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Drinking one’s own poison – Part 3

By Segun Durowaiye
07 October 2017   |   3:28 am
Two months later, the tenants couldn’t risk the looming health hazards and they started packing out of the house one by one. Within the next three months, all the tenants had left unwillingly.

Two months later, the tenants couldn’t risk the looming health hazards and they started packing out of the house one by one. Within the next three months, all the tenants had left unwillingly.

(Continued from last week Saturday)

The frustration became too much for Mama Aro’s tenants; they risked contacting diseases in the house because of the stench oozing out of the well.

Two months later, the tenants couldn’t risk the looming health hazards and they started packing out of the house one by one. Within the next three months, all the tenants had left unwillingly.

Exactly a year later, Mama Aro’s house had become empty. It looked like a haunted house, as she was the only one living there.

Everybody had heard about the wicked and unrepentant ways of Mama Aro and her house was deserted like a plague. No one visited her. Even her biological daughter had known the truth surrounding the death of her son, Aro, so she was scared of going to her mum because of her evil and atrocious acts.

Mama Aro continued to live alone, as the whole community was afraid of having anything to do with her or rent her house. There was no one to take care of her. She started to drink water from the same well she dumped faeces into, as there was nobody to fetch water for her in nearby houses.

She would walk weakly towards the well, fetch it and drink it herself. She even used the fetid well water to do her cooking by herself. Sometimes, when she was almost 70, she developed a strange illness that defied both traditional and orthodox medicine. Her skin was decaying and peeling off gradually.

She would scream in pains and cry, that ghosts were running after her. Neighbours were scared to pay her visits or rescue her because of her past misdeeds.

On a particular Saturday morning, she staggered out of her room weakly and headed for the well to fetch some water to drink. When she bent her head down to fetch the water, she became dizzy. She felt the earth moving and shaking around her feet.

She fell inside the well the next moment. A couple of minutes afterwards, she gave up the ghost inside the well after gulping large quantity of the water.

It was three weeks later when neighbours discovered that Mama Aro had died inside the deep, stinking well. She was buried inside the well, just like a stubborn fly would follow the corpse into the grave.

It is a saying that, ‘The evil men do will not only live after them, but also consume them.’ It pays to be good to fellow human beings.

Mama Aro died a painful, shameful and violent death. If one is in the habit of doing just and Godly things, it is for one’s good also, as no evildoer can escape the wrath of God for sins committed against fellow human beings.

Whatever seed you sow, you will surely reap. It behoves human beings to tread softly and do things that would always bring blessings of God and not His anger.

Mama Aro’s life was a lesson to her neighbours, family and generations yet unborn.

(Concluded)

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