A CALL

Making a life-time decision that would give her fulfillment was an enormous task for the young lady fondly called Carol. However, her modest extroversion did well in hiding the burden in her heart. She played and laughed pretty well and everyone in her world was welcomed into her benevolence. The beggars on the streets daily looked forward to her cheerful greeting. Neighbouring children often could not wait to listen to her morally instructing stories and games. Elders in need were always glad to find a willing help in her. And for others, her smile always made their day.

Secretly sad, she watched her parents struggle to feed the family and send all their seven children, at least, through secondary school. Her father was a civil servant with these many mouths to feed and gratify, while her mother was a petty trader with little to contribute. Three of her siblings were in the secondary school and the other three in the primary. She was seventeen and a secondary school leaver determined to study in the university and major in accountancy so that she would not only easily get a job [the position of an Accountant, being one of the most available positions for employment] but get a well-paying one.

It did not matter to her if her parents could afford to send her to the university or not, she would take the prerequisite examination anyway and cross that bridge if she passed. She did pass and her father gave her the little money he could squeeze out of his savings. She empathized with his self-pity over his inadequacy to provide enough. Luckily, she scaled the cut-off mark of her first-choice course and school which was within the city she resided with her natal family. But it was compulsory to spend the first year in the hostel. Her father and mother prayed for her and gave her admonishments in spite of themselves. This was because they had confidence in her good character which she acquired more from her inclination to the Church and its activities than from them. She had always been good and tended towards appropriateness.

She set out to the university with very little money and … continue to read in INTROSPECTIONS

A Call is a story in this mind blowing book of mind stories