ET11: Who Paid The Bill?

On 10th November, 2019, a few minutes past 9am, the ordered Opay ride (a tricycle) arrived and I and two of my sisters happily hopped in. Already, when we ordered the Opay ride, we had put in our destination, Ediene Abak, and so we didn’t bother to mention it again to the driver. The tricycle driver acted like he had it all figured out and confidently drove into the road leading to Abak, the town we were heading to for evangelism, so we weren’t looking at the road during the journey. We just sat still in the tricycle waiting to alight at the end of the journey.

That was how we sat still and 30 minutes passed and the tricycle was still moving fast. We thought he probably followed another route so we kept calm and waited for the journey to end. About 20 minutes later, one of the sisters we were to meet at our destination called to ask where we were since she had arrived Ediene Abak with some others and we were not there yet. We were surprised they had arrived and we hadn’t because we left our point of departure a good while before they did. Then it dawned on us how strange the surroundings looked and we began to question the location.

It was almost an hour into the journey by now. I asked the driver if he really knew where we were going to and he said, “No.”

‘Shocked’ wasn’t the word, ‘Bewildered’ didn’t catch [describe] it well either. Whatever I felt made me lose the ability to speak and think for many seconds. To finish me off, he looked at a signboard nearby and said, “I don’t know o, but I think this is Afaha-Obong.” [We were in another town entirely].

I died!

We asked him to stop so we could ask passers-by and they confirmed that we were still in Abak but far from Ediene Abak which was our destination. We decided that he should end the trip electronically on his mobile phone so that we could start a new trip back to Uyo. He did so and the bill was almost blinding. It was a whooping #1,100!!! We all burst out laughing at this, because even though the sister who had ordered with her account had a 50% bonus from Opay [which meant that she was to pay #550 while Opay handled the rest of the bill], she had only #190 in her Opay wallet [which would have been sufficient on a normal day – if we had just driven to Ediene Abak]. The Opay page showed us “Insufficient balance.”

While we were still thinking of how to pay the bill, something strange happened. The page which contained the amount to be paid cleared, and another page popped up. One of us then clicked ‘Submit’ and a reply – “Transaction Completed” – was displayed on the phone screen!

We were surprised and didn’t understand what had happened. We looked at the account balance and it was still #190. We checked the record of transactions and there was no record of that particular ride. The last ride recorded was on 7th November 2019. We asked the driver if he had been credited with the money and he said, yes, he had been paid the complete amount (#1100). We asked him to check his account balance properly just to be sure it was there and he confirmed that it was paid. I asked to recheck our Opay balance again and it was still #190. The Opay app was closed and opened again and the balance still wasn’t even a dime short!

Who paid the bill?

Fear God o!!! Fear Him!

We accepted our new location and after ringing it into the ears of the tricycle driver to ‘fear God’, we went into the streets of Afaha-Obong to do the will of the Father.

– Sis C.