Certain things

Certain things

Ozinwa lived in the most impoverished of refugee camps bordering two warring countries, where all the men had absconded to celebrate their differences in a conflict of forgotten origins. It was a conflict seasoned with a particularly generous pinch of atrocity, resultantly, the women and children painfully endured slow deaths by disease and starvation... amongst many other ills. 

Like most members of the refugee camps infirmed commune, her one constant thought was this: “We shall wake up tomorrow and starve some more.” Ozinwa never thought of giving up; she never said to herself: “I’m going to end it all today. Why? Because I’m 25 but I look 55; because I have an infant child who shall be dead in a few hours, but is still desperately trying to suck on a breast which no longer breasts as a competent breast should - a breast which disease and malnutrition have reduced to the proportions of a well worn flip-flop, and yields less nutrition than a well worn flip-flop; because there are flies on my pupils, but I don’t have the strength to blink – I don’t have blinking strength; because the grain might come in the evening, but so might those marauding bandits. I’ve been dealt a bad hand here. Dealer, I’m out. I can’t take anymore of this. Give us a better hand next time, eh? Now could someone please help me run that machete over my wrist as it’s a bit heavy.” 

No, Ozinwa never contemplated soul-surrender. Day-in day-out, she steadfastly stuck to her suffering, refugee camping and general third worlding, with thoughts of suicide firmly relegated to the back of her head along with other incomprehensible notions, like three square meals, security, and laughter... that was until the celebrity arrived.

The white man from Opulantia showed up with a small army of global media and an even larger security entourage; looking focused and sombre as he spoke into the cameras; dramatically ooooing and aaahing as he wove from fly-infested tent to fly-infested tent; honestly baffled by the plight of those who filled his backdrop with their best hunger glares. 

Was he promoting a film? Had he just written a book? Had an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him to travel to the war zone and prance about the arids whilst gingerly stepping over death, disease and starvation? Who knows. What everyone did know, was that he genuinely thought he was doing his humanitarian bit when he grabbed a starving baby and shoved a bottle of formula into its mouth, whilst making his: “Please donate; look at them, so poor, so sad, and so about to die any minute from now,” appeal to the world. 

Ozinwa’s baby was the global exhibit in hand when she miraculously managed to muster enough strength to lift herself up and snatch her child back, but not before landing a feeble backhander across the celebrity’s face. “Give him back! Perhaps after I’m dead, but not a second before, you voluture!” her slap would have screamed... if it could but whisper.

The security personnel surrounding him were just about to solicit (with their gun butts, fists and truncheons) which particular demons of inanity were colonising her soul, when the celebrity jumped in to intervene, and show the world what – in the entirety of his kind heart – he reckoned was the solution to the warzone’s problems. 

With his country’s diplomatic and political backing, he arranged for Ozinwa and her child to be granted immediate Opulentian domicile, and before Ozinwa could say: “Hang on a minute, all I wanted was some grain,” they were whisked off to the great kingdom. 

A few months later: after the celebrity had forgotten about his newly sponsored play things and was sunning himself on his yacht off the coast of Portugal; after Ozinwa had been taught to smile whilst saying her favourite four words: “we are very grateful,” in perfect Opulentian; after the world’s media had left her alone to pursue her “new privileged life” in the land of plenty and plentier, Ozinwa plunged to her death after leaping from the thirteenth storey of the office building she had been given a cleaning job in. 

Rumour has it she opened her first pay slip and queried it with a colleague. “What is meaning of this word income tax?” were the one-time dedicated starver’s final words. The explanation to which, drove her to explore the potentially greener pastures of the afterlife.