Good Riddance To A Beautiful Nonsense

   "Sorry,I think it's a network problem" she began and i am doubting that assertion judging from the manner the cuts were happening.

The Phone had rang and I was busy editing my work on the PC. I am not always particularly happy when interrupted from work. I picked the phone and connected, it cut. It followed that format three more times and I was wondering if something was wrong with my phone when It connected on the fourth attempt. It's my godfather's wife, her son was staying with us as usual trying to get to the son. She was a state away from usand always worrying about the state of the guy. 

"How are you today over there? I am trying to get to my son and he is not picking his calls. Is he around there?" 

" yeah, i saw him about thirty minutes ago, he might be in his room" i said wondering why the woman always worries so much about that guy at thirty-two.

" Can you handover the phone to him? I want to talk to him."

"Okay, i suspect he is at the other side, let me seek him out"

I was wondering why the cuts, and if I can hand over the phone. Did she believe I can't do that or what? I suspect she was expecting some negative reactions from me somehow depending on what her son had been feeding her on the happenings here and his situational report he had been sending back to his family. I can't help but see that he had been feeding them nasty information on the family and how he was being treated.

The guy is at his room's balcony exercising his eyes or sending spiritual signals to the man managing the next building adjacent to us. He had entered into a kind of spiritual alliance with running after reward or being illiterate and timid as some said. "Are you there?" I shouted without entering the room and he replied from the balcony. "Your mum, on the phone, pronto" I turned without hearing his reply and went back to my editing.

It was in the evening of the following day that I began to reminisce on what must have been the topic of their discussion after what happened in the early morning and that evening. I believed that the mother heard something and was eager to know the state of her son with us and when he wasn't picking the ringing phone, she kinda got worried and started calling me.

I heard that illiteracy is a disease. But I think it is more like timidity being an infectious disease. That is how I view the guy because he is what they call educated. A man that passed through college and went to service can be nothing but educated. In my opinion, if you can read and write, you are educated. He, at thirty-two can do all those and more. I suspected his articulation backwardness in my estimation must have been from his background, from stories about me and my family that entered his ears and took root there.

       It's four or five months ago he entered this family one late evening in a hurried arrangement with his father; you can't now fail to see why it was that way. According to the father, the company he works with is in our city and without prior notice, packaged the son and sent him to us. 

The visitors room, which served as an apprentices room, drivers room in the 80s and 90s when my dad was around and into full time trading but for almost two and half decades, the room has turned into a kind of packing store with all manners of things being stored there. Took me and a little boy staying here hours to put them together in a manageable state when the guy's father made that fire brigade call. 

Imagine putting your son in a bus heading to another man's family in another state and half way into his journey, you called telling them he is on his way as if there is already room, made arrangements you prepared for him there. 

The father himself passed through my father's apprentice route in the '60s and early '70s and that was when I came to this planet and that must be why he became my baptismal godfather. That alone told me how  my baptism day must have been. Something that was thrown together and out of all the apprenticeship boys around, his father was one with correct papers. That kind of arrangement still goes on todate. Look around, find someone around you believe is religious enough to worry about getting through Catholic sacraments with his documentations in order, no matter his age and point fingers at him and it will be that. I have even become a godfather to my nephew that way.  

The man is from the same town as us but never the same village. Outside that business training and settlement he passed through my dad, there is no other relationship or any other way we are related. About twenty other boys passed through this family as apprentices and none stuck around like the father which I think is good somehow but this boy acts and moves threatens to jeopardize that friendship?

I was inside in foreign land when my father died and I heard how the father helped a lot during the burial. Where are the other boys that passed through my family route like him? That is the question that always assults me whenever I want to react negatively to the boy's misbehavior which compounded a lot within the five months he stayed here. Sometimes certain things covers certain sins or must be somehow made to cover certain sins. The weather was still rainy one when he came. At times I wondered how I would have reacted had the weather been this hot and dusty when his antics started fully. I would have misbehaved and lay the blame like some do here on the doors of hot weather.

You see, from his first day here, he made that mistake amateurs always make when they believed everything they were told and that it's one directional attacks. He uttered words that pointed me to why he was here.

 I had just helped him with his boxes and shown him his room. Twenty minutes later, he came out to the corridor where I was reading and started speaking in english. Testing my literacy level. English is always where some start to know if you merit them saying good morning to you over here. From there to telling me he was sent as a mediator in his own way to settle my quarrel with whom i don't know. "If I did not state the truth, they would seize my license" I was eyeing him, wondering who he thinks I am, where he thinks he is, and what he was told is going on and who is behind those tales and orders.

Then, he started a story that connected my alma mater and eyeing me. Afterwards, he concluded it isn't me but a clone walking around here claiming to be me. I was wondering where he knew me before. I saw him last when he was around four years old and throughout my stay here and my departure time to another country, I never saw him again. Where did he know me to know if it's me or not. Who sent him here anyway? 

The tale is that he was here to stay as his base where he goes to work from. Why is he searching the rooms here, trying somehow at his age and state of the country's and family economy to add himself as family number which I don't know to another man's family without prior agreement? You buy drinking water, feed him, he was once sick and was asking for hospital money, he even returned one evening telling me that he was hungry. Asking for a transport fee to go to work at his age? 

Then started joining camp with those fighting the family and seeking for reward. It's obvious officers running a theft investigation they never wanted to end, were after me and certainly somehow behind the guy's appearance here. This guy is nothing but a plant as far as my senses and maturity go. He was sent here for something else not to be going to work. He is bad minded and the parents know what his mission here was when they put him in that bus. 

"If you ask me, I think they offered him as a sacrificial lamb. The parents must have been tired of his way of life and hopelessness they saw in him and decided to throw him as a bargain into this jungle.I concluded one day he was into one of his antics that it must be the case with him. 

Then came two days ago, a guy that was asking for transport fare to go to work and claiming he returns on foot most of the time due to lack of money said he has paid eighty-something thousand naira for a house near their office and will be packing into it come January. Some cult members that are after the rewards must have informed him that me and my mother were selected for death and that he must run. He turned around to say he was packing into the same house that day and no longer in January. He was trying not to be around when the calamity happened and he was hoping to collect the reward with the group that sent him here. 

        He must by now wondering why payment is being tarried. I won't swear to the state of his sanity, he was thrown to the wolves by those that pass as his parents. If he makes it, fine, if not, not all that bad. 

 The mid December weather was as dry as I have not witnessed it for years now. The evening the boy ran was the day he found it good enough to tell me he has room somewhere and I can see he was in a hurry to evacuate from the supposed disaster marked family to safety.  There was never a hope for him from what I can see by those that bore him and I am not sure those who are in bed here with him have any idea of the liability they are embracing. I will hear tales soon from that angle for sure. Just a matter of time.