• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Can of worms

Can of worms

This is one of those “too good to be true” stories. You know the type that you’d raise your eyebrows in disbelief when you read it. Well, this one is a true story so good grab your popcorn as I take you through a few cringe moments.

I’ll call him, Uncle Daniel. How we became family friends still amuses me till today. His family lives abroad so he shuttles between Ghana and the UK. He lives next door and our houses are separated by a short fence. Besides the cordial greetings we exchanged from time to time, there was no form of interaction between Uncle Daniel and my family so you can imagine our shock when one day, he climbed over the short fence to join our Sunday Brunch. He formally introduced himself as the “manchelor” from across the fence who was tired of being constantly assaulted by the aroma that emanated from my mother’s cuisine.

Anyone seeing Uncle Daniel and my folks would think they’ve been friends since forever. They hit it off quickly. He became a regular caller at our home and it was always a delight to see him. He was a bearer of goodies. There was always something nice for us in what he called his “goody bag”. As time went on, he’d do video calls with his family and we’d all talk for hours on end. They were all warm and friendly people.

We were all shocked when we received the news that Uncle Daniel had been involved in a car accident that affected his eyes. The doctor said it was “temporary blindness”. He explained that the impact of the accident had caused something in his retina to snap shut so it had to be one of two things… Wait patiently for the eyes to open on their
own or undergo a procedure to get it corrected. Thankfully, it wasn’t a retinal displacement, which could have been worse. Uncle Daniel chose to wait no matter how long it was going to take. His doctors had assured him that his eyes could pop open at any time so he’d rather live with that than go under the knife.

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Unfortunately for Uncle Daniel, his wife couldn’t travel down to take care of him because she had recently gone through a major surgery to fix her obstructed intestines. The onus now lay on my mom to take care of him. So she got him a domestic staff through an agency while she did the supervision.

The domestic staff was a young lady in her mid twenties. Her name was Araba.
She was hardworking but she had terrible mood swings. She was mostly nice whenever mom was around but she was nasty and hot tempered every other time. Araba spent most of her free time in the garden that I began to wonder why she wasn’t a gardener instead.

Uncle Daniel wanted Araba to leave, he was tired of the madness that she came with. Yes he was temporary blind but that didn’t give his domestic staff the right to be nasty to him. He wanted her to leave immediately but the agency pleaded that he gave them some time to get a suitable replacement for her.

So, there was another problem. Uncle Daniel wasn’t eating well, he always complained about the taste of his food. We knew that Araba was probably messing things up and we were scared that she could poison him. We had to find out what she was doing before things got out of hand.

It was a public holiday on this fateful day and mom wasn’t going to the office. She decided that it was a good day to find out what Araba had been up to. She stopped by at Uncle Daniel’s like she did every morning on her way to work. Then she pretended to leave for work but made a detour back to the house. At 9am, she called Araba like she did every morning to ask if Uncle Daniel had been served breakfast and the latter responded that she was preparing his food.

Mom waited a few minutes before doing the unthinkable. In typical 007 style, she climbed over the short fence and went into Uncle Daniel’s house through the back door. In the meantime, she had asked dad to be on standby incase she needed backup.

I will never forget how loud my mother screamed that day. Her loud voice reverberated through the quietness of the morning that it sent everyone flying across the short fence into Uncle Daniel’s house.

Two things happened that day. A miracle and then a discovery. First, the miracle was that Uncle Daniel was so scared when Mom screamed that he toppled over his chair and hit the floor really hard and Pop!!.. his eyes opened. Then the discovery was that Araba had been feeding him worms. His breakfast was a combination of spaghetti and worms. Some worms were still crawling in his plate and all over the tray. It was an unsightly sight. A little wonder she was always in the garden.

Uncle Daniel was screaming in excitement for obvious reasons while Mom was screaming for joy that he could see again and also because of the disgusting sight before her.

After all that probing and drama that ensued, Araba confessed to sometimes feeding Uncle Daniel with her urine and the worms she got from the garden. She had no reason for doing this. She was just being plain evil.

Uncle Daniel was very calm about it. He called the agency to inform them that he had changed his mind about the replacement for Araba. He wanted her to continue working for him for sometime. Then he told his security guard that going forward, his job description would include picking up worms daily. The more worms he picked, the more reward he was going to get.
Well, this is three weeks after that incident and Araba is still in his house. I can’t imagine what her meals have been like.