Sometimes, it is okay to experience challenges, because the most beautiful and the ugliest part of a man is revealed in trying times. This is true of Jerry Ekuma, a poor school drop-out of Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, who has become a global ambassador of generosity through his widow’s mite.
Not long ago, a roadside vendor of bottle-drinks was caught on a camera sharing few naira notes to prisoners being conveyed in a Black Maria truck in a slow-moving Lagos traffic. As he finished sharing the first set of notes in his hands, he ransacked his pocket and forced more notes through the cage holes into the waiting hands of the prisoners screaming for alms. The calmness on the hawker’s face and his unassumingness as he finished the noble act and continued his hustling were just enough to win anyone’s admiration.
Perhaps, what makes his act nobler are his antecedents, namely, his family background, school misfortune, and his late entry into a street struggle. In his interview with The Punch, Jerry revealed that he comes from the poorest of the poor, a family of ten where he, as the first born, doubles as their breadwinner. Secondly, he dropped out of the university where he was studying law, because of his inability to pay his school fees. Thirdly, he only came to Lagos on the 21st of December 2021; therefore, among other hawkers of his ilk, he is a JJC, a junior with a low start-up capital and all that goes with being a neophyte in a street trade. But these factors were not obstacle to a generous heart.
Picture the scene again! It was not sympathy but empathy that moved Jerry to action. In empathy, one forgets oneself and takes the plight of the needy before them. It was not the cries of the siblings and parents at home that bordered Jerry at this point, neither was it the outstanding school fees nor the low start-up capital. Jerry was moved by the immediate sight and predicaments of helpless prisoners, many of whom have committed heinous crimes and would ordinarily deserve no pity. Jerry lost himself in their cries.
Like Jerry, everyone has personal problems that will never end. Sometimes, we would wish to smile, but we find ourselves irresistibly sighing. Jerry learnt that there would always be challenges in one’s life, but one could still be generous and attentive to urgent cries while solving their problems. Truly, every giver has a dire need too. Sometimes, a beggar is the one who is first to say he/she needs something. Again, a beggar does not care about what hell of problems you have. As long as you are not courageous to say that you are in need, a beggar presumes you are better off.
The prisoners in the Jerry’s story saw the rich in their luxurious and bullet-proof cars. Rightly, they estimated that the rich could be deaf to their cries and that it would take someone on the street to know what it means to be in need. Personally, I am more contented with a calabash of palm wine taken inside a poor man’s thatched-house than bottles of Champagne taken in a rich man’s castle. The poor talk to the poor in the deepest part of the heart which the superficiality of the rich can never reach.
What about the spontaneity of the donation? Of course, we always see giveaways here on social media usually announced with flyers specifying the venue, time, how much to be given out and how to participate in the “show”. Such giveaways are not without reward, but certainly, they lack the nobility in Jerry’s spontaneous act. The accidental meeting and the instinctual doling of naira notes tell a lot about the heart of Jerry. We are who we are when no one is seeing us. In being real, the one who has no camera phone to turn on became the focus of a passing camera and a subject of media commentaries in the past weeks.
The irony of life is that the most generous have no money, the most intelligent no school fees, the wisest no education, and the kindest of men are at best neglected or at worst mostly hurt by the society. This is true of Jerry. But, is it not sad that since that video surfaced, we have not heard from the government whose harsh economic policies forced Jerry to drop out of school? Is it too much for a government that responds to every online gossip to send a commendation letter to Jerry for being a good ambassador? Where are his representatives in government?
The government is either ashamed of running a system that disables her citizens from realising their potentials or is envious that a golden seed buried by policy cruelties of Good Fridays sprang to life on Easter Sunday to the admiration of the world through uncommon kindness. Either way, the Ebonyi government does not regard Jerry both in rags and in riches. But, who cares? No one! Gold does not rot, it glitters. Jerry glitters through Obi Cubana, Daddy Freeze, Rocky, Mr Afuah and all who have stood by him.
