The lady that makes my hair told me an interesting story yesterday. She said when she relocated to this town, she could only afford accommodation in a shanty. A few blocks from where they lived was also the house of a rich man, who lived abroad, although he visited home a couple of times yearly. According to her, the man showed unusual thoughtfulness towards them (there were many of them on the premises). One such instance was when the transformer that supplied electricity to the neighbourhood broke down and one of the conditions that people in the community gave before they agreed to contribute money to install a new one was that all the shanty inhabitants would be cut off from the power supply, as they were not paying electricity bills. She said when the man (who wasn’t even home at the time) learned about this decision, he offered to fund the project from his pocket, provided the shanty dwellers would be allowed to benefit from the power supply. And that was how they had a power supply again. She also said the same man was responsible for providing them with a (borehole) water supply. Unfortunately, he died a few years later. According to her, as the funeral preparations were ongoing, one of the shanty dwellers (a young man) found his way to the man’s family as an errand man. Only to rob them blind. She said he carted away a lot of what the Obodo-Oyibo (abroad) based children of the man imported for their father’s funeral. But then, the shanty dwellers remembered who the man was to them, and almost all of them rose against the thief, giving him two conditions: to return everything he stole from the family and leave the shanty for good, or risk being reported to the police. He did as they instructed and was banished from their midst afterwards. Now, the important lesson to take away from the story is this: the goodness you show to people will actually be lost on some people. But, the same goodness can also fetch people who will have your back when the chips are down. Of course, the rich man was just being himself! He only tried to make life a little easy for those around him.
What would have been lost on (even) him is that his goodness actually built a house in their hearts.
If you know how strong the camaraderie among such dwellers is, you will understand that it couldn’t have been easy to turn against one of their own for any “rich man”.
In fact, what they did was akin to taking a bullet for the man!
In concluding the story, she mentioned how the man’s family gave them special recognition at his funeral. They were allocated a seating arrangement under a tent tagged, “family friends”. The man’s children informed them that they were aware of their father’s concerns for them, as he was always thinking about how to improve their lives. She said before she left the set, the man’s children were sponsoring about 17 children from that dwelling to school. The woman also talked about their experience during COVID-19. She said they actually lived in (food) abundance, thanks to a church nearby, which took it upon itself to come around the shanty to teach basic hygiene. This encourages someone to keep doing their bit for humanity. We just don’t know how much of our efforts build a house in people’s hearts. But rest assured, they do and actually, turn them into better humans. Imagine the story she recalled of all the experiences that the hard life of a shanty threw at her!