by Aluta Nite
She never went back to the bank. At five o’clock when tellers’ tills were being taken to the strong room after balancing the day’s work, there was no Gerry and her cash had not been balanced and her keys were with her wherever she was.
The manager did not know what to think and say because such a thing had never happened before. Fellow tellers were dismayed. All they knew was that she went for lunch as usual but they did not know that she went with Orion.
Because the of the counter being extra busy that day as it was end month, other tellers did not have enough time to think of why she was taking too long to return. And even one or two who thought about it simply concluded that maybe their supervisor had given her extra time to accomplish some pressing issue.
The manager had no choice but to call the police, her brother and sister in-law. Her brother and sister in-law knew nothing and they were shocked.
The police started investigations. In two weeks, she was found locked up in a faraway town in a tiny room where she was tied up with ropes and she could not escape. He went there every now and then to rape her and take to her food without bathing except supervised visits to the loo. She was dirty, filthy and scared to death.
The police rescued her and took her back to the city and to her brother’s house. She did not have the keys to the till with her. She did not know their whereabouts. And that is how she lost her job and all the benefits to go with it. Orion was nowhere to be found as he had escaped to the neighboring region. His wife said that she did not know of his whereabouts.
Gerry moved upcountry to live with his mother while recovering from this ordeal. Later, she became an untrained primary school teacher in the local village school.
Orion’s wife vacated the house opposite Vera’s house therefore Vera could not see any more drama from that house.
Total Surrender
Harriet was a cheerful girl who went to school as expected, from early schooling to college level. She even managed to get a chance to do a master’s degree due to her good performances all along while in different schools and also because of her dedication to hard work and interest in academia.
Over and above that, she was a scientist who loved mathematics, research and finding out issues that needed time, patience and acumen. She therefore qualified with a superb thesis after two years and ended up in a laboratory job that consisted of constant research and tedious observations that she enjoyed dearly. Her colleagues and bosses loved her and enjoyed working with her.
Meanwhile, while doing her bachelor’s degree, she met her sweetheart who she got married to without hesitation. He was a military career man who worked in the technical side of the air force.
They were blessed with six children, one after the other over the years with four boys and two girls. Bringing up the children, going to school and later working did not seem to bother her, as she seemed to cope quite well. That definitely, proved how intelligent and organized she was.
Although, the family could not advance fast economically due to the heavy load of raising so many children, she was happy and did her best to please her children and her husband. It was rare to see her sad or miserable. She laughed most of the times unlike many in that predicament. And her complaints if any were really minimal.
As the children grew big and had more demands and desires, she felt that she had to do more or something extra to bring in more income. She therefore decided to pursue part time her hobby of being creative in the needlework field.
She bought one Singer sewing machine and its accessories and started doing some designing and sewing of all sorts of apparels in the evenings after work or during the weekends.
Whatever she made, she sold to whole sellers or middlemen who supplied commercial traders. She made very good money from the venture and her appetite got wetter even further. After some time, she decided to open her own stall or kiosk at one of the local markets in the city and expand her business by employing a few people to assist her in the venture.
She brought in several Singer sewing machines to enable her meet orders. In the evenings and weekends, she did the entire cutting for the helpers to work on while she was at work during the day. And even at lunchtime, she rushed there to see how they were getting on and sort out any problem they could have.
The business picked up very well and boomed with time. Things were looking up so well that she decided to actually leave paid employment, the job she loved and concentrate on the business. While there, she continued to do the cutting, material acquisition and marketing while her assistants did the sewing under her instructions.
She became even happier and she was the envy of many who knew her or shared the market with her. Then the impossible happened. Whether it was fate or the evil hand of man, nobody knows.
One morning she woke up and as she was preparing to leave for work, she heard over the radio at the seven o’clock news of a fire that started and destroyed part of that market at wee hours of the night as people slept. She bowed down and prayed so hard to God to possibly spare her kiosk. Her husband had already left for work and her children to school.
It was difficult to even take breakfast therefore she set off to work. In the bus, she prayed silently in her head with her eyes wide open. She did not see the people in the bus nor whatever was outside as the bus rolled from stage to stage. She only saw her herself faintly through eyes that looked obscured.
As the bus approached the market area, she could see thick smoke bellowing heavily into the sky as people watched helplessly and City Council fire brigades fighting the fire. It was her side of the market on fire.
By the time she went round to the side where her stall was, there was nothing left standing as the roof had caved in and the semi-permanent walls had all collapsed and inside was full of nothing but soot, dust, ashes and embers. She lost, all and sundry. There was nothing to be salvaged.
She could not cry nor talk. She was like a dumb person who was born that way. Her legs could not carry her. They were like paper or boneless. She sat down on the grass to try and digest what was in front of her and gather courage and strength to return home and think of what next.
After several hours of not knowing what to say or do, she remembered that she had children that needed her and life that must go on. She got up and headed to the bus stop. She took the bus and headed home. There was nobody at home as all the children were still in school and their father at work.
That is when what had happened dawned on her and she broke down and cried loudly and very painfully too till a female neighbor heard her sorrowful voice and went to check on her. The neighbor is the one who called her husband to let him know of what had just happened. The neighbor stayed with her till her husband arrived home.
Harriet never recovered from this incident at all. She could not collect herself together and go look for another job or network with her former colleagues for her old job or make arrangements to start another business elsewhere or at the same place when new construction of the market was complete. She lost hope, wit and what it takes to think straight and move on.
She used all the savings she had made when the going was good and that was it. She could not think of making more money and saving for the future as she did before. The best she did after this incident was collect old and used newspapers and magazines from friends and people she knew well or merely acquainted with and sell them to get by day to day.
She was content doing that and refused to focus on anything else. It was like she died inside. Talking her off this into something more fruitful was like hitting one’s head on a stone that would not yield.
And to add insult to injury, her husband later abandoned her and married another woman and moved off to another house and area of the city. She was left with her children as he started another family with his new wife. Her children were now big but not independent as they were not all through with high school or college.
She could not afford to pay the rent on the original family home the
refore she moved to a very tiny place or room elsewhere where sanitary facilities and a common kitchen were shared with other families and no privacy of whatever nature.
Meeting her and looking at her, nobody would believe that she was that intelligent lady who scored highly in schools, college and at work. The shame she carried around her could not allow her to carry herself to some of her work or school colleagues who could help fix her on a job somewhere.
Therapy was maybe the only option left to help get her out of this situation but directing her there or taking her there was also another tall order as she became very stubborn and difficult to talk to or convince. The happiness she used to wear on her face disappeared and she etched towards serious depression.
Her appearance and outlook was pathetic and she lost tremendous weight. Even her jovial voice turned to a mere whisper. And that was the new Harriet.
Bad Influence
A good young man who was loved and respected by many both old and young changed into something incorrigible due to the direction he chose to follow after many years of being obedient and a trustworthy person. Zuka was born and brought up in a rural setting by parents who were of very lowly background.
He assumed this status from birth and immersed himself in it fully as he grew up because that is what was around him and therefore what he knew. He did not expect anything else or more for himself except being simple, ordinary and having the very bare minimum.
From his community, the most popular job a young person would do especially one who sought work outside his home area would be employment in someone’s house as house help within the town nearby or in the big city far away through an intermediary of someone who knew somebody somewhere who needed such a person.
That would be from around puberty to young adulthood. As for women, there was no option apart from being married off at puberty. School did not matter as it was strange in the community except in cases of the affluent families whose heads of the families were in the elite circles of the establishments of the day.
Zuka got employed at an early age, in the local town by a woman who had lost her husband but had children to take care of. The woman did small businesses at home to make ends meet. He did all the washing, cleaning, ironing and running errands for this household for several years till the end of his teen years then the lady handing him over to her younger brother.
Her brother had a small but young family than hers in the city. She felt that her children were now old enough to handle some of the work that Zuka did and also that her brother needed him more than her because of his young baby boy and his wife also worked away from home.
At the city, he did not just wash, clean and iron; he went to the markets and shops to buy food and cooked it. He also washed the family car. He learned the ways of the city and became very familiar with many things but he never changed his humble demeanor and trustworthiness.
After some time in the city, his boss got separated from his wife due to irreconcilable differences and he was relieved of his duties, as there was no family for him to work for anymore. Just before he boarded transport back to his roots, a friend of the lady of the house heard of his predicament and took him to another friend of hers who needed someone like him.
The new employer was a bigger and older family with grandchildren as well although not all the family members lived in the same house. The family also had businesses around the city by way of rented premises, a restaurant, a productive farm far away in another province and an upcountry home in another region.
He started working for this family as an errand boy and also did cleaning, washing and ironing in the main family home where the matriarch and patriarch of the family resided. His honesty, reliability, hard work and respect earned him a lot of love from this family. The old couple endeared themselves to him so much that they introduced him to people as their very own son.
Over the years, the couple learned to rely on him more than their biological sons. They could trust him with so much money to take somewhere even if it meant upcountry where they were putting up a new family house and he would deliver the money and travel back to the city and the contractor or foreman would acknowledge receipt of the money.
Their biological sons could take portions of the money for their own enjoyment even if they were given some as pocket money. Their trust on him became so deep that the couple decided to allocate him some land at their upcountry home so that he could retire there in his old age and do some subsistence farming or small business.
Due to his good nature and trustworthiness, the couple decided to put him in their restaurant business so that he could see to the day-to-day management of the operation including cash collections at the counter and deposits at the bank. This decision was made after one of their sons had more or less run the previously profitable place down to serious losses and to near closure.
Previously, the matriarch ran the place while the patriarch was still in employment. She became sickly and handed over the baton to one of their sons. Zuka revived the operation and profitability was realized once again. This endeared him to them even more. The business was accumulating four times what their son was showing at the end of any day.
Obviously they in return made his remuneration better every year and added him bonuses and many other rewards in between. He was happy, but still remained simple and unassuming. He was also living with them in the same compound and eating from the same kitchen except that he had his own room outside the main house for the night.
With time, he met a woman of his choice and decided to get married to her. He therefore decided to leave his sleeping quarters and move elsewhere with his new family. He brought her to meet them and she continued to keep in touch with them through visits during her first pregnancy. Before long, he had his first child, a baby girl.
When his wife delivered their first baby, a girl, they saw the mother and child in the hospital and thereafter through frequent visits to their home by his wife and child. His wife was a homemaker therefore he had to work even harder to provide for the family.
His new residential place was in the suburbs of the city, far, far away from the city center where the restaurant and the employer’s home were. Then things started to change slowly but surely after one year although his demeanor remained as before.
The business started losing money gradually and finally at the end of each subsequent month, the collections became what the couple’s son used to present to them. When he was questioned over a period of time, his answer was that he did not know what was happening. He claimed that maybe someone was putting their hand in the till when he was not there.
In other words, he was trying to put the blame on one of the staff members at the restaurant. Little did he know that the rest of the staff had been watching keenly as to the goings on when he had abrupt visits from someone who came by during lunchtime or afternoons without fail and the visitor was always escorted outside for about fifteen minutes.
The staff did not know who the visitor was, but they observed that the two talked the same vernacular language and that they talked in low tones. From the description of the frequent visitor, the couple was able to pinpoint who it was because they knew the stature of his previous employer.
Zuka was working in cohort with his previous boss to run down the business. His previous boss was known to be a very callous person who did not mind eating where he did not sow or bringing someone down to nothingness.
Apparently, this former boss was jobless at the time yet he had a car that was on the road and he had to pay rent. His incorrigible influence on the young man made Zuka do what no one saw coming, stealing from the employer who had had so much faith and trust in him for years.
And that is how he left his job not because they sacked him but because he started complaining of previously unknown sicknesses that he never mentioned before and asking for offs every so often as if it was his way of asking for sympathy from them.
When he started faking sick
ness, his former boss also stopped calling on him whenever he reported to work because he knew that the cat was out of the bag.
And due to his now common off duty routine, the couple decided to put someone else on the job. Zuka eventually told the couple that he could not work anymore because of his condition and he was let go, not that they wanted to keep him on; they were just studying the situation further before firing him with no benefits.
They employed a young lady straight from a middle college to man the place. Within her first month at work, she turned things around and the business made more money than the previous few months.
Within the next several months, things went back to normal with profit at its peak as at when Zuka had not started pilfering money to give to his mentor. That is when they confirmed that Zuka was indeed stealing from them with a lot of help from his previous boss who routinely passed by on daily basis to collect the loot.
