Baby Brot Bringer

Incredible! Where could little girl of her age be going under this cold weather at this hour barefootedly and bareheadedly?What could have sent a poor girl she was to street with just oversized slippers she inherited form her mother, poor enough, jettisoned on this two line express road?These and many more were concerns that agitated my mind.I therefore chose to spy or should i say monitor her;i wanted to know where she would enter and possibly who she was,stealthily i followed her.It appeared she knew where she was going,the poor girl walked straight without betraying any sign of lost of destination.Exactly twenty minutes now that I had been following her,we had passed many streets:Macualy street, Kingsway and the popular Lord Lugard Avenue yet she moved on.It was at the junction between Broard street and UAC that she forked right; she looked back,i quickly blocked her view as i hid me behind one abandoned lorry in my front,she did not see me. It took us another ten minutes before she suddenly stopped,in her front now was the city refuse dump were disused items were deposited; she rolled up her cloth and brought out a jute sack; she opened the sack and brought out a sickle and moved with a zeal to the hill of garbage. I stood behind a container that was put there long time ago by the Council for refuse collection,it was now overfilled with refuse and this gave me an advantage to hide behind it without been seen by the girl;needless to say how stinking it was,yet i befriended it,it was the only shield i needed now. For almost an hour she was searching through the hill ,it was not too easy for her; first,it was almost dark now, again, the whole hill had been covered with snow but she was using the sickle to wipe away the white substance anywhere she suspected that what she was looking for was. As she was searching she was picking somethings and dropping them in the sack which was now half-full . Again, she bent down but this time she did not pick anything rather she dropped the sickle in her hand and began to look at her sole, within few seconds she started coming down from the hill; what could have happened to her sole? At the base of the hill she sat down and held tightly her sole,now I could see her clearer,drops of blood were flowing down off her heel. I could now longer hide myself,i was moved by the sadness that appeared on her innocent face,poor still, she did not know what to do. I quickly ran to her,she was shocked to see me but still held tightly her sole. I did not waste time on introduction but went straight to ask her what had happened to her sole,she told me a broken bottle had cut her there. I bent down to look at the cut,it was not too deep,but deep enough to affect the poor girl if something was not quickly done. Luckily i had a nylon- water on me, i opened it, washed the cut and bound it with a new handkerchief I had earlier bought to use the following day when I would be attending the first church service of the year. It was not a perfect first aid but a non perfect aid was better than none . Now I asked her who she was and what was she doing where we were. She introduced herself as Lisa, nine years and that she was looking for plastics and other polythene materials that she could sell at recycling factory. I asked why she had to do that she said she and her grandmother had not even a brot at home and if she did not do this certainly they would be starved. Wondering why she should be responsible for that i pressed , "what about your parents?" " My mother had been abducted by the terrorists who killed my father and my two brothers three years ago." Big air escaped my nostrils as I became rock-still with this unpalatable bombshell. Seconds later I gathered myself,brought Lisa up and told her I would help her back home. She thanked me for the help but insisted that she would not be going home now,she must first go to the factory to exchange her stock for money. " it is too late Lisa, i don't think any factory will still be opened by now,besides you now have a cut on your sole", i explained. "The pay master in the factory had promised to wait for me till 10pm, i already had stock with him ,i just needed to add some weight to reach the required purchase-level,i must not fail on my terms lest he loses the confidence that for more than two years now,he has in me ; besides, grandma", she paused as if she remembered a thing, " tomorrow is new year, i have promised her good meal tomorrow" ; her voice cracked as if she wanted to cry,emotion envloped me as the word grandama reverbrated in my ears; my mind wandered about : poor girl,wretched old woman; how many millions of Lisa and her grandma were out there for the stupidity of some? My eyes became red and urge filled my mind,the zeal to confront terrorism,the joy of Christmas and new year in me evaporated; what was merriment of Christmas with millions of Lisa there? What was happiness of new year with millions of her grandma in our World?