Rat Poison

 

A little act of help can save a life. 

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Rat Poison

I have never imagined the extent to which people suffer from hunger, until my experience two weeks ago at my aunt's shop. 

I was at my aunt's place for the holidays and was given the duty of taking care of the shop with my junior ones. We played, gisted and had a great time together. One hot afternoon, a tatteredly dressed man with a small boy approached the shop for help. He kept on begging for alms with agony and desperation. 

Being a choleric, I simply concluded that his present situation must have been caused by his laziness during his younger years and used that reason to justify my refusal to help. Such a flimsy excuse. He kept on pleading and I became irritated; “Do you mean you have no one to help you except me?" “Do you mean you can't find a work to do?", I asked him.

He began to feel embarrassed at the sound of my utterance. As much as I wanted to consider his little boy, I couldn't help but rant more hurtful words at the father since I couldn't separately help either of them. As I turned to return into the shop, I heard my little cousins shout, that the little boy had stolen a shoe. I couldn't keep my anger in check as I bolted out to give both of them a hot chase.

Upon reaching them, after about 25 minutes of trailing their back view, what I met made me morose. I met the older man weeping over his son's lifeless body. 

What could have killed him in such a short space of time ? Apparently, his little son had perceived the smell of fried fish kept in that shoe but what he didn't know was that it had been poisoned for the purpose of eliminating rats in the shop. So he took the shoe, ate the fish and died a slow death. 

That act made me feel responsible for his demise. If only I had helped, then it wouldn't be the case as it were now. They were desperately hungry and would do anything to get filled including eating poison.

Written by Owolabi Philip. 

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