THE DEVILISH WORLD
It was one afternoon in the last quarter of 2008. Then, I was a NYSC teacher in one of the secondary schools in the Aniocha-North Local Government Area of Delta State.

I was listening to the world news broadcast on my tiny Motorola handset under one of the trees in the school compound, when it was reported that a passenger plane on an international flight from one of the South American countries got missing in the air.

Mr Obi, a calm and soft spoken man who must be in his 50s; whose look showed that he had gone and still going through the hard times of life was close to where I was. His right leg instep was somehow deformed with a scar from a long time injury, which had made walking a bit difficult for him. His countenance changed to a sad and thoughtful one when I told him about the bad news, he then went down memory lane but a sad one for that.

His words:
"I hope that the plane has not crashed into the Atlantic Ocean."

"Corper, this news reminds me of the time that I was in Lagos working with the Nigerian Airways. I was one of the cabin crew members then and I usually followed planes to different parts of the world."

I got curious and interested to hear more from him, because there was nothing to indicate that he had ever worked or existed in such an environment before, but his soft and barely audible voice was convincing.

He spoke further:
"I was on annual leave then and I decided to visit this village to spend part of the leave."

"When I got here, I started visiting family and friends, giving them gifts and money."

"I never knew when I wrote resignation letter from my job and went back to Lagos to submit same to the Authority of Nigerian Airways."

"When the leave was over, I went back to resume work."
"I was surprised when I was summoned and asked what I was there to do; I replied that my leave was over and that I returned to resume work, it was then that I was told that I had earlier resigned from the job."

"I strongly disagreed and contested this with them because I neither knew nor remembered that I ever at any time did anything like that." But I was confronted with my personally written and signed resignation letter and that was how I lost the job.

"I was without job for a while until I was helped to get job at Cardbury."
"My job there was to ensure the cleaning of the inner of the drums of the machines that were being used for production, after the production had taken place in the drums."
"The machines were self-wash with chemicals, while all we were do was to operate and supervise the machines through the cleaning process."
At the end of the cleaning process, we would press button and the machine would empty the cleaning chemical in it away, it was during one of those cleaning times that I unconsciously went to place this my right leg at where the machine would empty the chemical, and that is the cause of this my damaged instep.

I landed in hospital and lot of money was spent before I could be discharged. That is how I lost the job at Cardbury and I returned to the village to nurse the leg until I could move around with it.

I took a very long time before I was helped to get this messenger job, and that is what I have been doing since then.

Some years later, an elderly woman, who was one of those that I gave money to when I came to the village during my leave confessed before she died that she was the one behind my predicaments.
She said that it was the money that I gave to her that she paid to the priest that caused my misfortune!

Note: True life story but the name has been changed.