Hello, Hello Man Man. You got to help me man! I am in deep problems. I am at Heathrow airport and I am about to be deported. Help me please, please I beg you,’ said the caller.
I had some engagements in Central London sometimes back, so I took a train from my place and headed to London. My first stop was Kingscross St. Pancras, that meant that for the next segment of my journey, I had to be in the underground so I could not make or take a call.
I was to alight at Elephant and Castle train station then walk a few hundred metres to see my client. No sooner had I crossed the road leading to Southwark than I heard my mobile phone ringing.
I looked at the phone and saw that the mysterious caller had called ten times. Something in me told me to ignore it but then I reasoned that for someone to call me ten times, he must have been in a desperate situation.
‘Hello, Hello Man Man. You got to help me man! I am in deep problems. I am at Heathrow airport and I am about to be deported. Help me please, please I beg you,’ said the caller.
‘May I know who is calling please?’ I asked.
‘This is John from Edinburgh. I was your neighbour in Willenhall, Birmingham,’ he explained.
Indeed I knew John as a neighbour many years ago. We could meet in a pub and buy each other beer though we were not that ‘best of friends.’
I then asked him how he wanted me to help him and he told me that at that moment in time, he needed a solicitor to stop his deportation order.
John had come to England to look for greener pastures just like any of us. I imagined his shame of being deported and facing his wife and four children with nothing, how he would start looking for jobs with his hope of finding one and never finding any.
I had to help him as a brother in need. The solicitor I knew would require a down payment of £1,800.00 which was quite an amount considering that John was not in my circle of friends so to speak.
I asked him whether he had other friends who would help but he was sure that his friends would not be able to get that kind of money immediately.
All the same, I tried to phone some of his friends who listened keenly at what I was saying and even sympathised with him.
After I told them that we needed to raise £1,800.00 they promised to call back, but they never did. In fact, one of his neighbours asked me whether Anthony could agree to carry some clothes for his wife in the village!
Having tried my best to source funds from his intimate friends and failed, I decided to help. One of his brothers was terminally ill and required expensive medication. He was the only person in the family who would buy for him to survive.
He was the breadwinner to his brothers and sisters in addition to his nuclear family so the moment he would leave UK airspace; his family would suffer. If I was in his situation, I would need help. Maybe there was a reason as to why God directed him to me, so I thought.
Apart from paying £1,800 towards his Solicitor’s fee, I had to incur about bank charges since my account would be overdrawn. Since I was to incur £30.00 as interest, I asked him whether he was ready to pay it and he agreed.
“Man, Man even if it’s a million pounds, I am ready to pay. Please hurry otherwise by midnight I will be in the plane back home as deportee. Please, please help a brother…” he pleaded. I finally took a gamble and called the solicitor and paid the money. In return, the solicitor took over the case with immigration department and he was released.
After he was released, he honoured his promise and paid me the whole £1,800.00 and the £30.00 interest charges. Strangely enough, I don’t remember him thanking me or acknowledging that I helped him at such a crucial time of his life! I have encountered this kind of attitude a million times from friends and relatives, so I was okay.
After some years, I was having a drink in one of the pubs in London with one of his relatives. As we were enjoying our drinks, his relative told me that if he went to Heaven and found me there, he would walk out in protest because I was a very bad man.
“Why would you walk out?” I asked him.
“Remember what you did to my cousin John? How would you charge him £30.00 as interest to your money while pretending that it was Bank interest,” he asked? I was shocked beyond words. I thought that he did not know the genesis of the how I ended up asking for the £30.00 but he knew it.
“Yes, you paid £1,800.00 to his solicitor but did you have to charge him more money? What happened to the values of humanity?” he asked. I came to realise that James was going around telling anybody who cared how bad a person I was forgetting that if it were not for me, he could have been in the next flight as a deportee. Obviously, I felt betrayed by John but do I regret helping him at that point in time? Not at all. It was Godly and noble thing to do.
In another case, a friend of mine had employed a close relative of his in his farm. As far as he was concerned, his relative was the best worker and so he decided to give him two prime plots to build a house and some rented houses increase his income. He did all this in good faith. The problem was that the relative did not have capital to build houses. In his usual sympathetic and Godly gesture, my friend helped him to open a bank account and made sure that the accounts were active for him to get a good loan from the bank. Towards the end of last year, he had deposited over three million shillings in his relative’s bank account.
Early this year, my friend asked his relative to transfer some money to his account since he needed some cash urgently. Believe it or not, the relative refused, reason being that that was his salary! Not even that, he threatened to report my friend to the relevant authorities that some of the amount he had been depositing in his account was drug trafficking money which obviously was far from the truth! After being helped by somebody, that was the best his relative could do.
The people who are very close to you are the ones who are likely to betray you. If one asks many people, they will tell you that the person who has ever caused them the worst heartache owing to betray are their spouses. It does not matter whether one is born again or not but the fact is that human beings betray each other all the time. When people are lovers, they swear by the gods of the hills and valleys that they will never be sexually attracted to any other human being but that is for that time only.
With time, if each of their lives is looked at with a microscope, results will show that each of them had numerous secret relationships. Here is the plain truth, if you have never been betrayed by your spouse, one day he or she will. When that happens, do not lose heart. Just know that life is programmed that way and many people have undergone worse betrayal than the one you have or will experience. On what steps you will take to avoid a repeat of that betrayal, that is not for me to say. Once bitten twice shy.
We bring up our children with the hope that they will grow up and be people we should be proud of. My heart goes out to those parents whose children have joined gangs and are in drugs. For those of us who have children in the western world, we have everything ranging from good schools and many well stocked libraries where we can get all the books that we want. If one visits many libraries, he will find children of other origins borrowing books and studying hard. At home our children spend most of their time in the social media with friends forgetting that the world is moving very fast and its survival for the fittest.
In the end, we find that they are in the lowest point in the social pyramid. Have we parents missed something in bringing up our children? I need special knowledge to understand how a parent cannot enrol his or her children in any library. I also need to know how grown up parents argue and fight in front of their kids knowing very well that the children see them as their role models. The way we carry ourselves in front of our kids is the same way they will be when they grow up. When they turn out to be bad elements in the society, will we have betrayed them as parents? Over to you.
We also betray ourselves. How often do we engage ourselves with people of questionable characters and in the process download their mediocrity and become mediocre? How on earth do we join some churches whose teachings are not Bible based? Who does not know that smoking kills? The print and electronic media inform us every time that aids has no cure, yet we engage in unprotected sex and catch the virus and finally die? We are our own enemies. Excess drinking has its side effects in our bodies and our loved ones, yet we do not care? God help us.
So long as you live, there are people who will betray you. When you are betrayed, just know that it’s part of life. Don’t let the betrayal steal your joy because any unfairness that is done to you will eventually transform into blessings. Even if it’s part of life, be wise and don’t be betrayed twice by the same person. To err is human but do not let people throw their monkeys at you. A leopard skin is very beautiful but not his heart. Be warned.
By: Man ManKambugua E-mail: manmankambugua@gmail.com
Source-Misterseed.com
Betrayal in Diaspora: Saved from Deportation and no appreciation
