Introduction.
Hello friends, fellow comedians and comedy lovers, I hope this meets you well.
I want to bring you a story of our neighbor; Mr. Raphael and how his family forced him to marry a "village girl." Kindly seat back and have a read.
Our Neighbors Wife.
Around year 2000, while we where growing up, we lived at a rural neighborhood around Okigwe Local Government Area. At that time, Limca bottling company was still operational, and she was a second to the highest employer of labour around Okigwe, after Abia State University. Many people in the neighborhood worked with Limca. This included Raphael who was a security man with Limca.
At this time, Raphael was in his 40s but unmarried.
His parents had just the three of them, two boys and a girl. As life may have it, his senior and only brother died in a motor accident, leaving him and his junior sister who was already married off to her husband, they were based at Owerri.
Now, the problem is; we Africans believe every man is supposed to get married and have children to carry on with his linage and legacies after his life. But Raphael is not showing any signs to of seriousness in this regards and he was in his late 40s.
Just like in Nigerian home movies, one day, his sister visited unannounced, with a girl from the village, whom she claimed was Raphael's wife. (This is a case of; "if Mohamed doesn't want to go to the mountains, the mountain will come to Mohamed" 😅
This is a sort of desperation move since Raphael on his own doesn't look capable of confronting the capital project of marriage. However, we were all surprised and happy for him.
Not long after, the sister and her husband helped to see that the marriage was properly formalized and Raphael became a married man. They had two children, a girl and boy.
Few years later, Limca went morribond and all her staffs were paid-off for their services to the company. Raphael was not exempted, He received about two million naira as payoff for his services to the company. This was like a dream as he didn't not image that a day shall come, when he will own such amount of money, but it was not a dream, it did come true.
Raphael bought Kymco motorcycle which was invoke at that time, he wanted to use it for commercial perposes.
Again, he opened a provision store for the wife to manage. But that was the gratest mistake he made. Why do I consider it a mistake? I will tell you in the next paragraphs.
Earlier on, I had chipped in the facts that Raphael's wife was brought from the village. Unknown to the husband and people that she was not grounded with numbers and simple calculations.
On one occasion, one of our friends named Eze, approaced their shop to buy an item, after the purchase, he presented the highest denomination of the naira note to her. (At that time, 500 naira was the highest denomination). Normally, Eze's balance was was supposed to Be an amount lesser than 500 naira plus the item he bought. But what he received from Raphael's wife was an amount more than the 500 naira. If you plus it to the value of the item he bought, you will see that Eze had gone home with about double of his money. 😢
When Eze got home, he was amazed. He told a few other friends, that Raphael's wife doesn't know simple calcuations and as such. They starrted frequenting her store with higher denominations and getting more value for their money.
I didn't know if this till after a very long while, by this time, the shop was already crumbling because of this and many other managerial factors.
When I learnt about it, I told my parents, whom inturn invited Mr. Raphael and notified him.
Myself, the culprits, my Dad, Mr Raphael and the parents of the culprit were summoned to the landlords'. At first, the culprits denied involvement, but after some scrutiny, they pleaded guilty.
This caused a very serious problem at that time because there was no way to determine the exact amount these people were supposed to bring back to the business. However, the landlord mandated the parents to return ten thousand naira each to Mr. Raphael, which they did, but at this time, the damage had been done.
Conclusion.
This post is aimed at reminding us of how important it is for us to train our children in school, (men and female alike), especially through the basics (Primary and junior secondary). This will help them make better decisions in all their life endeavors.
Thank you for visiting and reading through my blog.