Jumoke and I had never been close. I tried my best to stay away from ladies who spoke too much, especially the ones who talked about other people's mistakes and never admitted theirs, or the ones who brought gossip about something that happened to someone for you people to discuss.
Source
The first day I met with Jumoke, she was talking about a business my mom was doing, drop shipping. I listened carefully as she explained in detail how she ordered her items abroad from the company, paid someone to help her ship them, and had them delivered directly to her shop.
Hearing her accent, I suspected that she was a Yoruba girl, so I involved myself in the conversation, asking how she managed to get a contact abroad and if she was Yoruba.
It took us a while to get along because she was always leaving the topic we were talking about and delving into small talk that didn't concern me.
I had to leave her alone for some time but then I had already promised my mom to get the information from Jumoke for her so I went back to send her a message.
Being that she wasn't a student, I decided to go to her shop to take a look at the place and also get to speak with her in person so she could tell me how to get a direct connection abroad instead of having my mom pay heavily for goods she could barely make profit from.
I set out that afternoon to locate the shop where she told me it would be and when I got there, I kept my mouth open at what I was looking at.
It was a container with a clothes hanger and some shoes arranged on a shelf. There were several cartons pushed under the shelf to give the shop a little room, then the balcony had a generator and some more cartons.
This was the shop where things were being shipped from abroad.
I hugged her, inhaling the scent of flowers, then accepted the wooden stool she gave me to sit on and took a good look around. The goods didn't even look like they were from a foreign country.
“Welcome to my small place!” She seemed really excited to see me because she was grinning from ear to ear.
“So this is your shop?” I asked, taking one long look around, I wasn't impressed at all.
“I just ordered some kitchen utensils from China, as you can see my shop is empty, they rushed all my goods last week”
I don't know why I burst into laughter but I couldn't hold it in any longer. It was obvious that she was lying and I just knew immediately that once I was done with the information I wanted to get, I would run far away from this lady. We could never become close for any reason.
I nodded my head absentmindedly at her stories, accepted the yogurt she offered to me, and then waited for the appropriate time to ask her for the connections she claimed to have.
“I actually have a cousin abroad who helps me to buy my goods and sends them down for me. When she buys, she gives me the goods and I pay her back when I sell”
I thought about it carefully, since her connection was directly related to her, then it would be safer for my mom to do business with them.
“How well do you trust your cousin with money?”
“I try to be very careful when we're dealing with money so I cannot vouch for anybody. That's why I tell her I don't have money and let her buy the things for me first then remit her money”
I understood and respected the fact that she was wise with her business but curiosity didn't allow me to believe that this cousin of hers was abroad, so I asked her for the girl's contact.
“No o, you can't call her. She's abroad”
“But she has WhatsApp, doesn't she?”
She reluctantly handed a strange number to me so I decided to send a message right there. The number did not even exist.
I decided to let the sleeping dog lie and headed back home, but I told my mother everything that was going on and my suspicions as well.
A couple of days later, my mother asked me to send Jumoke’s number to her, and she wanted to speak with her directly. I handed the contact to her and not too long after that, my mother called me back laughing hysterically.
She said she told Jumoke that she needed to get a particular good that was only available in China.
Jumoke initially jumped with excitement and said she was going to find out the price and call back. She didn't call back for a long time and when my mom eventually called her, she started stuttering, trying to explain that the particular item was not available.
My mother proved her wrong by saying she had a contact who had the same item, it was then she confessed that her cousin was at Aba and not in China like she said.
Jumoke was someone I would have loved to be close to because she was Yoruba and she was a jovial person but because of her dishonesty, I had to stay away from her.