Kicking the Blind

By Sunkanmi Afolabi

Kunle Sunusi Obinna was a full citizen of Nigeria with parentage that cut across the three major tribes of the country. He practiced the two major religions: Christianity and Islam. He graduated in the University and Polytechnic holding dual certificates; BSc and HND. Yet he suffered discrimination and inhuman dignity without apology to his person.
He got a job in the country that gave him the certificates. One of the certificates would confine him to a worker for life in which he would know neither promotion nor enjoy any companys benefits. The other would have made him a staff member that would experience promotion to move from rank to rank. He would have been exposed to the companys benefits but because he started his life as a contract worker, the escape to the life of full staff was a mirage. He tussled within and without. He battled his soul and struggled for a better living in the process provided a best option for his country to free the contract workers, drawing strongly from Lincolns saying: A nation cannot endure permanently half slave; half free.

This is a must read novel for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477251171

Sunkanmi Afolabi

Sunkanmi Afolabi was born in Nigeria. He attended the University of Ilorin where he studied English Language and obtained a BA Degree. He currently lives in the United States.

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© 2013 by Sunkanmi Afolabi. All rights reserved.

Graphics/Art Credit: Joshua Allen

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse February 10, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5116-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5117-1 (e)

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Contents

AUTHORS NOTE

CHAPTER ONE Joining The Workers

CHAPTER TWO The Road To Sokoto

CHAPTER THREE The National Central Labor Union Election

CHAPTER FOUR The Lords And Their Manors

CHAPTER FIVE Glimpse Of Sunlight - Endorsement By Error

CHAPTER SIX Exit Into Uncertainty

SYNOPSIS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

REFERENCES

AUTHORS NOTE

The story captures the plight of contract workers in the corporate environments. The characters are fiction; the working conditions are pungent. The novel is a deliberate attempt to present the picture of what the workers are going through, and the very best solutions that would take the poor wage condition away.

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I once read of an Iranian folk proverb, If you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be kinder than God? In other words, if you see someone who is suffering, you must believe that he deserves his fate and that God wants him to suffer. Therefore, put yourself on God’s side by shunning him or humiliating him further. If you try to help him, you will be going against God’s justice. Those were the words of Harold S. Kushner in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated to all contract workers in every land and clime who are deceitfully engaged in employments where they will never be promoted to the next level.

CHAPTER ONE

JOINING THE WORKERS

T he memories I wanted to do away with did not part with me. They kept coming like better days ahead. I saw them daily. I saw them again when my supervisor engaged me in a discussion.

‘Which school did you attend?’

From the expression on his face, it was as if I was one of those the Bank sent to him to be trained, who would become his boss effectively six months down the line.

‘Testament Polytechnic.’ I answered.

His nerve relaxed.

‘So, you have OND; Ordinary National ‘Dunce’?’

‘I have OND and HND; Ordinary National Diploma and Higher National Diploma.’ I explained.

‘So you are Higher National ‘Dunce’? Then, your case is complicated. Why didn’t you go to a University?’

‘I wanted to study Medicine in the University. When I was losing the admission repeatedly, I had to settle for Accountancy in Polytechnic to expand my future freedom and financial success.’

‘Why didn’t you settle for History, Sociology, Guidance and Counseling, Linguistics or something in the University to ensure you have BSc or BA?’

‘In fact, I took Accountancy reluctantly. I didn’t want to go for any substandard course in the University.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you made a poor decision?’

‘How?’

‘Have you ever been told that decision decides destiny?’

‘Decision decides destiny.’ I turned it over in my mind.

‘Young man! You should have gone to the University and obtained BSc or BA in Nothing than having HND in The Best Course.’

‘But Endlessly Reliable Bank will move us to the same level of BSc in six months or one-year time.’

‘Is that supposed to be a prophecy, a doctrine, a sermon, or a good wish?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘I mean you speak fallacy and quibble. You know how many years men have spent here for committing sin of HND? You will wonder why I am sounding so aghast. It is simple pal. An antelope who entered into a trap was shouting, people were asking; why are you crying, you are almost dead inside the trap. He says he was crying not because of himself but because of other animals in the bush that they might not enter the same trap.’

As he was employing this image to describe his situation, I studied him more intensely. He was tall. I was a bit above his navel in height. When he stood, his legs were not straight. It was the O-shaped. He was light in complexion. I listened carefully to him, and I looked at his physique. He actually looked like an antelope himself.

The rain drizzled. Droplets hit me through the holes on the roof and windows of the danfo bus I was sitting. I was dreamy. Dreamy, not because I was being rain-beaten, but because of what my mind was seeing through the fractured window.

I was inside the tattered yellow painted danfo bus in Iyana Ipaja Motor Park going to Ogudu. I beheld inside the mizzling rain, a man kicking a blind beggar with annoyance and frustration. The blindman held his bearer stick ponderously, and let out occasional pain in response to the intermittent kicking.

My memory drew back to the Iranian folk proverb, if you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be kinder than God?

If you see a blind man, kick him. Why must you be kinder than God who created him? This was a physical manifestation of this saying. Then my mind worked recessively on different stages of blind kicking. I dwelt on the increasing numbers of blind kickers. The avalanche of helpless and hopeless blind ones being kicked. I asked myself: must the blind truly be kicked? Why must we kick the blind? Why must we not kick the blind? Why are there blind people by the way? Who are the blind?

I was netted. My bone became riotous. Tears of human limitation welled up inside me. I was agitated. I dwelled on the issue long and far. I looked in and out. My mind travelled short and long distances.

The rickety bus wobbled its way out of the motor park. My thoughts ran through the fiery tales of my life adventure all in an attempt to make a living. In fact, pay for my existence on earth. Yes, pay for my existence. Pay for clothes to cover my nakedness. Pay for my shoes. Pay for moving around. Pay for my food to stay alive. Pay for a house to hide myself from rain and sunshine. Pay for the happiness of my loved ones. Pay for unnecessary luxuries to let them know I belonged. This is the story I seek to tell to all to free my mind and relieve my imagination. My experience at every stage of my endeavors was not with the gods. They were with fellowmen and largely my countrymen of the same skin color.

I just took one of those inconsequential decisions that would make or mar me depending on how the outcome played out but I felt lighter and better after the decision.

Trusting in the wisdom of our fathers that if things come to those who wait, they must be the things left by those who tussle, I knocked on doors of Human Resources Department at the Head Office of choice organizations mostly in Victoria Island, Lagos, of my country, Nigeria. I needed to secure a living. I was hoping for a miracle in the field of efforts. I had HND in the Polytechnic and BSc in the University. I carried four resumes. The one that carried OND. The second had HND & OND. The third displayed BSc. The fourth combined all; OND, HND, and BSc. Adequately equipped to give to any employer, whatever he desired.

Time was running out. National Youth Service Corps had ended. My clothes were attenuating. I had started managing hunger with insufficient food. At my wits end, tired of the job chase, I made a drained effort. I approached a bank’s head office. Banks were the largest employers of labor then. They were not taking BSc. I promptly submitted my HND. They asked me to write an aptitude test which I did.

The aptitude test was a blend of English Language, Mathematics, and Current Affairs. The room was filled to capacity. I had no idea of the number of us writing the test because there were four to five streams that were meant to write that day. I counted myself privilege among those who wrote. The results were expected to be available in two weeks. We were given a phone number to call at the expected time to inquire whether we passed or not. I wrote the number and kept it dearly and called on the said date but was asked to call the third day because results were still being collated. Another three anxious days ensued. As the clock clicked eight-thirty in the morning on the day, I hurried to Father Love’s business center and made the call.

It was a business center owned by a retired old man and his wife. He caught my fancy as a dutiful civil servant who spent substantial part of his life in serving the nation in honesty and integrity of heart and downright professionalism. When he completed the service year’s cycle of thirty-five, he collected his retirement money and quickly finished his building. For I knew the building before now, it was an uncompleted bungalow. All of a sudden, the bungalow was cemented internally and externally. The dusty floor was equally cemented. All that must have happened in less than two months. He greeted people around and had something good to say to everyone. They called him Father Love.

In order to keep busy while expecting the end of his chapter in human tussle, he ran two lines of business. He sold water. He had five points of tap water in front of his house. Two were very close to the ground. People who fetched there often came with pails and buckets which they carried in their hands. The other three points were 7-shaped, very tall in the air. Those who used the tall water points usually came with big tubs. They had clothes, sometimes as big as a woman’s wrapper, carefully kneaded, and rolled into a bundle. The buyer first placed the bundle on his head before placing the plastic tub on top of the cloth. This was done to prevent the carrier of the water from experiencing pain in the head in carrying the big object. It would make the large plastic tub stable and check the water in it from splashing and spilling on the carrier on his way home.

Hence, people who fetched with the container on their heads usually used the 7-shaped tap water. They stood under the mouth of the tap water in the air and used one hand to unlock the tap while the other hand held the tub. Once the water became heavy on their heads, they used their hands to check the extent of its fullness by putting their hands inside the tubs on their heads. They turned off the taps before the containers got filled to capacity and moved away gently.

Father Love was always up by 5 a.m. to allow those going to work to buy water. His bedtime was after 11 p.m. to give those who might not be able to wake up early enough to fetch water before going to their respective places of work ample time to buy. A bucket was five naira; a tub was ten naira.

Father Love was a huge man with a commanding voice. He appeared to have information on all issues. He talked about them with dates. He had a cynical flat but pointed nose that gives an aura of accumulated wisdom ready to respond to any issue with an informed knowledge. He was a disciplined civil servant. There were three things Father Love doesn’t joke with; money, newspapers, and books. He was rarely short of change for those who came to buy water or make calls from him. He wouldn’t owe them, and he hated them owing him. Father Love bought one newspaper every day and ensured he read everything inside. His many friends who came to greet could read, but they could never take them away. His library was a reservoir of different books. It appeared Father Love spent all his years in service acquiring books. The biggest room in his three-bedroom bungalow was his library which he filled with books, magazines, and newspapers.

He had four mobile phones which he used for commercial activities. Each of the phones had the sim card of each of the four most common GSM service providers. There was Yellow, Chameleon, Green, and Butterfly Networks. Whenever a customer came in to make a call, he would ask for the number he wanted to call. He would give Yellow for Yellow calls, Chameleon for Chameleon calls, Green for Green calls, and Butterfly for Butterfly calls to reduce the service charge and increase his income, as same network calls charged reduced rates than calls across networks. He had three long benches arranged in an incomplete rectangular shape where customers sat. He sat on an arm chair with a reading table to complete the shape. A notebook was his work tool where he noted the frequency of water purchased by a buyer who bought more than one. He easily added the total to determine the amount receivable from each customer. His daily newspaper is ever on his table to keep him alive. Money came in for Father Love both from his water and his phone businesses, every hour of the day.

I patronized Father Love on his two lines of business since we had no water in our Face-Me and Face-You apartment. Also, I had no phone line and my uncle whom I was staying with had none. I bought water from him and I used his telephone lines to follow up on job prospects. Three of his mobile lines were on my resume as I trusted he would always relay any important call I had.

Our apartment building was called Face-Me and Face-You as each room faced each other. The nickname has even been changed overtime to Face-Me and Slap-You because of the incessant fighting peculiar to this type of apartment homes. The building had a procession of seven rooms. There were seven to the left and seven to the right; making fourteen. We all shared one common pit latrine and one common bathroom. No kitchen. No water. The occupants of each room bought water and stored in a big drum and padlocked it. Everyone cooked inside or outside their rooms. Each room had an average of three occupants. We were five in ours. I lived with my uncle and his wife with their two children. Our room was divided into room and parlor with a large curtain. Both the husband and the wife slept inside the room; I slept with the children on a mat in the parlor. After daily early Morning Prayer, we usually folded the mat to allow space for visitors if they ever came in. To be truthful, I hated inviting visitors to our home. Whenever where I stayed was mentioned, I chose to steer the communication to other matters. This might not be a good attribute. The universal wisdom dictates one should