When a toad is running helter-skelter in broad daylight.
1041 Words
When a toad is running helter-skelter in broad daylight: Either something is in pursuit of the toad, or the toad is in pursuit of something.
The boy hawking roasted groundnut in the hot sun greatly believed this saying.
How could the saying be wrong when he is hawking in this "God damn hot sun!" in pursuit of something.
He needs money to pay for his high school final examination fee.
A fee that will expire tomorrow morning.
From this same market, he had bought the groundnuts, fried and bottled up, to be sold back in the same market.
Nobody will believe how much he makes from hawking groundnut.
Over a Hundred percent profit.
Amazing!
Now he planned to add it with popcorn to create varieties.
Most of his customers had been demanding from this always.
He strongly believed this is due to the economic meltdown, consumers now want something that can fill their stomachs for as little Penny as they can afford.
He prayed to sell today's market all.
He has no choice and he is ready to hawk till nightfall if that is what it takes to achieve this mission.
To escape the shame of being the only final-year student unable to pay his examination fee.
A mere some of 35 dollars.
Meagre the principal had said on assembly when calling his name out yesterday.
Yet this had taken him two weeks of hawking in the hot sun and still unable to complete it.
The hawker shook his head sadly, how he wishes he was born with a spoon.
Not necessarily to be golden or sliver, just a spoon will do.
Unfortunately, life had been so cruel to choose him to be born into the house of paupers.
He and his family were absolutely nobody in society.
For as long as he could remember, he had learned to feed, clothe and shelter himself as well as provide for his mother and siblings.
Surprisingly, he started carrying the responsibility of a man when he was just nine years old.
Yet so far so good, he had managed to avoid shame and debt and had trained himself through high school amidst all the odds and challenges.
Now lie the last obstacle: paying his examination fee.
He had called all his known and unknown relative for help but all they offered were promises and some reprehending him for not planning his life very well.
'You are cutting your nails on the day of the journey!' One of his rich aunts had yelled at him over the phone a week before the deadline.
Nobody offered to help.
What a lonely world!
But he can't fail if only to shame those who belittled him.
Udonis high college is a big and prestigious college, located in Bayelria state, a state situated in the eastern part of Urian with an estimated population of fifty million citizens.
Udonis high college had produced the likes of timbers and calibers of society.
Doctors, lawyers, and politicians. Movers and the shakers of the societies were all ex-students. Even the present state administrator was once a student of this prestigious college.
The hawker knew it was lucky for him to admit in the first place, he needed more than luck to be able to graduate with an unshamed face.
Just eight dollars remaining, he must sell all his groundnut.
"Today promised to be a good day." He muttered aloud.
His first customer had bought a two-liter bottle filled with groundnut of two dollars. All he need his four more customers like this and boomed, he had his examination fees.
Chief Andrew chibuke was driving his latest Amanda jeep, his mind on his container.
Today, the worst of all has happened.
His agent handling his container had lost his documents to claim his goods.
Those bastards at the port are demanding two hundred thousand dollars to clear the goods when they arrived.
His goods!
What a corrupt nation.
His phone ring bringing him back to reality.
His new phone always makes a nasty noise when ringing, not that he minds anyway.
Slightly, he bends his head to remove his phone from his jeans pocket, losing focus for just a fleeting second.
Raising his head a second later, he caught a glimpse of a boy with a tray on his head, heard a colliding noise, followed by screams so nasty he will never be able to forget in several years to come.
He watched in horror as bottles of groundnut poured on his car fencer.
Paused with mouth agape as he heard the sickly crushing of bone sounds.
More screaming followed then silent.
He just killed a groundnut hawker. From frying pan to fire, then to hellfire.
When the child awoke, he was delirious with pain in a strange place.
Could this be heaven?
Jonny remembers his short time on Earth, he had heard heaven is a place righteous people go to when they die.
Although some would say a fourteen years old Jonny could not possibly understand heaven, Jonny understand quite well. Where else could he be? Recollection settling in, he was hit by a big car, he died.
Heaven is beautiful Jonny! thoughts.
Filled white with blinding and pure light!
His heaven, Jonny learned as the blinding light was eventually turned off was the intensive care unit in Bayelria General hospital in Bayelsa state. The world calls his survival a miracle.
Chief chubike paid for all his bills and took Jonny home with him when he was finally discharged.
God saved me for a purpose, Jonny believed.
Today, he is the president of the federal republic of Uarian Regardless of his poor beginning, he has achieved what most of his mates will never achieve in several reincarnations.
Yet there are more to do, more to achieve, with success, you hardly get satisfied.
But the north, hidden under the guise of Boko Haram for selfish reasons had done their best in weakening his government.
What started as a play, now a national emergency.
The economy is weak, corruption, insecurities, unemployment, to mention but a few.
They had been here for a decade, they won't just fly off.
What else can he do? He is a man and not a god for Christ's sake.
- Writer
