A Glimmer of Hope

In a country as messed up as this, occasionally there are certain things that happen that still give me hope that maybe, just maybe, it's not all over yet.

For the past week, I've been trying to register for my NYSC, and although the process has been nothing but stressful and discouraging, something happened during one of those days that I was trying to register for mine that left me a bit surprised.

You see, I would leave my house every morning by 6am, hoping to be among the first five people at the shop, waiting to get attended to. During our second day of registration, a good-looking lady had walked into the shop and sat down with the rest of us.

I soon found out that, unlike the rest of us who had been there on the first day and had a bit of the registration process done, she had nothing. So she started running around, asking everyone and anyone to help her. It got to a stage where it felt like she had given up because I could see the frustration on her face. At this point, she had even taken off her wig, and that was all I needed to see to know that she was going through a lot…and that was when it happened.

_{photo by Defrino Maasy}

That was when I watched her slowly and carefully get up from her seat and walk towards the guy who owns the shop and was in charge of completing the registration for us. She had slid him a piece of paper, and from the corner of my eye, I could see a bit of what was written on it, enough for me to know what the full content of the paper was.

She was offering to bribe him, to pay him so that he could push her to the top of the list and just give her some attention to get her registration completed. To be honest, I didn't blame her for doing that, because we're used to things like that in this country.

Everyone is always willing to give you a helping hand if you have something to offer. I probably would have done the same thing if I had any money to offer.

But shockingly, after he had read the content of the paper, he had looked at her, smiled, and asked her to go keep on trying because he wasn't doing any special favors for anyone; it was a first-come, first-serve service.

I would be lying if I said that didn't surprise me, because I had expected him to take whatever amount she was offering because most people would. But it was good to see that there's still someone like him in the country who could say no and stick to their policy.