“Would you stop talking and eat your food?” mother says this every time my sister and I forget our table manners. My family is the perfect family. This is what father says every time he kisses us goodbye before going to work. From what I learnt in Social Studies, our family is a nuclear one—father, mother and two children.
My name is Joshua and I attend Baptist School with my sister. Mother told us we would be spending this holiday with our grandmother in the village. I have never been to the village before, somehow I am excited. My sister told me that we won't be able to watch TV because there are no electricity poles there. “Daddy, is it true?” I asked my father. “You don't need TV to be happy there. There are a lot of fun games I did during my time there” he said “you will also be exposed to your natural environment. You will be able to climb a real tree and pluck mangoes”. The estate we live in has no trees and I loved climbing. The idea of climbing trees made me happy.
The following day, after eating breakfast, mother packed our boxes full of clothes and toiletries to last two weeks. I was with father while he checked the oil gauge of the car and other necessary things. By 10am, the whole family sets out.
I've never seen father drive so fast, the trees and bushes were all moving backwards in blurred motion. I wanted to count them but they were too fast. I enjoyed the breeze gushing in from the opened windows.
“Daddy, why are you speeding so fast?” I asked.
“This is an express road. There are less vehicles, so you can speed moderately”
I wondered why father slowed down suddenly. He put off the ignition and got down from the car. “I don't know who will fall a tree trunk in the middle of the road” he was telling mother as he opened the door to leave the care. “Please, be careful, this could be an ambush”. I don't know what ambush meant but I know from mother's expression that it's a bad word. Father went forward to where the log was and tried to lift it up.
Immediately, three men jumped out from the bushes nearby and hit father so hard he collapsed. Then, I realised what ambush meant. My sleeping sister woke up from the noise.
“Dial 112 immediately” mother whispered.
The three men were approaching our vehicle.
“We're being kidnapped” that was what I said into the phone before I heard thunder strike on my face and I saw all shades of lightning.
— Abdulhameed Ridwan O
