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In the small village of Usaka, there lived an old man named Obi. Obi was a very popular man in Usaka because he held a very significant position, and many people respected him, including the King and Queen of Usaka.
In Usaka village, there was a sacred river called Uso. This river was believed to be a source of life and prosperity for the villagers. It wasn’t just any river that the villagers could easily access whenever they felt like it. The only time any villager had access to the river was if the spirits of the sacred river asked for the person or a spiritual cleansing had to be done in the river.
Just like his ancestors, Obi was the guardian of the sacred river. Obi came from a family of gifted people who had the ability to communicate with the great Spirits of the sacred river. For many years, Obi served as the spokesman for the spirits and the villagers. He performed sacrifices in their due time and did everything to ensure that the river remained functional to the villagers of Usaka.
But as Obi grew older, he became worried because he knew his son, Amadi, would have to succeed him. Right from when Amadi was a baby, it had been prophecied that Amadi would be one of the greatest and most powerful guardians in the history of Usaka village. Obi knew that Amadi was highly gifted and could even see things before they happened, but there was a problem: Amadi had no interest in following his father’s or ancestors’ path.
As a child, Amadi was different. He refused to learn about the spirits of the sacred river and even hated that his father had to make blood sacrifices twice every year. In the beginning, when Obi noticed that Amadi was not interested in everything he did, he thought that Amadi was just being childish. However, when Amadi grew into an adult and still did not change his mind, Obi became concerned.
One night, after Obi struggled to sleep for hours, but he couldn’t, he went to Amadi’s room and woke him up.
“Amadi, my son,” Obi called after Amadi woke up.
“Papa, I hope everything is alright, ” Amadi asked in a sleepy voice.
“Amadi, I have not been able to sleep for nights now, and it’s because of you,” Obi said.
“Ah!” Amadi exclaimed, “What did I do?” He asked.
Amadi, why are you so stubborn? You’re making me worried,” Obi said in a sad voice.
“Em! Papa, If it’s about taking over your position as the guardian of that river, I am not interested,” Amadi said.
“But I have told you, the spirits of the river have chosen you. For many generations, your forefathers have been serving the river. Why can’t you understand that you have been chosen to follow the family tradition?” Obi asked.
“Papa, am I your only son? I have two older brothers, the spirits can pick any of them and he will happily serve them,” Amadi said, ” I’ve said this over and over, I don’t want anything to do with you and your family’s stupid tradition, allow me to live my life,” Amadi said.
“Hmmm! You still speak like a child. I hope you realize before it’s too late that you cannot run away from your calling. No matter where you go, you will always return to your roots,” Obi said.
“Papa! I know why you’re saying this; it’s because I’m travelling next week to serve my master, right? I’d rather be a salesboy for the rest of my life than be the guardian of a stupid river,” Amadi said angrily.
“Please, my son, pity the grey hairs on my head and consider me. If you try to run away from destiny, you will not like how things will turn out for you. Now that I am still alive, why don’t you let me do the necessary rituals on your head and teach you all that I know,” Obi begged.
“See, eh, papa, even if you beg me until tomorrow morning, my answer remains ‘No’. I don’t want anything to do with you and your river. Allow me to live my life the way I want it. I want to be a businessman, and hopefully, after 7 years of serving my master, he will settle me as he has promised,” Amadi said.
When Obi saw that there was nothing he could say to convince Amadi to change his mind, he left. A week after Amadi had that conversation with his father, he travelled to the city to serve a man named Eze, who owned a big electronics shop.
Eze was a family friend of Obi, and he had promised Obi that he would take Amadi as one of his sales boys for his shop. Then after seven years of Amadi serving him, he would give Amadi some money to start his own business.
Even though Obi was happy that Amadi would become independent in the future, he was sad that Amadi had rejected his primary responsibility to Usaka village.
The first few months Amadi moved to the city with Eze, everything went smoothly. Amadi lived with Eze, and every morning, he would wake up early and go to open the shop. On some days, they would make a lot of sales, and on others, they would make fewer sales.
All this while, Eze had no reason to treat Amadi badly until five months later when Eze’s business began to suffer.
It started with Eze’s money mysteriously missing under Amadi’s care. Then, a fire broke out in the market, and only Eze’s shop burned to the ground, causing him to lose so much money.
When the series of bad luck continued, Eze’s wife was worried that something bad was happening, so she went to a powerful church to make enquiries, and to her greatest surprise, she was told that Amadi was the cause of all that had happened. When Eze learned that Amadi was responsible for all the calamity that befell his business, he sent Amadi away without giving him any explanations.
After Amadi left Eze’s house, he thought of returning to the village, but he was too ashamed to go back with nothing, so he decided to remain in the city. Luckily for Amadi, he had been saving some of the tips some generous customers had given him when business was still good, and with that money, he rented a small apartment and started a small plastic business. Since Amadi could not afford to rent a shop, he bought a wheelbarrow for his goods.
Every morning, Amadi would push his wheelbarrow around the city, hoping that someone would buy some of the plastic buckets, plates, cups and the other things he sold, but that didn’t happen. It was almost like Amadi, and his goods were invisible to passersby. Meanwhile, Amadi made a new friend who was also doing the same business, and every evening, Amadi’s friend would show Amadi all the money he had made that day.
“Maybe you should follow me since you’re complaining that you have not made any sales since you started your business, ” Amadi’s friend suggested after Amadi complained to him.
“Will it work?” Amadi asked.
“It should. There is no day I go out that I do not sell anything, no matter how small. So maybe, if we go out together, you might make sales,” Amadi’s friend said.
“Thank you very much, my friend, I will do that tomorrow,” Amadi said.
The following day, Amadi and his friend went out with their wheelbarrows filled with goods, expecting that they would sell, but that didn’t happen. For the very first time since Amadi’s friend started his plastic business, he pushed his wheelbarrow around the busy parts of the city for the whole day, and not even one person stopped to buy from him.
The first day it happened, Amadi’s friend believed they had a bad day, but after three days of not making any sales, Amadi’s friend began to suspect that Amadi was the problem. Although Amadi’s friend did not want to hurt Amadi’s feelings by telling Amadi that he had bad luck, when he couldn’t endure anymore, he was forced to tell Amadi to stop following him.
“My friend, why do you want me to stop following you? weren’t you the one that told me to come with you?” Amadi asked in a confused and disappointed tone.
“Look, Amadi, I will tell you the truth; I think you are the reason you have not been making any sales,” Amadi’s friend said.
“How do you mean?” Amadi asked.
“My brother, you need to go and check yourself. You have serious bad luck,” Amadi’s friend said.
“Ah! Why would you say that?” Is it because I asked you to help me, and now you’re insulting me,” Amadi asked angrily.
“See, this is not a matter you should get angry over. If you feel you don’t have bad luck, then what is the explanation for starting a business and not having sold a single thing in the last four months? No matter how bad you think the economy is, it shouldn’t be like that. Your situation is not ordinary,” Amadi’s friend said.
“What about me? It’s been a week since we’ve been going out together, and I haven’t sold a single thing in the whole week. How do you explain that?” He added.
“So you’re saying I’m the reason why you haven’t been selling?” Amadi asked in a heartbroken voice.
“Yes, Amadi. I will not lie to you. As for now, I don’t want you to follow me again, and I’m afraid we will not be seeing each other anymore. I don’t want you to rub off your bad luck on me or my small business,” Amadi’s friend said. With that, he walked out of Amadi.
That day, Amadi was very sad because of what his friend said about him, but he refused to believe he had bad luck.
“If this business is not moving, then I will do something else. I cannot allow people to insult me or say whatever they feel like to me just because of a bad business,” Amadi soliloquized. “In fact, I know what to do,” Amadi said.
Instead of sulking over what his friend had said to him, Amadi pushed his wheelbarrow and his goods to the market, and he auctioned all his plastics at a discounted price. Luckily for him, some market women who were in the same line of business bought everything from him. Even though Amadi had lost most of the capital he used to start up his plastic business, he was glad he sold everything.
That evening, when Amadi went home, he thought of numerous ways he could make money, and he decided to learn a skill, which was sewing male clothes, and in less than a week of picking a skill of interest, Amadi found a tailoring shop where he could learn how to sew male clothes. Without wasting time, Amadi made the payment, and he bought everything he needed.
Since learning a skill was not the same as running a business, Amadi believed he would succeed this time, but he was wrong.
Exactly two weeks after Amadi began learning his new skill, something terrible happened at the tailoring shop. Some thieves broke into the shop and stole some sewing machines, including Amadi’s new sewing machine and some expensive fabrics. As a result, Amadi had to pause learning since he could not afford to buy a new sewing machine.
As if pausing his learning process was not enough, some of the other apprentices at the tailoring shop began to spread rumours that Amadi had a hand in the robbery. They claimed that since the robbery happened shortly after Amadi joined them, it was possible that Amadi was the mastermind behind it. Then, to portray himself as the victim, Amadi asked the thieves to steal his sewing machine so he could cover up.
When these rumours reached the shop owner, he kicked Amadi out of his shop without any investigation and threatened to arrest him if he ever showed up again. Unfortunately for Amadi, he never got to learn the skill and never got his money back.
This alone almost made Amadi depressed. It was quite heartbreaking for him that in the span of one year, nearly everything he tried to do was unsuccessful. The worst part was that Amadi had high hopes for the money he would make from tailoring and had invested all of this money into learning the skill.
As time passed, things got so bad for Amadi that he could not even afford to eat one good meal a day, and he was forced to do odd jobs like dumping trash and fetching water for people just to afford to feed every day.
“How long will I continue like this? Look at what I have reduced myself to,” Amadi soliloquized.
Earlier that day, Amadi had to beg for 200 naira from a woman he often dumped trash for. He told her he wanted her to pay him in advance, but deep down, he desperately needed the money to eat.
“What if that woman refused to pay me in advance? Is this how I would sleep hungry?” Amadi asked himself.
“At this point, I need to think of something else to do. I don’t mind washing cars for people or learning mechanic work; at least, I will make little money daily. Just because things did not go as planned doesn’t mean I should fold my hands and do nothing,” Amadi said.
At that point, Amadi made up his mind to do something different, even if it wasn’t the kind of thing he would not have loved to do. He simply had no choice.
What Amadi did not know was that it didn’t matter what line of business he chose or what skill he chose to learn; he would still experience setbacks unless he returned to Usaka village to swear allegiance to the spirits of the sacred river.
Watch out for part 2
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