If You Want to Test your Character, Come to Nigeria
Nigeria is the most difficult country to practice being a Christian.
It will test your limits again and again.
You could be the most patient, gentle, most humble human being, but not here. This country is designed to bring out the characters you didn’t know existed within you.
When you think people cannot go any lower, you will discover they are falling down a bottom less pit. You know when the Bible Bible says to flee all appearances of evil, some days in this country will leave you fleeing from every corner you go to.
Yes, I wish I could stay in my home all day and be righteous and holy but sadly, no man is an island. I have to leave my house daily.
You have to go out and test your character.
That’s how I walked in to the hospital the other day, a civil, well mannered, kind, gentle, patient Christian girl and went home looking like a shrew with no place to put her face.
Going to public hospitals in this country is more stressful than going through airport security in other countries.
In short, pray to have no dealings with any government affiliated hospitals, because they are not there to serve you, these high and mighty officials will have you crouching at your feet, thanking them for paying you any attention in the first place.
Because tell me why I went to the hospital by 8am but had to wait until 11am to see the doctor who waltzed in looking as though he was just a patient’s relative.
We needed a blood order and not surprising, the computer had broken down. That wasn’t a problem, I’m more than happy that there was electricity in the first place.
But then, this young man looked at me and told me to get him paper to write on. I rolled my eyes at the ceiling and wordlessly gave him a look that said, ‘let’s be civil please’. Thankfully he got the message.
Tell me, why a national hospital is making me pay for utilities and also telling me to buy my gloves, spirit, cotton wool, syringes, cannula, IV and blood giving set?
Tell me, why I have to go out and source for blood for my relative?
To which I did go, bought the cooler and all for the blood. Those people were nice. They still lied to me though, they said the blood was 72 hours old, but when clocked in the system, it turned out to be a week old.
Tell me, why I have to raise my voice at the laboratory worker to get a response?
Then, tell me why I have to beg the nurse to come and do her job of changing the infusions.
Tell me why I have to wait over 30 minutes at the records point because the one person they put there has gone to pray?
At this point in time, I cried. It had been 9 hours of moving from service point to service point and I was tired and hungry and my 2 and half year old daughter was going to miss the exact time for her medications because some records officer was absent from his point of service.
I really tried, I could almost hear my spirit saying you have fought the good fight, you have won the race, but No.
It was closing hours and there are plenty mad people in this country.
So while on my way home, there was this driver dancing makossa with his car on the road, because tell me how you move from the fourth lane to the first lane in a diagonal pattern during rush hour.
This guy cut me off in my lane which was okay, I had noticed him displaying his madness, but then he proceeded to insult me with hand gestures.
That was the point at which I lost it, I slowed down, wound down my windows and yelling swear words and demonstrating meaner hand gestures.
A minute or less of tit for tat and I was head bent in my car, hoping no one recognized me nor my plate number, nor my car.
Did I triumph today?
Well, I got home alive.
But it could have been better, we still need to work on that self control.
[Devil 2 — Nguper 1]
We try again another day.
✌🏾
