ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER 5

The boys agreed with her because women don’t finish with their make-
up. Martin called a taxi to pick them up by the gate. Grace rushed
outside and collected Martin’s clothes; they were already dry. Martin
thanked her with her totem, ‘the hearts’. She smiled and kissed him.
Lovejoy coughed a naughty sound and told them to get a room. Lionel
then said, “Please continue; we are taking down the notes,” and he was
about to record on the camera. They all laughed and went to pick up
their bags from their rooms.
Grace dashed to the kitchen and wrapped roasted chicken in a foil
paper. Then, she packed potatoes into a lunchbox. Martin told her to put
it in a plastic bag. The taxi driver called, telling them that he was at the
gate. Martin told the boys to come; it was time to go, and they both came
and whispered in his ear as they thanked him for the new underwear
and shorts.
Grace told them that if they were planning to elope with her, then
they had captured the wrong girl. She was gonna bite them one by one.
They all laughed and went out. As Martin was locking his doors, his
current girlfriend arrived. He panicked so much that he even dropped
the keys. She then jumped on him and said how much she missed him.
Martin told her to stop, and she looked at Grace to see her facial
expression. Surprisingly, she was smiling and not even offended.His current girlfriend, Caroline, then asked who these people were.
They looked like people with strong rural backgrounds. Caroline’s dad
was a minister of finance in the cabinet, so she had pride and was full of
herself. Martin was angry and told her that those two boys were his
cousins, and the lady smiling over there was his high school girlfriend
whom he dated for years and never cheated on him. That hit home
because Caroline had cheated on Martin with his best friend the
previous week.
Martin visited his friend, and as he got there, he heard sounds
through the window. He got inside quietly and sat in the sitting room
because the front door wasn’t locked. He was shocked when they came
out, and he saw that it was Carol, his girlfriend. So, she had come to try
and apologize again, although Martin told her that was the end of their
love story.
Caroline shouted at Martin, asking why he was telling them their
issues. He shouted back and told her that he would not marry a loose
woman. She walked back to her royal car embarrassed and shouted at
her driver to drive off quickly. The boys laughed as they walked to the
taxi that was waiting for them at the gate. They apologized for delaying
him and gave him a tip as he drove them to the bus terminus. They
noticed the bus would leave in 10 minutes. Luckily for them, it was a 10-
minute drive. They got off and rushed to board the bus. It was a double-
deck, and the boys were surprised about this.
Lovejoy then asked him why he didn’t pay the taxi driver, so he
explained to him how he paid for everything online, even the bus tickets.The boys nodded their heads and smiled at how technology was far
ahead in big cities than in rural areas. The bus drove off, and that was
the beginning of their journey to a foreign land looking for greener
pastures. Lovejoy and Lionel had seats in front, while Grace and Martin
had seats at the back.
Lionel went to the back and gave them his blanket so that they could
share, and he would share Lovejoy’s. The conductor walked around
delivering bus tickets to those who bought online, and he asked for
passports from everyone. When he got to the boys’ seat, their hearts
pounded with fear, and Martin walked from his seat to come and help
them negotiate. Martin told the conductor that they were not crossing
over; they would drop off before the border post. He then told the boys
to give him a $30 note. He smiled and left and attended to the next
passengers.
Along the way, they met more refugees, and their stories were
different from each other. Most of them were running away from
political issues; some were teachers who were accused of teaching
history subject wrongly. Lionel sat next to a lady who was a history
teacher and she was worried about how she was going to cross the river
with her two kids. She had a three-month-old baby and an eight-year-
old son.
They arrived at their destination, in fact, the beginning of a real
struggle. It was dark at night when the driver told everyone without
passports to go down and follow this other guy. Lionel and Lovejoy also
joined the others. They followed their leader into the forest. Lionel heldthe hands of that boy whose mother was a teacher. She was happy that
he helped her, little did he know the risk he had taken.
As they were about to cross the river, their leader told them to keep
quiet and wear dark clothes because soldiers were walking around on
the bridge above them. He also warned them of the crocodiles and said
it was survival of the fittest and to have faith. He instructed them to hold
hands tightly. Lionel realized that the eight-year-old boy would be
heavy to carry on his shoulders and gave the older one to his mother and
offered to carry the baby on his back.
The group leader instructed that if you feel like your partner is being
dragged, just don’t fight it, obviously it’s the crocodile. After this, he
asked if anyone could pray. Just after prayer, they heard gunshots miles
away. Everybody went silent. He told them not to worry. They were
lucky that the thieves were not fighting, so they crossed in peace without
being robbed or attacked.
The ring leader counted them, and they were a group of forty. They
held hands and started to walk through the dark, cold, scary waters of
the river. The ring leader also warned them about the soldier’s lights
from the bridge above them. He said if the lights flashed toward them
they would go down whilst walking, then up again. The fear of
crocodiles and mermaids was making them shiver.
When they reached the other side of the river, they noticed that some
were missing. That was the worst silent moment. All of a sudden, they
cried bitterly. The ring leader silenced them with a gun and told themthey’d be caught and he was not going to be paid. That’s when Lionel
realized that the person he was holding hands with was the eight-year-
old boy and not his mother. That’s when he remembered how he felt his
hand being dragged and the sounds of water splashing.
At some point, he had to let go of the hand, but his heart was broken
into pieces. He felt someone holding his hand again and he took a deep
breath. Lionel was relieved; she was safe again. He thought she fought
and won since she was the last person in the queue and Lionel was
second from last. The little boy narrated how he jumped into the water
from his mother’s shoulders. When the crocodile had bitten his mother’s
legs, he swam and held Lionel’s hand again.
Lionel hugged him tightly, Lovejoy joined them, and they cried
silently. That’s when the baby woke up and cried as well. Lionel was
confused about where he was going to take his two little ones since he
was going to start a new job. Lovejoy told him not to worry since they
were going to meet Grace just after the border post. As a social worker,
she’ll make a plan. Lionel was relieved from the burden, and Grace was
a heavenly send.
They walked towards the boundary fence which was cut in different
parts, some crawled under and jumped over, and others walked easily
on the open part that looked like a tiny gate. They were so happy that
they had crossed the boundary fence. They heard a lion roar, and the
leader told them not to worry since he had a gun. They walked in peace
till they were sure that the lion was left behind, the baby was quiet and
fast asleep because she was given gripe water that made her sleepyThey saw lights on their left side, and the leader told them that was
the border post. They rejoiced as they went through the forest behind it
and got to the highway road close to the garage. The ring leader told
them to cross over to the other side and wait for the bus while hiding in
the forest. He then switched his phone on and called the driver who
reversed his bus from the garage and picked them up.
Grace was waiting for her boys; she was standing close to the bus
door. She hugged them and went to sit next to them. The ring leader
narrated how many people were missing to the driver who then called
out a register of border jumpers and noticed the missing people. Lionel
told Grace about the kids, and she almost cried and filled the gap of a
mother. From that moment, she comforted the kids and noticed that it
wasn’t easy to cross again the border with them, so she decided to take
them to the orphanage home in that foreign country.
She proceeded with her journey for a vacation and decided to take
them into the hotel room for the night and then ask for orphanages the
following morning. Lovejoy and Lionel arrived in the wee hours of the
morning. They got off the bus and sat on the benches for Grace’s uncle
to come and pick them up. Grace got another bus to Durban for her
vacation with the two orphans. She bought baby milk and fed the baby.
On her way to Durban, Martin called her, and she narrated how she
met the boys; they were safe and sound. She left them at Park Station in
Joburg waiting for her uncle to pick them up. He thanked her, and she
also narrated how the boys brought two orphans to her. Martin told her
it was a calling to be a social worker, and that’s why she could notbreathe. Grace told him how she got a strong feeling that Lionel got the
same calling as well, besides saving Gloria’s baby, he saved two more
that very night.
Martin agreed and said their goodbyes. At that same moment, a car
stopped across the road, and the driver almost hit it. Two robbers got
onto the bus and asked for Grace. An old woman stood up and said she
was Grace, so they slapped her and walked through the passage to the
back seat looking for Grace. They passed by her because she now had
two kids and a wool hat on her head. When they stepped out from the
bus, a few men with guns stood up and followed them.
Before they could open the car doors, they were shot down in the legs.
The other men got into the car and drove them to the nearest police
station. Before they handed them over to the police, they beat them up,
and they confessed who sent them to kill Grace. Yes, our very own
Grace, the social worker, Martin’s bride-to-be, confessed how Carol
followed Martin from his flat till they boarded the bus. She then called
these robbers to follow her till they could get a chance to kill her; this
was their only chance since they had failed so many times.
Grace cried bitterly as she heard how she was a victim, and God
protected her from the robbers being put into custody and promised that
they would contact the police from across the border to deal with Carol.
Grace was relieved, and she thanked those brave men with guns. She
then texted Martin; unfortunately, he was fast asleep. She wept, and the
little boy wiped her tears. She then fell asleep and woke up the followingday. She woke up to the breeze of fresh air from the ocean, and she
smiled as she saw it for the first time. The kids were still fast asleep.