Junkyard Blues

Chapter Fifty-one

219 C Chapter Fifty-one hat night he found himself actually praying to God for luck in getting as many junks as possible. It was the first time he had ever asked God for any help with his scamming business consciously and he caught himself before he could go through with the prayers. What are you doing? He needed God, needed His help. If only He could lend him a hand, he knew everything was going to be alright. But was asking for God’s help in something like scamming, which was a business clogged with lying and fraudulence a good idea? He did not think so. But he needed the money; he needed the money in less than a month’s time and he was certain even God could understand that. What was so difficult to understand in his case? Was he not just trying to survive just like everybody else? And was what he was doing that bad? No, he did not think so. There were worst ways to look for money and he had almost been initiated in one of those horrible ways. But it was still hypocrisy to ask God to help him in such a business. Such a business that involved only lying and lying and lying some more just to rid some poor fellow of his hard earned money - Money that the poor fellow had surely sweated hours upon hours to get. Chicken change! Was there any amount of money on earth that was chicken change? People sweated even to get the tiniest sums, and he was certain of that. It was not only in Africa and in Cameroon in particular where people worked hard and even more than hard to earn a living. Those poor junks were just normal people like him who had to look for a job and complain everyday and work hard before they could get a dime. And what was he doing to those poor people who were just like him? He was lying to them, duping them and taking their hard earned money in exchange for things that did not exist. And he was gutsy enough to ask God for help in doing that successfully. But I need the money, I need the money very badly and there’s no other way that I know of to get the money. T 220 God had to understand, God had to understand that he himself felt bad about what he was doing, that at times his conscience worried him… “At times I see their faces,” he had told Niba once. “Whose faces?’ “All the junks I’ve lied to.” “You don’t lie to anybody, man, forget that stupidity,” Niba had said. “You don’t understand…” “Don’t start that shit, man. It’s just a little money we take from all those rich white people, and most of it is money they made from African sweat. They owe us big time,” Niba had reminded him again. “How do you even know it’s only white people who are junks?” “Because they’re the only fools who like buying all the stupid things we sell to them.” It was all simple in Niba’s head and at times he could see the logic in it too, but it was not always that he saw that logic. He could not stop himself from thinking at times about the wrong in what he was doing, the evil he was carrying out with some faceless people he only met online in the internet. It’s a lesser evil. You think so? It’s not that bad. But he was just a thief, just another version of a thief. It was only that he was doing the stealing in a modern way, getting into people’s brains and stealing their will power to resist his lies. He was a thief and praying to God to make him more successful. He turned around in bed and stared at Mabel’s back in the dark. She was sleeping peacefully as always her own worries locked somewhere she could no longer reach. He felt some anger rising as he watched her sleep, she did not understand what he was going through, even if he told her she would still not understand. He turned around and faced the ceiling once more. Where were all the junks when he needed them? He thought and stifled a yawned. The junks were getting wiser and wiser every single passing day, getting...