Freely you have received; freely give.
~Matthew 10:8
It was a snowy winter, bitter and cold, but not even that could wipe the smile off my face. I was in the United States of America. A twenty-year-old African girl was finally getting a chance to fulfill her dreams, and going to college was a good way to start. I was going to make my mama proud. My fifteen-hour Greyhound bus ride from Atlanta, Georgia, to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, was finally over. It was 9:00 p.m., and I had no idea where I was. I stood in the cold night air and hoped someone would stop so I could ask for directions. A few minutes later, a car pulled up.
“You’re about an hour away,” one of the girls in the car told me. My heart dropped and my face fell. It was a Sunday night, and I was due at school Monday morning. I hated being late for anything, especially for the first day of the rest of my life. Plus, I was extremely hungry and tired.
“We can take you there. Hop in!” They must have seen the defeated look on my face. I barely had time to wonder if they’d take me into the forest and chop me into bits like in some horror movies. I was getting into that car even if my life was at risk. I settled in the back seat, gratefully yet fearful, and said a little prayer.
The first day of school was chaotic. I managed to register for classes and find a few people from my country. We decided it was cheaper to rent an apartment together. There were five of us. The two boys shared a room, and so did the two female cousins. I had a room all to myself. I had spent all the money Mama sent from home to pay for my tuition for that semester. I was literally broke, and my roommates had no idea I didn’t have my share of the first month’s rent.
I borrowed textbooks from every class I attended and stayed up all night to read four to five chapters ahead of each class. I made tons of notes since no one would be lending me their textbooks during test periods. It was no surprise to me when I got an A+ in every class. I was extremely determined but, most importantly, I was grateful to be in school.
As time went by, I received help from some generous friends who chipped in to help me cover my rent. I ate what I could and when I could. Most days, my stomach ached with pangs of hunger, but I did not let it show. One of my roommates had landed a job at a fast-food restaurant. Whenever he could, he would bring me a little burger from the leftovers that were going to be trashed.
“Thank you so much, James,” I would say.
“Ah, you know it’s nothing. They were going to throw it away anyway.” He would hug me and sit with me for a while, telling me jokes to make me smile.
“My Mimi,” he would say lovingly. He was more than a friend, more like an older brother.
I was super grateful for those days when I had food to eat.
Interestingly enough, before I came to school, there was another James, my young cousin, who had heard about my financial plight and decided to do something marvelous about it. James worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Atlanta, and before I made the trip to Arkansas, he had saved weeks of his pay as a gift to me for college. It was such a kind gesture because I knew how hard he worked and how many long hours he put in to come up with such a sum of money. I used most of it to pay for a few school supplies, utilities and some furniture at Goodwill for my room.
As weeks passed, I got into the routine of borrowing textbooks. Soon enough, people took it upon themselves to ask, “Do you need to borrow my book for a while?”
Even though my grades never faltered, my weight was dwindling.
We were far from wealthy back home, yet somehow we never really starved. It was hard for my mother to raise five children on a meager salary, but her kindness was always returned. Mother always shared her groceries with two of her other friends who were financially worse off than we were.
“What if we don’t have enough?” we’d ask, but she would always say, “Freely you give, freely you will receive.” And like magic, someone always dropped by days before we ran completely out of food to drop off some kind of staple. It never failed to happen!
But now, it was beginning to get hard to read, to study, and to smile. There were no more free burgers from my friend James’s job. Someone had reported seeing him take leftovers home. But James knew how to make me laugh, and for a while I would forget that my insides were burning with hunger.
I’d come home every day from class, drink a large glass of water, and make myself fall asleep to forget the pain and make the day go faster.
Carmen, a woman I used to help with studies, offered me a ride home from class. It was unusual, but I wanted to get home quickly to drink some water and sleep off my anguish.
“I’m going to Walmart. Do you want to come?” she offered, but I declined. I had no business going to tempt myself with food when I couldn’t afford it.
And so she dropped me off, and as usual I performed my ritual of water drinking and sleep. It was 3:00 in the afternoon, and I’d hoped to sleep long enough to wake up the next day. But a disturbing, consistent honking woke me up. I went to the door to see who the lunatic was, only to find that it was Carmen.
She started to unload bags of groceries from the trunk of her car and drop them into the house. It took me a while to register what was going on or how she even knew that I needed food! I never mentioned anything to her, let alone showed anyone that I was in any kind of trouble.
When she was all done, she came back to the spot where I stood transfixed, wiping away my tears.
I wanted to ask her why, but I could only say her name. She gave me a tight big hug and whispered in my ear, “I am your friend.” Then she got into her car and drove off, leaving me on my knees, sobbing gratefully.
~Bernice Angoh
