Overflowing Gratitude

  Many things, uncountable of them that I still recall to be grateful for in this my life. I know there are many I don't recall anymore and many I don't even know happened to me. 

I have been shocked twice by electricity that was supposedly acute enough to send me out of this planet. And I still recall the first being in my year five in primary school and the second coming last year. I don't know who I am but I think I am that type of humans their God gives special instructions to the angels guarding them.  "look here, if anything happens to this boy on your watch pack your property and get ready to join Lucifer were careless people ends up"

  I have seen a hell of despicable things in my life, and passed through a hell of fearful shits. I have fallen down from a pear tree and my breathing ceased for minutes when the girl with me behind the wall was calling on me and I couldn't answer yet hearing her scream my name. I spent about five minutes there staring at an empty space. This also while in primary level in different town. 

I nearly drowned in my secondary level swimming with friends in a lake I went to without permission. I was there struggling and the four guys with me were ignorant of what I was passing through. Oblivious to my plight and force I don't know where it came from pushed and pushed me out of that depth and the guys even to date still don't realize what heaven did that day.

I lived in the school dorm in my junior years and during that my time there, the school dorm was surrounded by bushes that frightened even security guys. Too dense yet at that age, there was nothing like fear in us as juniors. One day we climbed one of the cashew trees all over the place. I was bitten by a snake minding its business up there on the leg that I suspected saw us as intruders. I survived on herbal treatment and didn't even know then that such an incident is life threatening.

How will one not be grateful even if in reminiscence way of these things that I, in my adult age have seen many sent to their graves by same incidents? Then I considered them one of those things.

Then in my college, right after my final year exam, project submitted, and waiting for a call-up letter. One faithful sunny morning, I entered my dad's Peugeot 504 to go and see how things are turning up in the school. Went there without any incident from our base in the city. On the way back, it happened. I did not check break fluid . One coaster Mass transit bus was coming in the opposite direction and I was heading back with all assurance that I am in control. Applying the break, it failed to respond to my command. I was careless, as usual, those mass transit drivers are known not to have respect for road signs. How am I going to halt this pan I am inside? Fear set in and I hammered at the mass transit bus and had the driver not shifted a bit, it would have been face to face. 

The guy came down. First, he called people standing by and asked them to help in pushing the car out of the road because once officers that behave like dogs at times smell that there is opportunity nearby, they will come to tow the car to their station first and that will be another story only money will settle. 

The driver eyed me and knew that I needed to pay for his headlight that was broken and it's sold in pairs. Despite only one having problems, you will buy a set. Funny enough, within three minutes of pushing the car out of the way into the mechanics workshop nearby, the police landed and were surveying the broken glass on the road and eyeing my car in the mechanics workshop there. The mass transit guy collected my documents and gave me the address of where to come in the city with money to collect it. He needed to replace his headlights or else he would be out of work.

It's not a scratch or dent as some will call it, it was serious hammering of metals. Many of such incidents people overlook when they see you healthy but it is life threatening incidents all the way. I really don't know who I am spiritually wise, but my God is awake and watching 24 hours. Many things that will end some people's lives, I go through them at times ignorantly without a scratch.

Again, while on the remedial courses at the satellite campus of the same college I finished from, I had gone one cool evening to the lake to fetch water with others. About five of us. I jumped as usual inside there, this time around I was not having problems with the water, but could you believe that immediately I left the spot I was in, one village guy we met there shouted snake, snake and pointing where I just left. There was this snake fish twisting here and there struggling with the hook that trapped it. First time I am seeing such a long snake fish. Swimming ended in that lake that evening till I left there. The lake was even crocodile infested too. 

Then it was a service year in the northern part of the country. One day, I decided it's opportunity to learn how to ride a motorcycle and learn how to drive handgear cars. That time, automatic gears weren't as popular as they are now. I was posted in a remote town. This local guy that had a car with handgear and behaving like someone seeking for ritual money told me and my friend that was interested in the handgear too that he will do the teaching in one isolated road that led to a girls school in the interior village there. Something clicked from nowhere in my head. "Never for any reason follow that guy there" Our lodge is facing an open field and you can't teach us there? 

When narrating the story to one local guy that serves one commissioner living nearby, he advised us never for any reason follow any local person to any isolated place. "Things are happening these days" as he put it emphasizing with the shake of his heads. I succeeded in learning from some students under me how to ride a motorcycle without gears.

I am the first to break a family record in foreign land. The first to go to prison in my lineage and headache of the highest order followed me for almost thirteen years inside there. Funny thing is that, I never knew I was dangling on death rope for that period, every second, minutes and hours of that twelve years plus. I never knew. I think it pays a hell of a lot when you don't know danger, mortal one is following you around and smarting to finish you off. And, if your heart is good, and if your God is the kind that gives angels stern orders on your behalf, you will come out even if limping, but you will make it out of any tight corner you are in. At times, I attribute my writing to the stint in that prison. It's terrible but it conditioned my head and mind to a deep extent.

Gratitude is something anyone with commonsense will always give once there is life. You don't need to pass through death traps or run death races or play Russian roulette to know forces beyond your control were on your side and therefore deserved thanking them. Nay, it is something one needs to do each evening and morning before leaving the house and returning for the day.

Writing this on the first day of August and so grateful to see the new month healthy enough to be writing this. Why not? I knew many of my secondary school mates that have dropped dead and these guys are far, far better by all means than me. Why them?

I wouldn't know. The gods are the only ones in the position to answer that. Grateful I am and will always be to my God and all he does his works through for my good.