Mixed Scenarios

by Aluta Nite

  Edo’s father left his house in the city to his younger sons. Edo had already moved out of his father’s house and rented his own place not very far away. He also had a girlfriend that was from the same neighbourhood, and from a low income family. Like his sisters, she had been educated up to middle school. Before long, he married her and they had two children.

  Because of the poor quality of his education and his lacklustre performance as a student, however, they were barely surviving on the meagre wages from his low scale job. He had gone to backstreet schools run by greedy individuals whose sole purpose was to make money and who cared little to nothing about the quality of education associated with the names of their institutions.

  Edo’s wife was not employed, and he could not afford to pay for his wife to go to college in order to, learn a trade, get a job and contribute to the family income. He did not know what to do to make things better. It became a struggle every month to make ends meet. A few friends assisted him sometimes, but he did not wish to depend on them.

  Initially, rent was left unpaid, but over time, other bills could not be paid on time either. The landlord was at his doorstep nearly every week and he could not lie to him any longer. In addition, his wife got pregnant again. With these persistent and new challenges, the couple’s relationship began to sour. Feeling helpless and hopeless, he decided on a tragic solution to end it all.

  One Monday morning, he heard the sound of the bus from a distance. His house was just next to the fence bordering the sidewalk. The gate and road were a few feet away. He left his pregnant wife in the house with his two children, as if rushing to catch the bus to work, but that was not what he had in mind.

  As the sixty-two-seat bus approached at high speed a few feet outside the gate, he run into the road in front of it. The impact when the bus hit, threw him some feet away on the road in front of the bus, then it ran him over. His bones and organs were crushed and his bodily fluids eerily gushed out onto the street. He lay motionless and silent. It was finished. The double trauma of getting hit and then run over had done it.

  His wife was one of the first to swarm around his body and the bus. If only she had known what had been on his mind, she would have prevented him from leaving the house. She had seen or heard nothing to suggest what was to transpire.

  She did not know how to begin to mourn his death. The shock took its toll on her and left her speechless. She wondered how she would continue her own and her children’s lives with no income, after his burial. She also did not know what to tell her two young children.

  The police arrived half an hour after the accident, covered the body, then took it to the morgue hours later. They detained the unmarred bus to investigate the scene of the accident.

  Edo’s parents were sent a telegram immediately, and they travelled overnight arriving very early the following morning. His siblings, other relatives, friends and neighbours spent a lot of their time at his house while making burial arrangements.

  Funds were needed to buy the coffin and shroud, pay the morgue bill and hire a mini-bus that would transport the body to the burial site in the countryside, where his parents resided. Funds were also needed to clear his outstanding rent and bills and for his wife to resume life on her own, whether she chose to return to the city or remain in the countryside after the burial. It took two weeks to raise enough money.

  Meanwhile, people wailed or mourned quietly every day at the house until their departure to the countryside for Edo’s burial. The crowd swelled in the evenings after people left work and on the weekends.

  Edo died a quick and presumably painful death. People did not know what to say, as what he had done was entirely unexpected. Not even his few close friends or relatives had any inkling of the possibility of him committing suicide.

  People thought he was too well-adjusted to contemplate or even carry out such an act. Everybody went out of their wits trying to guess at possible clues in what he had said or done beforehand. No one succeeded, thus it was difficult for anyone to have closure about his death.

  He had lost hope in life completely. He felt helpless and did not know where or how to seek help to combat the challenges he felt alone in facing. Therefore, he felt compelled to find a permanent way out of what appeared to be an impossible situation, though it did not have to be that way.

  Had he spoken to those closest to him about his burden, or searched deeper inside himself, he could have found actual solutions. He could have avoided scarring and burdening his family immeasurably for the rest of their lives and lived to see his children grow up.

  Three Turbaned Men

  In the city in the sun, weird things sometimes went on. A young college graduate, Zippy, while waiting to start a career, lived in an upscale house with her friend, a former colleague who had been a year ahead of her. She had it rough - not from her housemate - but from an undisciplined middle-aged, turbaned South Asian male driving a navy blue BMW saloon.

  She did not know the man and he did not know her. It was as if he never went to work at all during the two weeks that Zippy was at home waiting to start work. She could almost never go anywhere without him appearing out of nowhere in his posh car. He was crazy and she was his target.

  He was actually nauseating to her, but he never gave up. She had a boyfriend who she cared for and the stranger had likely seen her with. So, she did not understand why this older man, who she assumed was married with children, was being a habitual nuisance.

  He would drive by slowly, stop the car, open the door and plead with her to get inside and ride with him to wherever she was going. He looked and sounded desperate. He was trying to sound humble and polite, but to her, he seemed dangerous and conniving.

  Her walk to the shopping centre took about twenty minutes. He would drive by her and stop perhaps five times along the way. She would see him, say nothing and keep walking, with her face as stern as ever. On the way back home, he would be there again hoping for the success that constantly eluded him.

  While waiting for public transportation to town, he would drive by and wait at the bus stop while mumbling nonsense, until the bus came and left. She was happy to eventually start work and neither see his face or car, nor hear his murmuring, except when he reappeared on weekends. Four months later, she moved away and that ended the stalking.

  Where Zippy moved to, there was another young lady named Immaculate, who had the very same problem - an older turbaned South Asian man, driving a grey Mercedes Benz saloon, following her around. Immaculate was employed and living alone.

  The turbaned man followed her for so long, she was persuaded that he was a genuine suitor and welcomed him into her house. Perhaps, it was because she did not have a boyfriend yet and the stranger was conveniently available.

  Before long, she was pregnant with his child and eventually gave birth to a baby boy. He prevented her from going back to work so she stayed at home to take care of their child, while he provided everything. He was a successful businessman who was married and had a large family elsewhere.

  She found out the truth about his other family when he stopped coming to her house daily. He went to see her on alternate days, and only after work and at night. She was his mistress and the mother to his mulatto child.

  When Zippy moved yet again, she witnessed the stalking of yet another young lady, Collette, by an older turbaned South Asian man, also a businessman, driving a large white Toyota pickup truck.

  Collette was a job-seeker living with two other friends, one of who was employed. She accepted his advances and started going out with him. Perhaps she fell prey because he was financially secure and she was not. He later moved her into another house in the same area as she became his mistress.

  Before long, she too got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, his mulatto child. He visited a few times a week and supplied her with all that she needed, so she stopped looking for a job
. He too was married with grown children.

  As it turned out, these experiences confirmed the warning Zippy had received several times from older women. They told her that some turbaned South Asian men, who were married with families of their own, were rather lewd and promiscuous. They persistently preyed on young local girls and women, who therefore needed to be wary of them.

  Electronic Device

  Carola was accustomed to going to the library daily when looking for a job. The library was a fifteen-minute walk from her residence. Because, she did not have a computer of her own, she used the library computers to search online for jobs and submit applications.

  The library also had photocopying and printing facilities which she took advantage of for a small fee, as she could not afford to have her own at home. It was therefore a very convenient location for her to get certain errands done.

  One day, she forgot her purse on the computer desk at the library. The next day, it was returned to her intact with all the coins still inside. Library staff had picked it up where it had dropped on the floor, and kept it at the information desk with other lost-and-found items. She felt privileged to get it back, because it showed library patrons’ and staff’s respect for other people’s property and their honesty.

  On another day, she unknowingly dropped her flash drive on the carpet floor in the library, as she was getting ready to leave. The next day, after realizing it was missing, she asked staff about it upon reaching the library, but they had not seen it.

  They showed her the lost-and-found tray containing other items, including flash drives, but it was not there. They advised her to keep on checking with them, in case someone turned it in later. The next day, her flash drive had still not been found. She was growing anxious as it contained vital information.

  Nevertheless she sat down to start her job-hunting session for the day. She began by checking email and found a strange one from an address and name she did not recognize. She transferred the email to her ‘Trash Folder’ and then decided to open it because the subject line read ‘flash drive’, and she thought it might have to do with her own lost flash drive.

  The email began as a crazy love letter from a man. Carola did not know him and he did not know her. He said that he loved her name and wanted a relationship with her. He also attached two photographs of himself and wanted her to attach photographs of herself, when she replied.

  He then said that he had her flash drive and wanted her to meet him at a private place the next day to return it to her. He wanted Carola to reply to his email after which he would state the location of their intended meeting.

  He had plugged in her flash drive, read and obtained her private information, including her email address, and used it to get in touch with her, in order to seek a salacious ransom for the return of her flash drive. He did not make the decent choice that any honest, dignified person would have, which was to give the flash drive to library staff as a lost-and-found item.

  Carola summoned the library staff to come and look at the email and his photographs. They checked his name in the staff and student lists and found no match. They then checked him on Facebook and found a match.

  One staff member recalled seeing him in the vicinity two days earlier, on the day that the flash drive had been lost. Another remembered that he was harassing one of the young female staff members on that particular day, and that another male staff member had to go and rescue her.

  When the staff supervisor heard this, he told one of them to call the police, so that something could be done about the culprit. They arrived at the library thirty minutes later, took all the necessary details, and promised to get in touch with the culprit, and then with Carola, a day or two later. However, they asked her to get in touch with them, if in three days they had not gotten in touch with her first.

  She ended up calling them on the third day. They said that they had gotten in touch with him, and he had promised to drop off the flash drive at the library immediately after. They therefore concluded that he had done so. However, because Carola had called, they realized that he had not returned the flash drive, and was playing games. It became necessary to contact him again and threaten him with an arrest.

  He did not want to be arrested and charged, so the culprit returned the flash drive to the library on the fifth day. Carola got her flash drive back on the sixth day, having learned a bitter lesson about guarding her property in a day and age when the privacy of information, because it is electronic, is easily compromised.

  She also learned that the Internet is a good tool when used appropriately, but not when used by malevolent people to harass others, who they think are vulnerable. She also realized how desperately low men can stoop. The culprit turned out to be a twenty-year-old, whereas Carola was a baby boomer who was old enough to be his grandmother!

  A Young Recruit

  Lydia finished high school and went straight to a secretarial college, to take a two-year course in shorthand, typing and office management. She had gone to high school in the city, and was, therefore, familiar with city life. She lived with her father and siblings in the city.

  After finishing her course, she got a job in a government office. She had to commute uphill on public transportation every day, to get to her place of work. Instead of being assigned to a supervisor, she started work in a typing pool with several other secretaries. They were doing work allocated to them by many supervisors, from several floors in the building.

  Each supervisor was assigned his own secretary, but the excess work was sent to the typing pool. The typing pool secretaries also replaced the assigned secretaries whenever they were absent from work due to maternity leave, sickness, refresher courses or other reasons.

  As a new employee, Lydia was on three months’ probation, after which she was to be confirmed and assigned to a particular supervisor. After the three months, however, she received no confirmation or assignment letter, and consequently asked her senior colleagues on the job what the procedure was.

  They laughed out loudly and told her, “You will be lucky if you receive a letter of confirmation or transfer.”

  They added, “Some of us have been here for years and no letter has come our way.”

  But, they encouraged her saying, “Go and ask the manager if you want to know more about your fate.”

  So, one Monday afternoon, she went to the manager’s office to find out her fate. The assigned secretary let her in. She relayed her concern to him and in return he listened politely to her, but did not promise anything.

  He simply said to her, “Wait for me at the bus stop at four-thirty, when people are going home, so that we can discuss the matter further, because right now, I’m busy.”

  This obviously unsettled Lydia, but she decided to go and see what the outcome would be. She was waiting at the bus stop at the agreed upon time and the manager also came within five minutes. They boarded a bus to one of the middle-class hotels downtown and went to the restaurant downstairs.

  The manager placed an order for a soda for each of them, and they conversed about generalities. When she finished her soda and the topic of her particular interest had not come up, she sensed something amiss. He offered to buy her another drink which she declined, saying she wanted to go home. He saw that she was uneasy, excused himself as if headed to the bathroom and came back soon after.

  He then reached into his pocket and took out a key that he handed her saying, “Take this key and go upstairs to the fourth floor, then to the room number on the key holder and I’ll meet you there.”

  “No! I will do no such thing!” she asserted

  She got up and left him there, effectively quitting that job. She never even went back for her outstanding pay. Instead her father went on her behalf to pick it up.

  Next, she got a job at a private firm where the sole owner was in the import/export business. The secretary was
about to go on maternity leave and was not returning after delivery, as she was moving out of town with her husband and family.

  Lydia was to be the new secretary. The old secretary trained Lydia for about one week before leaving. Lydia was happy to secure this job, but had no idea what awaited her, and was wary, given her previous experience.

  After her week of training, she started exploring the work spaces around her out of curiosity and to become familiar. She stumbled upon a door that was permanently locked. It appeared from outside to be a small storage area. She did not inquire about it, but was interested in finding out what lay beyond the locked door.

  One particular day, during the last week of her first month, her boss said to her, “Do not go for your hour-long lunch break today at the usual time, because I have some urgent work for you to do before the afternoon shift.”

  He then added, “You can go home earlier than usual today or I will compensate you for the extra time...whatever you prefer.”

  She replied, “I’ll go home early.”

  As lunchtime approached and other employees were excited to take their break, she planned to stay behind as requested.

  Her boss rushed to her saying, “Don’t forget about our agreement this morning. I will give you the task shortly.”

  She did not feel alright, but felt anxious instead.

  When her boss was sure that everybody was gone, he rushed to her again, while pointing to the door that was usually locked and said, “Get into that room where the work is. The door is open. I’m coming to show you what is to be done.”

  Lydia panicked and was on guard mentally. As she twisted the door handle and the door opened, she realized that he had indeed unlocked the door a few minutes earlier. She then discreetly threw open the door while standing in the doorway and saw a well-made single bed in an otherwise empty room. He was now right behind her as she turned to leave.