The Friends Who Ran

What does true friendship look like? I can imagine when they all woke up that morning and thought of what strategies would be employed to make money for the day, an accident or even death was not a part of those pictures. The four of them excited to go for their daily bread howbeit one that involved a lot of risks – in a system that works, it would not exists –  as they stood by the road filling potholes and waving to cars for money.

Two days before this incident, I was on the same route headed south of Nigeria when another accident happened that resulted into smithereens of a sheep by a trailer.  I was devastated to the point that when we approached the car that caused this particular accident that resulted in the death of that sheep I felt some much pain and wanted the man arrested.  

Now, here I was witnessing again another heartbreaking accident that may have led to the death of a man hustling for his daily bread.  The amount of money they had made before the accident I do not know. They looked happy doing their job until the blue sienna came. The sienna in a bid to swerve away from the other car (red) in front of him who had slowed down to avoid hitting the man in front of him, swerved to the right knocking down one of the friends. The sienna plunged into the bush while the friend that was knocked laid in the ditch bleeding from his mouth and noise battling for life.  Our car parked to see how we could help, the driver from the sienna came out and was fine but the same could not be said of the man that was knocked. I tried to call the emergency number 112 to no avail. The road safety emergency line 122 requested for a code which I did not understand.

In the process of trying to place these calls, I observed that the 3 friends filling the potholes and begging for money were running away from the scene. Those are the witness I thought to myself, should we remain at the scene before the police arrive may, be a problem and taking him to the hospital and he dies in the car will be a problem too. The best option I thought to myself was to drive to the closet checkpoint and let the police know there has been an accident. Unfortunately, this same road that over 56 checkpoints the day the sheep was killed had no checkpoint for over 30 kilometres and no hospital was in sight. I felt really bad and began to pray that God will spare the life of the man. I went on asking myself why the friends ran away instead of coming together to help think through a solution.  What will they tell the man’s family when they return to the community they came from? Should their friend not survive will they hide his whereabouts from his family when they knew exactly what had happened?

So many questions and thoughts ran through my mind for the next 3 hours of the trip. Those we have around us and call friends to have the power to either make us better or worse off consciously or unconsciously. Don’t just look for true friends but, be a true friend and be there for others. Do not run away the moment in which your friend needs you the most. Your case may not be like that of the accident but a period where your friend may have done wrong unintentionally and receiving backlash for it. BE a true friend that will have other peoples back no matter what.  That does not mean supporting them doing wrong, speak truth to them when they err but do it in love.