Love-On-Wheels
by ahjotnaija
It was Love-On-Wheels-Campaign. The party knew the need of the people- practical love. The chairman mounted a lorry; a loudspeaker in hand. The crowd cheered endlessly. They never felt so loved. Many began to weep. For joy.
The lorry drove the streets. The Party of the People (POP) shared commonwealth. At every stop the crowd increased. The people noticed, the louder the cheer, the more money sprayed. So they cheered even louder.
The lorry drove on. Overtime, it became hard to discern if the people were cheering or crying. Desperate shouters hit stray dogs with thorny clubs. The animals whined for torments. Market women, whose trays were overturned, screamed and cursed. The throw-way markets, landing in the mud, increased the rowdiness. Babies strapped to mothers’ back cried their throats dry for fear.
More money.
To catch them, they trampled each other. Many caught the wind. Some jumped. Others landed in the mud. Angry thugs elbowed indiscriminately. Many women scrambled for money. It was not yet a mad scene.
*Ha! We were shaken o!*, many claimed. The shock was the death of the omnibus-boy, which crowned the campaign. It did not prevent more money-catching though. Actually, nobody cared.
Some sensed trouble coming when the boy hit the omnibus. He wanted his driver to increase speed. Having no mirror, the driver relied solely on his boy to negotiate sideways or increase speed. At the sign, he increased speed.
The driver sped past the POP lorry, when the boy made to catch air-bound money notes. He let go of the omnibus. The outcome was pre-programmed. He landed on his head and died on the spot. It was a horrible sight.
The driver did not wait; he sped off, unaware death had just harvested his bus-boy from the air. The POP lorry hurriedly drove out of the area before curious journalists arrived. The struggle to catch more money intensified. The wads of money that helped death kill the bus-boy landed and disappeared into thin air.
The front-cover photograph of the Daily Nuggets showed people crying. The paper reported, the crying people had witnessed the horrible death. The sight traumatized them. *Horrible death and trauma?!*, captioned the Peoples’ Pamphlet.
Beside the crying lot were those with money, stacked away in pouches, pockets and bags. They had faces plastered with wide smiles. *But why are they crying?*, a man at the newsstand asked. *Did they come too late to the Love-On-Wheels-Campaign ni or caught too little money?*
Nobody answered.
ajagunna 