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I witnessed two human tragedies on Saturday 13th of October 2018.

First, I woke up to the unfortunate news that a very good friend of mine and his family lost ALL their material possessions in a terrible fire incident at their home. The fire started at a little to midnight on Friday and was raging while we slept into the early morning. Thankfully, no lives were lost.

Upon getting the news, I immediately made efforts to reach out to them. When this wasn’t successful, I reached out to another mutual friend close by, who asked me to pick him up so we could visit the family.

As I drove out of my street, I noticed a little crowd had gathered at a particular spot down the road. The subject of their respective gazes appeared to be a male figure on the ground. I noticed he was writhing in severe pains.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m usually too confused to know what best to do in such a situation, and more often than not, I simply “mind my business”, interpret that as driving off with a few “Eh yahs” murmured under commiserative breath, all to be forgotten within the next second.

A couple of events culminated in the actions that followed, first a car was coming in the opposite direction, which then narrowed the path for me to manoeuvre enough to avoid climbing over this man. So I slowed down for a few seconds and wound down. Next, the driver (a woman) of the approaching vehicle, who by now had pulled up astride mine suddenly says to me “Can you help to take him somewhere?” (We’ll call her “Woman X” because she would appear again in this story). I was obviously in a hurry so my initial thought was “You’re driving a car as well”. Even worse, she was dressed in what appeared like PJs. But everyone’s lack of action was disturbing.

I started calculating. I looked across to a few of the onlookers, some were close enough to the writhing figure of the man. In his fits, I noticed that he kept trying to reach out for something on the ground. I looked closely and was able to make out the unmistakable feature of an inhaler and some prescription drugs. It suddenly occurred to me that the man was most likely asthmatic and must have suffered an attack, though rather violent.

Everything I just described above happened in split seconds, 1 mins tops! I immediately jumped out of the car and rushed towards him, which seemed to be a cue for a few of the onlookers, who then came closer. With the help of a few of them, I successfully administered the content of the inhaler into the man’s mouth. As I was doing this, I started asking questions. Then I heard a few of the people around say in Yoruba “Awon mola ni”, which basically translates to “ He’s probably from the North”.

I dismissed this and after several more puffs of the inhaler, the man had noticeably improved. Then as I helped him sit up, he suddenly screams “CHI-NEE-KE!!! which is Igbo language for GOD. Even I was taken aback at the first words that came out of his mouth. He then burst into tears as he narrated how he came all the way from home, somewhere in Oshodi (a suburb in Lagos) to see a “consultant” who had promised to get him some drug that’ll help stabilize his condition. According to him, he arrived at the man’s place as early as 6 am, but unfortunately met his absence and was asked to come back after 2 weeks! He was on his way back home when he suffered the attack.

By this time, everyone had joined in. A woman asked if he wanted some water, another offered him melon from her house. Turns out “Woman X” apparently had some medical knowledge. She had also joined in the effort to resuscitate this man and kept reeling out the names of drugs — she it was that recognized that the pink tablets on the ground were “Ventolin”, and that the particular drug the man was seeking from his “consultant” was called “Ceri-something” to which the man nodded in agreement and even though he insisted he had been told it was only available at Teaching hospitals, she confirmed it could also be sourced at local pharmacies at retail price.

After a while and once we helped him get up, I offered to drop him off at a nearby Hospital but he declined to ask if I could help him get the drug instead and offered to “pay me back”. I shrugged it off, gave him all the money I had, and immediately left the scene to proceed on my previous journey.

As I drove off, the events kept playing in my mind. What if the man was left unattended? His life would probably have been lost as a result of NEGLIGENCE, which could be traced to FEAR and INSECURITY over TRIBAL DIFFERENCE (more on this some other time). I also learned that people are inherently driven to DO GOOD but would only join in when they see someone else IN ACTION. It’s like everyone is waiting for who would GO FIRST.

I eventually arrived at the scene of tragedy no. 1 and in tracing the events, you could tell it followed a similar sequence. A neighbor’s generator went up in flames and set the rest of the house ablaze but for the concerted efforts of a few neighbors, the tragedy could have been worse.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Let’s start paying attention to other people’s business(es). It could be a matter of LIFE AND DEATH!