She spoke solemnly.

In good English.

This old woman who was selling roasted groundnuts.

Along Admiralty Way.

To a woman who was trying to bargain with her to reduce her price.

"How can you see an old woman like me selling small groundnuts like these and still have it in your heart to ask me to reduce it, when you know that my price is the same with everyone else who is selling this around here?"

The woman who was evidently coming from work.

Responded unsmiling.

"Mama why are you bringing age inside market? Your own is to sell, my own is to buy, and it is pricing that is the language we are both suppose to speak to each other."

"But there are somethings that one should approach with conscience and empathy. Can't you see that for me at this age to be selling these things out on the road means that something has gone wrong somewhere in my life?'

"Mama leave all that one, and reduce price for me."

"You are still pricing?"

"Why shouldn't I? Can't you see how hard things are?"

"It is hard for both you and I, but you must also know that when you buy things in the market, from the sellers hands alongside what you buy, you also collect blessings or curses."

"It is the same thing you get from the hand of the buyer, alongside the money you collect, there is also blessings or curses."

"I agree. But you know that tongues are different and that God is fair judge. If I curse you and you curse me or if I bless you and you bless me, there is more chances of mine coming to pass than yours."

"For where? Do you know who I am?"

"You don't know who I am too."

"Abeg Mama, no need for all this talk, are you reducing the price or not?"

"No problem. Take what you want and pay."

"That is what you are supposed to have done since instead of talking all this grammar."

She picked the amount she wanted from the bunches the old woman had neatly tied and arranged on her pan.

Then handed to the old woman, who had a black plastic bag already opened to receive them.

The old woman handed the bag to her and collected the money she stretched out to her.

Then the woman said to her as she was about to leave.

"Mama, I know you have cursed me for pricing your market. Me sef, I have cursed you too."

"Cursed you? Me? What for? If my only child did not die, he would have been even older than you, and you will be the age of his daughter if he had one. My daughter, I have blessed you. I have asked God to give you enough money, so that when you see people who the misfortunes of life has forced them to do what they normally won't be doing, you will have mercy in your heart to be fair to them as they are fair to you, by giving them the little they deserve instead of trying to take from them even from the small that they have..."

Lagos

Jude Idada
July 19, 2023