Parasite 🦠

You can't tell what someone looks like until you get closer to them or share the same roof. The moment you get closer to them, you can truly tell what and how they appear to be. That neighbor of yours, you might see them good on the outside but maybe they are something different inside them.

Having a home to live in is something, but having a good neighbor is everything. When you are blessed with good people around you. Then you will surely know what it means to define peace. But a toxic neighbor might turn your peaceful home into hell. That's the power of neighbors.

Mum Ade, as she was called by the name of her first son, is short, outspoken, and troublesome. You can tell from afar that she is never the cool type of person. She packed into the apartment in the next compound.

Bro Mike was the one in the apartment before he got married. And after marriage, he planned to relocate elsewhere to find greener pastures. We knew how much we would feel his absence so much. It’s normal to feel that way when a good person is about to leave.

Bro Mike will always cheer with us, come around and gist, he's also the type that is so free with everyone. When he travels he comes back with different stuff from his hometown and then gives them as proof to his talks about his hometown.

We were just hopeful that the new tenants would be way better, but we weren't sure they would. Even from their first encounter, it was so obvious we had a thorn in our necks.

While they were packing in, all of us were outside sitting and gisting. Then we heard the sound of a truck coming in.

“Ooh, it's the new neighbor,” My sister said.

Mum wasn’t much surprised at their arrival neither did she feel happy about it. We noticed but we kept silent and observed. There should be a reason for that.

The truck engine stopped and they jumped down from the front side. It was the husband. He reluctantly greeted us the moment he realized we had an eye clash and he couldn’t avoid it.

“Good afternoon,” he said and walked at a faster pace.

“Good afternoon” we all responded.

Still looking at Mum’s reaction. We knew the worst was yet to happen.

A few minutes later. A bike stopped behind the truck and it was Mum Ade.

She alighted the bike and just took her walk straight to the truck, started conversing with her husband and then she packed all their loads into their new apartment.

The next morning, they needed to get water to do some things in the house, and there was a well in their compound where we used to fetch water and some other people in the community too. It was open to everyone.

They came and then realized that we fetched water from the well, the next thing the wife did was to get a padlock and lock the well. Without any explanation, Mum had to challenge her to know the reason why she had to do so. Instead, she ignored Mum and arrogantly walked into their apartment.

“If you want to fetch water, come and get permission” Those were her last words before she shut the door.

Interesting. I knew there was something up in that woman’s mind. But who can tell she would be so arrogant and annoying as such? She acted like she was the landlady of the house thereby she was just a tenant.

News reached the community chairman about her behavior and then they called for her attention. She was even bold enough to decline the request of the community’s gathering. That’s so serious.

There was nothing they could do against her since she wasn’t a part of the meeting as a landlady. The house owner was summoned and then asked to find a solution to her nonchalant behavior in the community. It got worse as days kept passing by. She had picked a quarrel with almost every household in the community.

The landlord was forced to give her a quit notice, regretfully that he couldn’t tell she would be a parasite on him and even a pest to the community. She stood her ground and took three months extra before she could pack out of the apartment.

They packed all of their stuff in the middle of the night. Everyone woke up the next day and realized they were out of the apartment. Peace reigned after quite a short time of violence.