what he would do with the privileges he would now be allowed to enjoy. I wasn't worried that he would go wild, he was already taking up responsibility and had proven to be level headed since he was 14.

I didn't know if I could say the same for other teenagers. I wasn't like that, neither was any of my older siblings but I felt that once a child started taking full responsibility of important tasks irrespective of age, then he or she should be considered an adult.