Became Mum’s Teacher For The Day.

Everytime when I pass Mama Michelle’s shop, I’m always amazed by the number of customers she has. Not only that, her shop is so big that I feel I can get lost inside it.
That wasn’t all. I’m always surprised with the amount of goods she showcases outside her shop everyday. My mum sells a lot of groceries as well but not up to Mama Michelle. Her shop was just on another level.

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I wish I had more money to buy more goods. My customers will stop going to other shops to buy what they didn’t get from my store, Mama Michelle, the number one grocery seller in the area serves as a motivation or role model to my mum always. In one way or the other, my mum wishes to be like Mama Michelle so she can have more goods and more customers.

Before we knew it, it was Thursday again, another market day. The only woman who sells beverages opens her shop and that’s where every grocery wholesaler goes to buy beverages. My mum who’s a shy type has always tried her best to avoid close contacts with Mama Michelle and other grocery seller, sent me to the market to buy a few cartons of beverages.

I know other women are going to buy more goods or even times three of what I’m buying so there is no need for me to go there and start feeling inferior, my mum said to me with a teary eye. She was about to cry. The fact that she has lost a lot of customers to people who have bigger shops hurt her a lot and the only solution was money. She needed money to buy more goods.

I’m the type who tells her to brace up whenever she’s not feeling happy but my hands were down. I surrendered to her sad mood. I couldn’t pat her. The only thing I did was pick the list of goods I was about to buy and headed to the beverage shop.

I met exactly what my mum was avoiding. I met Mama Michelle, Mama Kofo, Mama Lekan and other bigger grocery sellers around the area. I was holding a mere two hundred thousand Naira but when I heard the total goods of the first woman attended to, it was over three million Naira.

No wonder this seller doesn’t attend to me well, I thought. It may be normal though. I’m just a mere customer who buys little goods and can never be compared to what other bigger women are buying.

I sat hopelessly and felt my mum was never going to grow that big. Where do we get the money from? Our total goods are not even up to a million Naira so how do we get such amount or three million Naira to spend on beverages?

Mama Michelle, your total goods is five million Naira, when the seller said this to her, I became grateful that my mum didn’t come to witness her mates buying millions of goods just as she said.
Many thoughts rolled into my head. How come she has this much money? How much does she make in a day? She must have a land in one of the Lagos Islands. These thoughts came into my head like a flash.

I will pay five hundred thousand Naira now and pay the rest in installments before the end of the month, I became as surprised as a kid on Christmas morning. I had always thought she had the money to buy all the goods in her big shop.

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I was just so eager to go home. Out of my eagerness, I made a mistake at the beverage shop but I didn’t care. I just wanted to go back home to hint my mum and tell her that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Mummy, you won’t believe what happened at the beverage shop today, I said to my mum. She was looking so serious and eager to hear me talk.

What is it? What did you see at the beverage shop?, my mum asked with anticipation.

Mama Michelle who we think has the most money doesn’t have ohh. She’s buying goods on credit which means we are even better than her, I could see my mum looking astonished.

Are you serious about this? she asked. I had no proof but I made her know that I wasn’t lying about it. I told her everything that happened there she she was forced to believe me.

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Mummy, you see that all that glitters isn’t gold, she agreed with me and I was glad I used that moment to teach her that there is always a story behind everything that we see.