Hello Playloadites,

We have got this heart touching story, titled: “The Thorn In My Flesh” and here is a brand new Episode for your reading pleasure and am sure you’re going to learn a lot from this story..

Mama Gift was just about chasing mama Toke away when her husband told her to stop.

Baba Gift: “you don’t have to stress yourself asking her to leave. When she is tired, she will leave by herself” he said and got up and returned to his bedroom.

Mama Gift: “you don’t know this woman, she can so poke nose into what is not her business” she said.

Mama Toke: “thank you, sir. Please, I am here to plead with you to lend me some money to register my daughter for her Junior WAEC, I promise to return it back as soon as possible” she said to mama Gift.

Mama Gift laughed out loud and long.

Mama Gift: “see me see trouble o, I should lend you money so that you can use it to pay for your daughter’s exams, you are very funny”

Mama Toke: “I know that we have not been the best of friends and that we have one or two issues but please let us at this juncture bury the hatchet. I come in peace, please help my daughter” she said.

Mama Gift: “well, I don’t have any money. The little I have is for my business and I cannot lend out my business money. So sorry o, carry your plea for peace to another place” she mocked.

Mama Toke: “please help me talk to your husband, I am sure he can assist. I promise to return the money as soon as possible. The closing date for the registration is this week and if I don’t pay, my daughter cannot sit for the exams” she said.

Mama Gift: “my husband doesn’t have as well. You can try another place o, you want us to lend you our money so that you can take it to your coven and strike us with poverty abi, your plans will not work. You are here carrying one innocent look when your heart is wicked” she said.

Mama Toke: “you have to help me o, after all you caused all these for me in the first place. You put me in the condition that I am in right now”

Mama Gift: “ta! Me put you in the condition that you are in, did I ask you to kill your husband? If you had not killed your husband, he would have been here to pay for your daughter’s education. In your next world, think twice before you kill your husband”

Mama Toke: “this is so unfair. I was on my own selling my wares in the market and making some little money for myself before you went around the market telling people that I am a witch and that they should not patronize me again. Since then, nobody has bought anything from me and that is how I have come to find myself in this situation. If you refuse to help me, what do you want me to do?” she said with shaking voice.

Mama Toke: “how is that my business? When you were busy running your mouth in the market and calling me all sort of names, what were you thinking? That you are the only one who can insult people or what? Please, leave my house” she said and pointed at the door.

Mama Toke: “God will punish you and punish your generation unborn. I hate you!” she said and left the house.

Mama Gift: “good riddance to bad rubbish. And you, what are you still doing kneeling down there, will you get up and go and get your father’s food? Silly girl” she said and Gift scampered along, glad that her punishment was finally over.
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Mama Toke took to the streets, begging for alms without her daughter’s knowledge and even at that those who knew her would not give her a dime. At the end of each day, she would return back home with barely enough to feed herself and her daughter.

Each time she returned and saw her daughter sitting before the kerosene lamp reading, her heart will break for the umpteenth time because she saw in her daughter the desire to acquire western education.

Mama Toke: “no, I cannot just fold my arms and watch my daughter drop out of school at this age. What kind of a mother will I be if I allow this girl’s dream of becoming an engineer die because I cannot afford to pay her fees? The only daughter that I have in the world, is she not the one that will take care of me in my old age? How can she take care of me if I don’t give her the best of education? No, I have to do something no matter what it is to get her back to school” she soliloquized.

Toke: “mama, are you back? She asked cutting through her mother’s chain of thoughts.

Mama Toke: “I am back my dear. How are you and your studies?”

Toke: “fine, mama. You are looking very bright today, I like that. Don’t worry yourself about my education, if we cannot afford the exams fees this year, we will wait till next year when we must have saved up enough money for me to sit for the exams”

Mama Toke: “thank you, my daughter. You speak with so much wisdom that is not common to your age. But not to worry, you must write the exams this year. If your father is dead, your mother is not dead. I will get the money for you”

“Thank you, ma” she said and hugged her mother.
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Chief Oko: “so you want me to lend you money for your daughter’s fees?” he asked mama Toke who had come to his provision store, very close to the village square.

Chief Oko was one of the dogged business men of their time and while her husband was alive, he and chief Oko had been best of friends and because of how close they were, her husband would give him goods on credit and then he would pay the money after selling the goods. That was how he was able to set up his own store after a long period of taking goods on credit from her husband.

Mama Toke: “I promise that I will pay back soon. My daughter has been sent away from school and if we don’t pay up, they won’t allow her sit for the exams. You are our only hope, if you don’t help me, I have no other place to go to for help. Please, just do it for me for the sake of my late husband who was your good friend” she pleaded.

Chief Oko: “chere! (wait) I know that the late father of the girl in question was my best friend but this is business and I don’t mix emotion with business because the money you want me to give you is my business money and if I use it to buy goods, I know how much I would make. So, I will advise that you borrow from your husband’s people or even your own people” he suggested.

Mama Toke: “they have all refused to help me. None of them will even give me a dime and you know that my parents are dead and I am their only child. My uncles didn’t want me to marry the man I ended up marrying and so they have all abandoned me. In fact I have not seen them for years after I got married and left the village” she said.

Chief Oko: “in that case, how do you intend to pay back the money if I lend you?”

Mama Toke: “I don’t know how but what I know is that I will pay back” she said sincerely.

Chief Oko: “ah, it cannot work that way. This is how we will do it, you will rub my back and then I will rub yours by giving you the money free of charge because the truth is that you don’t have a means of paying back” he said.

Mama Toke: “rub your back as how?”

Chief Oko: “I will sleep with you and give you the money free of charge. You don’t have to pay back”

Mama Toke Thought about it and nodded.

Mama Toke: “I agree, I will do it, I will do anything for my daughter’s education” she said wiping tears from her eyes.

To be continued.