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| A girl with books in the sky |
I sat on the cobbled stone and dropped my old documents beside me. My shoes looked like a comical display of how a good office shoe should look like with its sole half open like the mouth of a new born ready to receive it's first milk drops.
My clothes hung on my body and it seemed i had lost weight in the space of two days. People said looking for a job was not easy but nobody ever said it was this bad. My ears rang with the amount of "we'll get back to you" I heard already today. Some were more brutal, " Your qualifications are impressive but where's your experience. Bearing first class on documents isn't enough to guarantee a job anymore, we need experience."
I kicked at a stone in frustration as I bunched up my fists to the sky. How on earth would I get an experience if nobody was willing to take me on. All my life I have struggled for the most basic things including getting school fees to pay per session while I was in school. I practically tried my hands on everything. To make better for myself I put more effort to emerge the best graduating students hoping my grades would make way for me.
My village people probably laughed at my big plans.
" Pure water" a hawker sang as she approached from a distance. I stared at her dully with world weary eyes and parched throat and wondered if I had any money to buy pure water. I reached into my pockets and felt my hands go deeper and deeper till I brought out a badly squeezed and dirty looking ten naira note and offered it to the hawker for pure water.
She looked me up and down suspiciously and stayed an arm length as she took a pure water from her tray and handed it to me. I reached for it and sucked on it greedily like my life depended on it. My Adam apple bobbing up and down, moisture stealing from the sides of my mouth in scattered pieces till the contents of the pure water satchet was finished.
The water gave me some energy and I stood up gratefully ready to resume my search. I walked for a while and got to a particular busy part of the street when I was suddenly bumped into by someone who pushed me sideways and dumped a bag into my hands. Fear shook my limbs as my shaking hands beheld the contents of the bag. My eyes bulged when I saw the dollar currencies and my heart started beating a steady rhythm of a war.
Before I could process a thought in my head, I heard a loud shout of "_Stop thief!" With a short hairy man in a thick middle belt accent pointing topointing me. i didn't wait to hear the rest, I ran for my dear life. I knew if they caught up with me, my life would be over even before it began because I have heard stories like this before.
Suddenly a leg reached out among the crowd and tripped me, I fell into a bed of punches and kicks while I futilely tried to protest my innocence, a big lump the size of a golf was gradually rising on my forehead but no one heard as my voice was swallowed up in the crowds. "_Where's the petrol?" Someone screamed. One leg of my shoes thrown to the main street. My pile of documents showing my first class certificates lying in the gutter of a nearby beer parlor while I struggled for my innocence with my last breath.
©Tee ha na