The power had blinked twice that morning, after two weeks of power outage, when the whole village had been plunged into total darkness.
Chuka sat on a bench, the laptop on a rickety table, belonged to his friend Erasmus. Even the network was bad and he feared that he might not be able to make it to the zoom meeting that morning.
He was tensed up no doubt and severally he had felt like giving up, just turning his back and walking away from it all, but he just couldn't, this could be his only chance.
He wore a white t-shirt, clean but frayed at the collar, ironed with a heated pot, along with his trousers. His brother Abuchi watched from a distance as he fumbled with the laptop, mouthing prayers for his brother's success.
The Zoom link started working.
Three faces appeared on the screen. A sophisticated looking Nigerian woman with braided hair and very harsh eyes, a British man with round glasses resting on his sharp nose and an older Nigerian man with grey hair all over. He was the professor and his face appeared to be carved from stone.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Chuka Nwizu." said the woman. “We’re glad you made it to the final stage of the International Foundation Scholarship.”
Chuka nodded quickly. “Thank you so much ma'am, I’m very honoured.”
The British man smiled slightly. “Let’s begin, shall we? So tell me young man, why do you think you deserve this scholarship?”
Chuka swallowed hard. And right then, he lost connectivity. Fear gripped him as he started fumbling with the wires again, trying to reconnect .
Then, thinking he was on mute, he whispered to himself, “I don't know why I even bother, they will never give it to a poor boy like me.”
The screen flickered. His mic was on.
He didn’t realize.
But they heard him.
The professor leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Repeat what you just said, young man.”
Chuka’s face was drained of all colour. He hovered his hand over the mute button, then dropped it.
“I… I thought I was on mute.”
“Yes, but we’d still like to hear what you meant.” The woman said gently.
Chuka’s throat tightened, for a second, he thought of ending the call and calling it quits. Just closing the laptop and disappearing back into the dusty corners of his life. Then he looked at his younger brother, Abuchi, who had dropped out of primary 4 because there was no money for school fees, and then papa’s portrait on the wall. His eyes seemed to say;
"Go on, you can do it my boy." He had never wanted to disappoint his father. He slowly turned his eyes back to the screen.
“I’m sorry,” he began, his voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to be rude, I just… I’ve applied to so many of these. Every time, it’s the same disappointment.
‘We regret to inform you…’ Even when I make it to the finals.”
“Why do you think that is?” the British man asked, scribbling something.
Chuka looked into the webcam like it was a mirror to something deeper.
“Because I am poor,” he said. “Because I don’t speak the way rich people speak, because I don’t have connections, because I’m from a place you people can’t even find on Google Maps, because when you ask me about leadership skills, I think of how I taught five children under our guava tree when their school shut down.”
He paused.
“I sell pure water on the street with my mother, just to survive. Most times we don't have light so I study under mallam's kiosk light. I taught myself calculus from an old textbook with lots of missing pages. We thank God when we are able to have more than one meal a day. My father......he collapsed and died while pushing a wheelbarrow, with excess load on it."
The interviewers were silent.
Abuchi was weeping silently in a corner.
“I know I should be confident, polished, impressive, but I am not polished, I don't know the fancy words, what I have is fire. I know how to learn. I know how to work very hard because I know what hunger feels like. It's not funny waking up every morning to nothingness even if I try anyway.”
The professor leaned back slowly.
“What will you do if we give you this scholarship?” he asked, voice low.
Chuka blinked away tears.
“I will become someone worthy of it, I will study engineering. I will study so hard, not just to leave poverty behind, but to build things. Power. Things that work, not just for me, but for my village, for people like me and for every boy whose dreams were buried under payment of school fees.”
The screen went still.
The stern looking woman with the braids smiled softly, for the first time.
“Mr. Nwizu… you say you are not polished but today, you’ve spoken with more honesty and purpose than most people ever do.”
The British man nodded. “Indeed.”
The professor said nothing but he reached for a pen, signed something just out of view, and gave a small nod.
Then the woman said the words Chuka never expected to hear:
“Congratulations. You’ve been awarded the International Foundation Scholarship, to study in Spain.”
There was silence, then a choking sob as Chuka pressed his hand to his chest.
With a completely cracked voice, he whispered.
“This means everything, thannk....you."
The woman said, “Yes, we believe in investing in people who don’t give up just like you.”
As the call ended, and the screen faded, Chuka sat still, breathing in the moment.
Outside, the power cut again. Darkness filled the room.
But inside him, the light had come on.
Years later.
Chuka graduated top of his class in Electrical Engineering and went on to intern at a solar tech firm in South Africa, then returned home.
This morning he looked around the room, then up at the solar-powered lighting system he had designed himself, the bulbs, elegant and efficient, ran on less than a whisper of energy.
The sky above hummed with the soft sound of solar turbines spinning and for the first time, Ezifite, Chuka's village would have constant light, not from a noisy generator, not from borrowed power, but from the hands of one boy who thought he was on mute.
All images are AI generated.
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