‘Get Rich Quickly or Die Trying’

This is your one and only Mfashumwana aka ‘The Villager’. Many people take me for granted, maybe that is because of my background! So many people reason that, “you can take a villager out of the village but may not take the village out of him”. This is quite true for many of us but untrue for the lucky few. Nearly every week, I receive emails from all sorts of people, widows, orphans and relatives of the dead, all soliciting for my assistance in helping them secure the fortunes of their departed ones! Is it my innocence or my trustworthiness that the village in me that attracts them or what is it? I may never know the truth because I will not embark in their schemes come what may! Much as we all may have the love for good life and all the best items that make life on this planet worth living; we must tread with utmost caution. There was this Nigerian guy called Olufemi, who hooked himself onto my SKYPE, I innocently accepted to allow him in and the moment he was in, he began suggesting a very intricate scheme in which I would help him secure funds that belonged to his uncle who was a General inthe Sani Abacha regime. That the uncle died in an aircraft accident and that, he had no next of kin. The plan was for me to become the next of kin so that I could inherit the late General’s huge estate that was in the tune of an obscene twenty million United States Dollars; wow, not all that glitters is Gold! Not that I did not want the money, but free things are never free, in fact, they can become many times expensive! I did not want to explore any of the devil’s traps, I rejected the offer downright. As I was busy chatting with the Olufemi man, he kept asking me for this and that. He wanted me to send him an amount of money he termed as little! This little money was to facilitate him access the funds and transfer the cash to my account. He assured me that, he trusted me so much and that, he had a good feeling about me and that, in his profession they do have cause to rely on their hunches, blah, blah, blah! That, this time along, his hunches had told him that I was to be trusted! Normally, the prospect of getting rich quickly or die trying to get rich is temptation enough for someone to release his guards and get hooked! This guy kept sending me e-mail after e-mail on the subject, he warned me not use telephone contacts as this could alert the authorities of our intentions and as a result, we could lose the cool millions. As for mycut, I was to get a staggering 30 per cent of the twenty million dollars (something like 6M). Wow, with that money under my control, I could do so many things that had evaded me for long! I could build a sort of Kigali City Tower; maybe call it Remera City Tower, eh! I think many of you must be thinking on the same basis, not me the villager who lost the village in him! Any time you get an e-mail claiming that you have won this or that amount of money or you should help someone repatriate this or that amount of money, better delete that email and stop lamenting about it. What looks so juicy could end up being the biggest loss in your life and the lives of your loved ones.