Diaspoman : When our riches turned into ashes

A few years ago, I found myself in a certain neighbouring country. I had gone there to look for a seriously lucrative deal. This mega deal was arranged by one of Aggrey’s friends called Kiviri. It involved buying gold at give-away prices. Since Aggrey was quite busy, he couldn’t join Kiviri and myself as we headed across the border to meet our dealers. It was around 7.30pm when we arrived at our secret meeting place. Kiviri advised me to copy and paste the way he walked as we approached the dark corner of this very posh night club. He was walking at an angle. This angle was meant to send messages to any onlookers that we were serious investors. We had come over for a business meeting amidst this crowd of revellers. We crossed over to a darkish corner where we waited for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, the waiters came for our orders. But since we were top guests, we could not be seen drinking beers. Especially when we felt that it would be inappropriate to be seen guzzling beers in the presence of our gold vendor. Instead we placed an order for a bottle of Champagne. Within minutes, a burly guy walked in. His necklace was made of gold. His wrist watch was glittering like the stars. Overall, he smelled like real cash. After darting his eyes from corner to corner, he sat down and started rapping like Puff Daddy himself. But we could not understand a word! Apparently, he was speaking to us in the French language. After a long struggle, we got the gist of the message. All we had to do was look for half a million francs in exchange for gold. He pulled out a wrapped tiny box and secretly showed us the gold. Wow! He then told us that we could fetch not less than 20 million francs from this small stone. We were so excited! Ibaze, just spending half a million francs and in return pocket 20 million francs. So, Kiviri pulled out the bundles of cash and paid the dealer. The burly gold seller gave us the small box and urged us to hide it deep in our pants. Kiviri picked it rapidly and stuffed it inside his reddish pants. Before the dealer left he warned us against being silly; “Guys, do not open it until you are safe at home otherwise crooks may kill you!” With all the excitement we rushed to our small hotel room. It was almost mid-night when we were safely locked in the room. We eagerly opened the small package but to our astonishment, there was just a heap of ashes instead of that most coveted golden gem. Kiviri’s pants were all sprayed by ashes from a stove. It looked like all our riches had turned into ashes! We looked at each other in disbelief. All our money was gone. We did not have anything to pay for the hotel room. No money to buy food. And no money to jump on a bus to take us back to our beloved country. In short, we had been mercilessly conned and we were finished peeee… diaspoman@yahoo.com