ANGELS

ANGELS

Josephat S. Hema

After that day’s great rainfall the gentle cold wind was passing aggressively as I plugged in my left foot on the pool of water, the common feature to most of African feeder roads. Devastated, the splash of water reached my face, let alone my red Simba sports club jersey, I sighed and stood aside. Still I could remember my father’s serious voice warning on coming late at home. He would strictly not let anyone come home after him any evening. But the love for street football especially on weekends like these let me late once again this time. The cloudy sky made it even darker to intensify my guilty and hardness toward finding the way back home through a rough road. The road sides were empty and quiet, some gentle voices from people’s homes, smoke and dim lights remained the only signs of life. As I pressed on toward home I was thinking on how I would respond to the question on how I got this late and my fears grew even bigger. Was it because of the rainfall or? I was trying to compose any scenario to get this case out and something happened. Across the most solitary roadway, I met a man with a heavy loaded donkey-pulled cart. The cart was too heavy for the donkeys to pull the reason as to why it was moving so slowly, let alone the adverse weather that day. Unfortunately it accidentally overturned, the panicked man yelled without knowing what to do, or what to pick up first. I stood hopelessly thought as one of those weak and tired people in the world who cannot help anything on that too great task. The road side echoed back his yelling, no one could yell back, the man held his head with the greatest grief, I went closer and asked if I could help anything. “My trade commodities, they are being destroyed, let us pick up them first”. As I started picking them up, out the darkness and the cold wind in the solitary way people came from nowhere to help. The one thought heavy work got finished within few seconds, we were working quietly. The cart was restored back to its normal position and the man sighed with a relief. As he raised up his face to thank those people who came to help, he saw them afar, silently disappearing. He looked at me,

 “Thank you, you have served me, tell them that God will bless them”, he said.

 “I even don’t know them, I don’t live here, and I’m just passing”

“Where do you live?”

“Just Next Street”

“Okay have a safe journey there, Good evening”

“Thank you”

I left, hurrying back home, thought at least I would have a scenario to back up my explanation on why I got late. And as reached I heard my father laughing, he was talking so charmingly, I heard him talking about angels and that they may take a form of a human being to provide help then they may leave and go back. As I approached the sitting room his voice was increasing in volume and joy.

“Your headmaster greets you, he gave you a lot of compliments, i met him in the meeting, keep it up“

He welcomed me with such a heart soothing greeting.

 I greeted him, smiling had nothing to add, he was talking with mother on what had happened to him on the way back home. His old car got stuck in the mud in the solitary place but some people from nowhere helped him pushing it and unstuck it. He thought they were angels because he never saw them before. Then we happened to talk of that terrible weather as we were having our dinner. Nothing about being late was noticed that day.

I slept with overwhelming peace. Father said that Angels are everywhere, they look at us and sometimes help us where we cannot expect. They are always good to us, they never wish us ills, never hurt us. As I said my night prayer that night, I told God that I would wish to be an Angel on Earth.