From his shadow to his darkness. Story of a downfall

Expressing the poverty in his village and the injustice his people were suffering for many years, ignited anger in him as if he was just from noticing those inequalities. Knowing that I could not do anything to change this situation sooner and that I was actually working for the government that was oppressing them, I decided to remain quiet and showed him some compassion with my attitude. No word could have calmed his bitterness. After spitting his fury for about five long minutes with me listening attentively, he remained silent for some seconds as if he was trying to rest after a serious effort. Then he took his phone and made a call. As soon as he finished the phone call in which the conversation was in the same dialect as that of those thugs at the periphery of the village, he looks intently at me and said:

“Son, I just had one of my guys on the phone. Go back to school; he and his friends will help you.”

“Oh, thank you very much, sir,” I responded a little embarrassed.

To say the truth, I wasn’t expecting nor desiring any help; even though I appreciated his affability, looking at the task we were about to do, any assistance other than that of my colleagues seemed useless. But my estimation of the workers needed was totally inexact. I found myself mentally thanking him more sincerely when we faced the issue of transportation of plastic chairs and tarps. We could not have finished installing all the equipment required for the event without these young people’s help. I was so pleased by their enthusiasm while helping us. They showed us a better image of the youths of this region by behaving friendly and far different than those bandits who wanted to aggress us when we arrived.

Two hours later, everything was ready before the entire regional establishment arrived. We could now rest a little before the beginning of the ceremony. As I patiently waited for the arrival of the minister and my other colleagues, I noticed that at forty minutes before the commencement; the place was still empty; that was a very bad situation. Knowing that all this was also organized to show the love mister minister benefited all over the country, even in the regions known for their detestation towards the regime, poor attendance would have sounded like a defeat. In this particular period where he was facing so many issues, the press would have not hesitated to take that as an advantage and turn it as the ultimate demonstration of his downfall. Even though the popularity of my boss was an acknowledged fact, I couldn’t be a hundred percent confident about the success of the event with all the bad luck that has been chasing him for the past three months. That’s why I anxiously prayed to see the crowd coming. Sometime later, the small number of people attending was turning into a crowd; and ten minutes before the official opening of the event, a large crowd was present and ready to welcome mister minister. The entire village was present; no single member of the regional establishment was absent. The ambiance was jovial, cadenced by drums, people were shaking and giggling their bodies before a group of kids demonstrated a delighting ballet that they surely prepared for months. The excitement was all over. The national television channel was also present to capture everything during the ceremony as Mister Minister required from its general manager, a special team for that purpose.

Everybody was now patiently waiting for the main person of the occasion. The wait didn’t last long. At exactly four o’clock, a black Mercedes emerged in front of a convoy of about ten vehicles from the same standard. Then two minutes later, Mister Agbwala’s team of security guards, three tall guys wearing black from head to toe, speaking on their small earpieces with a lot of focus, moved out of his Volkswagen before opening the backdoor of the car. Subsequently, the Minister came out of the luxurious automobile with his usual and notorious classiness; he was in a stylish grey suit, designed black sunglasses, working on a red carpet in an astonishing allure. The whole crowd went into a noisy fervor after his salutations, displayed a remarkable passion who sounded like a proof of his undeniable popularity despite all the denigrations on him since the last three months. He was still their hero, the one who had always defended them and assisted them no matter their political point of view. These cheers from this village were what we came for. Capturing an image of people from an acknowledged hostile region celebrating their champion, showing him love, was an amazing element we could use for propaganda.

A gorgeous little girl came to welcome him with a bunch of flowers, and then he made an outstanding speech that ended with a standing ovation from the crowd. He insisted in his speech on the need for everyone in the nation to come together and to forget the past. He called the authority to come and assist the population of Waloua and encouraged the youths of the region to continue to work hard and progress. He couldn’t end his propos without adding some propaganda for him and his party, which was a normal move from an established politician like himself. After that, the main part of the ceremony came when he officially handed his donation to the principal of the school. The lady received with a large smile, the ten computers and four new generation printers he offered. Her joy was so extreme that she could not hold herself to express it with a funny dance move that made the entire crowd laugh as if we were watching a comical show. Some young men just by my side even testified their shock after seeing this usually shy and reserved woman dance like this in public without looking uncomfortable. I was surprised, but, thrilled to see her so content after all the pain she had narrated to me earlier.

This cheerful and pleasant ceremony ended when the regional delegate of the state invited the establishment members of the region and the ministry of education workers to share the buffet with him in a classroom near the principal’s office. The rest of the crowd also had their own collation at the courtyard. I couldn’t eat much, I focused my entire person returning to the city, even though the trip was a success; I had some personal things to do on that same day.

But thirty minutes later, we were still there, impatiently waiting for mister minister to finish this very long discussion he had with the governor. I was complaining in my head about the length of that discussion and bored like never when I heard a voice calling me:

“Paul, Paul come.”

Gracefully, his discussion with the governor had ended and we could now leave. So I hurried to find out why he was calling me with so much excitement. When I came close to him, I was delighted by his first words to me; he knew how to stimulate and thank his workers.

“You did an outstanding job, Paul, I’m proud of you. Just maintain these qualities, in some years, you will become a minister too.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you very much, sir,” I said, grinning. This wasn’t the first time I received these motivational words from him. For me, it had always been a great honor to be acknowledged by such an established person like him.

As I was still seriously enjoying these appreciations, I saw him putting his hand into his right pocket and then pulling out cash. Despite being rich, the amount he displayed shocked me. A second later, he just pointed it at me without even embarrassing himself of counting it and said:

“Take this; distribute it to every single person who assisted you during the equipment installation.”

“But sir, the budget…” I shyly tried to object. For me, it was a little too much even though I appreciated his intentions. But as generous as he was, I couldn’t stop him.

“Do as I say,” he replied quickly without letting me finish my sentence, “you will understand later,” he added.

That was why people loved him so much; he always had the good words, the perfect attitude with people. He was a brilliant mix of charity and charisma. I had a great admiration for his personality and a real desire to resemble him even a little. With my timidity, my agoraphobia, my introversion and my clear lack of charisma, it wasn’t hard to say that I was his opposite. Adding my stinginess to all these characteristics, the list of my faults will be complete.

Thirty minutes later, we were finally on our way back to the capital city. After expecting an eventual new modification in our planning of the day, I was closer to mister minister by traveling back in his car and left my own to one of my subalterns. But twenty minutes later, I started to feel insecure and regretted my choice because of the high speed at which we were traveling. My heartbeat was rising every time we passed near one of those gigantic trucks specialized in wood transportation and frequent user of this highway to assure the connection between the coast and the interior of the country. While I was stressing and trembling because of the dangerous ride of the driver, the others were not showing any sign of alarm, among them, the minister who was even comfortable with this tempo. After praising the driver, he was now absorbed in a phone discussion. I could hear him saying: “my love, yes my love” what made me conclude that he was surely discussing with his wife, Mister Agbwala was a married man with three kids.

After he ended his phone call, he gave an instruction to the security guard at the front seat. Subsequently, the man transmitted the order to the driver before a long silence took place. I was a little frustrated; usually, mister minister will communicate to me this order before everybody. But this time, I had to suffer to be out of the process. Knowing that the main reason I was physically close to him was to know of any information and any modification, I couldn’t feel anything else than dissatisfaction. The only thing I could do was to guess our next stop because, for me, we will surely not go directly to the office. My intuitions were confirmed some minutes later when we arrived at the periphery of the city and the driver took the road going to the business district instead of the left street of the junction. I then concluded that we will surely hold a meeting at a hotel to discuss briefly, our next plan when the driver turned at the city’s main boulevard with his multiple hotels five minutes later. But I couldn’t imagine that our destination will be at the Atlantique hotel, a marvelous place known for its quality of service and architecture and also selective even for those who were not discouraged enough by the elevated prices of the rooms. Even though all this beauty delighted me, the feeling that I had since the marginalization I suffered thirty minutes ago when mister minister kept me away from the information he transmitted to his driver, turned darker immediately we penetrated the five-star hotel. The bad reputation of this place was all over my head. The hotel was not only known for its splendor; many other stories about mysterious cults holding meetings there and organized prostitution occurring in this same place rubbished the image of the “Atlantique” these last years. Adding the fact that mister minister barely came to this hotel in my presence and that we had held no meeting there in the past, it became very difficult for me not to have in mind all those rumors that stated that my boss was a member of a cult and that he also secretly used to come there for his dirty activities. His behavior was not just helping; he had just left us at the hotel hall and went to the elevator with only one bodyguard without telling me anything. I was now troubled; a victim of every kind of dark thoughts, doubts, and mystery always go in pairs, and his actions were mysterious. I couldn’t get these suspicions out of my head, whenever the beauty of the hotel got me absorbed, the length of his absence will subsequently turn back into thoughts.

Gracefully, the wait finally ended and mister Agbwalla impedes my uncertainties and my frustrations subsequently when he asked me to excuse his previous attitude, blaming it on a family emergency. I was so enchanted by the way he presented his excuses I forgot to ask whether the problem he mentioned had finally been solved; he just wowed me by displaying so much humility. What a great man!

Five minutes later, we were moving out of the hotel on our way to the parking lot, when we met with a group of street children; four little boys in a dirty outer shell, they all looked hungry and weary. Their appearance was a clear example of the consequences of poverty in our country. The grimness of their frizzy hair made them look like neglected dogs in the street. Immediately they saw us, they started begging for money. Insistently. Their dirtiness was in perfect dissimilarity with the luxurious environment around them and made their presence turn into a serious proof of the incompetence of the security guards of this hotel. After the minister’s bodyguard noticed that they were a little too close to us, they decided to rudely make them go away. As they were dealing with them, the minister intervened:

“It’s ok, it’s ok, leave them…” he shouted to the bodyguards.

Even though we all knew how generous he was, his reaction was a little too exaggerated, knowing that the guards were only doing their job.

Subsequently, he took the oldest boy of the group apart and started questioning him.

“Tell me, young man, what are you people doing here? He asked gently.

“Our parents are dead sir, I’m with my brothers, we are looking for something to eat, anything to calm our hunger. We used to sell groundnuts and clean people’s shoes when some guys stole our equipment three days ago.”

“Hmmm…” Mister minister reacted before calling one of his bodyguards to give him some instructions.

We could hear the kids shouting out their happiness and expressing their gratitude towards the unexpected benefactor mister Agbwala was. Even though I couldn’t know what mister minister gave them to provoke this spectacular mood change, I was deeply impressed again by his bigheartedness. He was such a charitable man. I would have surely not acted the same. I usually hesitated before giving money to these abandoned children, and this behavior was because of my opinion on the topic. There was an amplification of the number of children in the streets, but all of them were not homeless. Many left their villages to look for a better living in the city. Others were used as a means of income of poor families already living in the city for years but sadly suffering from misery and unemployment. My compassion for those children who lived in the streets with all its dangers and uncertainties was as high as my anger against all the adults who sent them there. And any single person who had the means to change this situation but still didn’t. But the reaction of mister Agbwala came as a huge lesson for me: give first! My mind was now focused on the rest of my day, I needed to develop this kind of generosity and stop calculating all the time.

Later on, when the night arrived, I couldn’t hold myself for not relating to Caroline what happened at the Atlantique and especially on Mister Minister generous and humble actions. But as usual, whenever Mister Agbwala’s name was mentioned, my wife only noted the negative elements of the story. She first started complaining about the danger we faced on our way to Waloua when we encountered a group of thugs. Then also followed the many rumors on Mister Minister’s mysterious spiritual activities when we were discussing on the Atlantique. She even insisted that I should avoid or refuse whenever my boss proposes to go to such places Like many people in the country, she too believed that that hotel was nothing but a dark and dangerous institution. Hopefully, we didn’t argue on this subject much as we usually did when it comes to mister minister and my job.

For many years, it had become a strong habit to converse on him in our family life. In fact, my job was like a second family and a dangerous concubine for Caroline. That’s why most of the time, she acted like a possessive and mad rival, always trying to know her enemy for a better demolition. So it was just normal that her belief on Mister Minister and my workplace was permanently negative. Mister Agbwala, who was a praiseworthy man, a role model for the society, had a very different image in my wife’s eyes. For her, he was a bad influence to me; he had a double personality and hidden face that will be pulled out one day with destructive consequences for people close to him like me. Even if I had never agreed with most of her opinions towards my boss and my workplace, her hatred was understandable for me. It was just a manifestation of her frustration, regarding the number of nights she slept alone and the number of times I left her because of a phone call from the office. She was deplorable.

The harshest part for her was the passion I had for my job and the power of constant motivation, adding to the fact that she had never succeeded to influence my view on my Godfather even after her perseverance. Apart from my invariable admiration, I started feeling a deep commiseration for him after all the attack he endured these last months. I was sad that despite his good actions, people still hated him. But most of the time, he was able to deal with it that even when the revelation of the Herald came out; he didn’t look much concerned about it. He surely thought it was “fake news” like the multiple ones he had been facing before. But this one seemed to be true. That was surely why for three weeks, he was particularly absorbed, sad and nervous, he wasn’t the same joyful and cheerful man I knew. Sometimes, I will find him sunk into deep thinking, so absorbed that he will not even notice my presence for long minutes. The worst was that he had a pile of newspapers treating this subject permanently on his table. I couldn’t be in his shoes but for me, reading all these rumor mongers wasn’t a good thing. He better stay focused on his work and has confidence in his lawyer and justice. I used to ask myself if he was feeling guilty of something, or if he had some key information, we did not take into account. We, his supporters, continuously showed him love and support.

The day after, despite my unusual punctuality and the tranquility, I was hoping at the beginning of the day, huge was my surprise to see a long queue of people waiting for my arrival, expecting an appointment for most of them. With no hesitation, my instructions to Jasmine, my secretary, were clear; no appointment until further notice. I had much work to do, and I focused my entire planning on that, even though the desperation I saw on many faces pained me. But I had no choice. But three hours later, a bigger duty sanctioned my dedication to work and reminded me that there was no higher obligation during my working hours: a phone call from Mister Minister completely changed my scheduling and made me postpone the termination of my work. He asked me to meet him at his office as soon as possible. Like every single time he requested my presence, it sank me into prayers and fears; the short distance between our offices turned like the way to the execution room.

When I entered his office, a pleasant silhouette of an unknown lady who was facing him welcomed me. As I hadn’t seen her face yet, I was speculating on her beauty, thinking of how gorgeous she could be. Then she turned her body to my direction, and I finally discovered her charming visage and her pretty lips. She looked shy and bent down her head while greeting me. The minister introduced me to her before instructing me to look for her an office where she could work. He stated that she will start as an intern, “then we will see,” he said before they exchanged a candid smile. Their unique and remarkable complicity made me conclude that they were probably from the same family even though some little doubting though forced me to focus on this subject for some long minutes. Since all these rumors about the cheating habits of mister Agbwala, it had become very difficult not to suspect him of bad intentions every time an unknown lady was around.

Her name was Caroline… This coincidence provoked a strange attraction in me; I was now treating her more kindly. She was stunning. While working with her, I noticed again her nice derriere. Some minutes later, we were discussing in a friendly atmosphere as two old colleagues; she was less reserved. I succeeded to make her open up. That’s how she detailed me her school background; she had a master’s degree in Bilingual Letters and Translation. It really impressed me. She looked too young to have attained such an academic level. Shortly after, we arrived at the office I chose for her at the Operational Department. I presented her to the chief of the department and left him some instructions. Christian, as they called him, couldn’t hide his feelings; he was shocked to see such a beautiful lady. I had never seen him that excited to welcome a newcomer before. The funniest thing was that the lady did not even notice the impact she had on him as she was seriously concentrated to appear sympathetic in this unknown universe she was brought into. After we exchanged friendly smiles, I left her and promised myself to keep my eyes on her knowing all the dangerous male of this office.

In the afternoon, as traditionally every third Wednesday of the month, Mister Minister invited his closest collaborators for a dinner. Contrary to our past consideration of this tradition, as many of us usually thought it was just a waste of money and time, this time around, we felt the necessity of it and took it as a good opportunity to have a good time and momentarily run away from the tension occurring in the office during that period. The place chosen by mister minister was the restaurant, “Monte Carle,” the best restaurant in the city, known for its amazing cuisine and the reputation of its chef, but very expensive for average people in the country. The cheapest plate there cost equivalent as food allowance for over three days for most families in the capital city. But that was the choice of Mister Minister. Who could blame him? He had the means, and sometimes, we all needed to enjoy life as far as we find time and money for.

When we arrived there, they welcomed us like kings by the restaurant staff. They were so excited to receive such high personalities, particularly the legendary Mister Agbwala. He was also cool with them, really at ease, calling everybody by their name like they were longtime friends. The female workers of the restaurant were more agitated than their male colleagues; it couldn’t be otherwise, seeing all these rich and powerful men were turning them into a trance. They were smiling for no reasons, displaying an eccentric cordiality. Many of them could easily offer their body to a man even if he was married just because of money; one has to be naïve to think dating this kind of girl will be a sincere love affair. But taking into consideration the poverty in our country, their salary and the harsh living conditions in the capital city, were they blameful?

Mister Minister requested the most expensive Champagne and some costly wine bottles. I was thrilled to see him in that humor, smiling, chilling, and joking. It was a memorable dinner, a break in a tense period we were facing.