Saturday, December 28, 2013

I saw an angel in Nigeria

Wtf?, is this me?
Not everthing in Nigeria is bad, we have unfiltered desire to love and share with each other. At a very tender age, when I was about five to six years old, I became obsessed with angels. My priest always preached that there was a guardian angel watching over us and I believed him, literally.
So I would leave an empty chair next to me while I ate or at night I would lie down on my bed thinking of my guardian angel and inviting her to sleep with me (no homo...lol).I would chat and talk to her and at the end I would feel somewhat inspired.
When I was seven I finally got to be an angel in the christmas carol play (I fought for the post)...it was a crowning achievement in my life to that point.
But Grandma didn't believe in angels, she believed in hardwork to fight another day. Grandma was tough and tireless. The kindest but least sentimental woman I have ever known, she believed in seeing and believing, action not words.
I remember the day a woman who lived next door to us was threatened with a miscarriage, while my mother sat down and cried with the woman, Grandma walked a mile and half to fetch the doctor...right in the dead of the night!.
Grandma was a famous fix it woman in our neighbourhood. Someone always needed help and she helped everyone. She took food to families, her matter-of-fact manner made it acceptable. Grandma made our clothes and conjured good meals out of no promising ingredients.
As I grew up, I turned my obsession with angels into a serious affair. I studied then and even aspired to write a ground breaking book, proving their existence. I read on people who had miraculously recovered from an illness and people who had actually seen angels.
I narrated the story of a young boy to my Grandma, the boy had screamed and sobbed to keep his family from boarding a flight as an angel advised. They ignored him and the plane crashed into the sea.
Grandma wasn't having any of it. "If it is true," she said, "why didn't the angel save everyone?".
Eight years later, Grandma died. Her death had a devastating effect on people who knew her. It felt like something was missing from my heart and I walked around in ghost mode.
One day, about a year after Grandma's death, I alighted a bus, I dug into my bag for my wallet but it wasn't there!. It could have been lost or stolen, I didn't know...I could feel hot tears welling up in my eyes, when a man sitting beside me dropped a 1,000 naira note on my lap, "don't worry", he said briefly "it happens to everyone sometimes". Then he walked out before I could even utter a word of thanks. I looked out the window but he was gone.
That was the turning point. It made me realize that I have been looking in the wrong places to prove the existence of angels, because life is full of them, performing small and not so random acts of goodness and kindness. When you become aware of this, you begin to notice them all round. They don't wear wings or white long flowing gowns (at least not the ones I've seen), and they look like teachers, mechanics, waitresses, and they behave like...well Grandma.
My little sister once asked me if Grandma was in heaven, and I replied in the affirmative.
She then asked me "is Grandma an angel now?"
I told her what I know is the truth.
"She always has been"

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by TCWO