INSPIRATIONAL SHOT- Jonas: Job Wouldn't Be In The Bible If I Was Born Before Him

Jonas is a big lad. You wouldn’t believe life could have the courage to deal him some hard blows. He said, “It has to be Job(biblical). Sure, it has to be him. No one under the surface of the planet earth has been through what I have seen in life. I faced rejection right from birth. My father probably did not want to be in my life. I felt so because I learnt that I was picked from the gutter just within 3 days of arriving here. And the only reason my mother would have left me there could be for the fact that none of them, she and my father, wanted me. I was found by a good woman who was on her way to work. Even though she was reported to be well to do, she too didn't want me. This was how I ended up in the orphanage, which became home for me. Living in the orphanage was the only good moment (before now though) recorded in my life; for having no parents, we lived for each other. Every other aspect of my growing up was inhumane and unpleasant.”

He took a sip from the glass on the table and continued. “The moment I became eighteen, I left the orphanage to see what life had in stock for me. At this juncture, I became exposed and was dragged through the rough edges of life owing to my vulnerability- an experience that left me with obvious psychological and emotional scars. Honestly, I wear the scars till date but I have refused to let them sink me or determine how I live going forward. The first job I did was working as a bus conductor. This exposed me to the life of ‘rascals and jackals’ in the park. The boys would gather after work to get high; to drink, smoke and patronize the sex workers. Life in the park then, and to some extent now, was one that gave with one hand but ended up siphoning whatever was given with the other hand. The money that the drivers and the conductors made in the park disappeared in the bars and 'batchers'(wooden houses popularly seen in Nigerian parks) where they drank and smoked away their sweat as they took refuge in the arms of the commercial sex workers. I was almost caught up in that 'siphon system' but somehow nature for a reason I am yet to decipher didn't let that happen. It was in the line of duty that I lost this eye(he removed his dark shade so that I could see the bad eye)- our bus was involved in a fatal road accident. Three lives were lost. I survived it but one of my eyes was used as a bargain for my life.”

I could see why his friends christened him the fish; Jonas opened the next can of water and emptied it into the glass cup. “I left the bus conductor job and went for an apprenticeship with a qualified and popular mechanic in the city. I was meant to understudy him for five years and then get released with some little start-up as captured in the contract. However, in my fifth and final year, the mechanic lost his wife to the cold hands of death. He pleaded with me to give him an extra year to help him recover from the loss. Life was not easy for me but I did accept it. At the end of the extra year, we lost the mechanic to prostate cancer. This left me in a deep mess. I was heartbroken and devastated. That moment was like a rising sun that came crashing before sunset. Based on an agreement between myself, an orphan, and the mechanic's relations, I was begged to run my deceased boss' workshop for another year to keep the customers (and the money flowing for his immediate surviving children). One evening, I went to test drive a fixed car with a customer, another car took a one-way road and ended up in a head-on collision with our vehicle; I lost a finger while the owner of the car, who was riding with me on the passenger side, lost a leg. My life hung on life support while I lay in a coma in the hospital recovering.”

He concluded this way. “The owner of the vehicle that hit our car was a very wealthy politician. He did not want the news to get out there for unknown reasons. He took care of the hospital bills. When my story was narrated to him, he was touched. He gave me a bus from his fleet as a gift (and palliative) as soon as I was discharged from the hospital. Using the bus as a private vehicle did not make sense to me; remember that I was struggling to put food on the table then. Rather, I chose to give it out on hire purchase. From there I was able to increase my fleet to 15 buses, 10 tricycles and 6 shuttle buses within ten years. You might wonder how I was able to achieve this. Don't look that far; all the hard times I went through toughened me and they all had roles to play in achieving those stellar milestones. Let me tell you how- my apprenticeship as a mechanic kept me ahead of the driver's antics; my role as a bus conductor always kept me two moves ahead of them while the accident that took my eye and a finger compelled me to commercialize the bus since I was not allowed by law to drive in the condition I was left in. Like the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, I realized that nature had been taking me through tough life's lessons to prepare me for this time. The scars are there but today, I feel less pain as I get closer to the stars in the sky."

REFLECTION
Life is not fair. We talk about the divide between the rich and the poor. We keep wondering why some live in affluence while the other group wallow in abject poverty. It is what it is and there is nothing anybody can do about this situation.

I have good news for those who believe that they are at the negative side of this divide. How you react to what shade life throws is central to how successfully you manage adversity. And again, life through experiences has offered us a veritable platform to be tutored in the things of life. This is why experience will always be considered a fantastic teacher. Everything we go through in life prepares us for the next thing and the next, and so on. Whatever hard times you are going through right now will prepare you for extraordinary moments.

The fact that you are still alive means that you are bigger than what it is that is troubling you. You are still breathing and dreaming! Do not play the victim game. It will eat you up. No one can save you except you. All you need to do is hold on and muster the courage to go through each day looking forward to the next. One day, you would look back and see how life trained you for the good life that was to come.


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