Diary Entry: Wednesday, 21st March, 2018
Trrrr! Trrrrr!! Trrrr!!!
Lydia woke up and turned off the alarm, as usual, there was no light, and she just couldn't believe it was 3am already!!!
'The village people have stolen the night' she cried, 'if only I could sleep for one more minute' she bemused.
Up she stood and was on her way to the kitchen, her first task every day was to mix the flour.
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Lydia was one of the few corpers lucky to be retained by her PPA but she knew that the small money she got would never be sufficient if she was to run her Master’s program at LASU and so, she had side hustles. One of which was the small-chops business.
She quickly made the dough and was soon making the samosa in the new non-stick frying pan she had bought last week. As she turned the samosa, the power was restored, she quickly started to fry the pepper sauce for the peppered meat. She was lucky today!
By 4:30am, Lydia was done with the small-chops, she quickly packed it in a bag and rushed to the bathroom, luckily for her, the bathroom was free.
Mama Ngozi, met her just as she stepped out of the bathroom,
Mama Ngozi: "Here’s the money from last week, I’ll give you the balance tomorrow."
Lydia also served as a distributor for recharge card in her street, she would buy at the bigger shops on the way from work and she would distribute it to the vendors on the street. The vendors preferred doing business with her because she only collected the money after they had sold the recharge cards.
Lydia: "Thank you Mama Ngozi", she collected the money, counted it and went in to get ready for work.
At 5:20am, Lydia was already at the bus-stop, the Lagos traffic demanded extra 2-hours from her every morning. She got to work at 7:30am, just in time to package the small-chops in takeaway packs before 8am.
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It’s 7pm, Lydia just alighted at the bus-stop.
She’s now on her way to distribute recharge cards, after which, she’ll go to the night market to get ingredients for tomorrow’s small-chops.
Before she does the goodnight prayer, she will read in preparation for her entrance Exam.
Diary Closed: 11:00 pm, Wednesday, 21st March, 2018
Word Count: 350
PS:This story describes the daily life of a Lagos Hustler struggling to make ends meet. The hope of them all is a brighter future with less stress and more enjoyment
This post is an entry for the contest by @air-clinic
