A Predestined Meeting Written in the Stars

During my NYSC year in Enugu I was posted to a rural community school, the classrooms had broken windows and the building wasn't something to reckon with at all. At first, I felt so frustrated that I wished I had the opportunity to serve in a big city like Abuja or Lagos where I could make networks and create opportunities for my career path but here I was, thrown into the land where network signal was like gold. On the first day when I entered the school of my primary assignment, I walked into the staff room and saw a pile of dusty ancient textbooks in one corner. The principal of the school who happened to be an old man, he was also in the staff room when I arrived so he looked at me and said "Don't worry about those textbooks Corper, they are too old to be useful” but something within me had the urge to bring along with me so I took a few of them to my lodge.  That evening I read one book on African literature in low light with my rechargeable lamp, although I was tired so I dozed off while reading. The next day, I decided to start a reading club with some students with those worthless books. In the beginning there were only five children who showed up but slowly news was spreading and in another two months there was over thirty students present. One afternoon, a man came into the classroom when I was reading aloud Chinua Achebe's book titled Things Fall Apart. The man was extremely tall, he was dressed in normal shirt and trousers having a camera with him, he introduced himself as a freelance journalist recording rural education, he said he got attracted to the school when he was hearing me read to the students while he was passing by.  At the end of the lesson he requested we snapped some pictures together with the students, then we sat at the mango tree near the school and he interviewed me on the reading club, I explained very well to him and he documented it for his article. The article appeared in a national paper several weeks later, my Principal summoned me to his office when he received the paper, it was treasure to him and he said "Corper Precious you have done us proud, our small school has become popular overnight, this article opened some doors that I had never thought of".A local NGO contacted them and volunteered to provide books to help the club, exercise books were given by a bank for the students so parents became more interested in the education of their children. Above all the great things that happened to the school, something personal also happened to me. Michael and I stayed in touch, he would visit the school on a regular basis and would bring newspapers or novels for the students, slowly our friendship grew better. One evening as we were standing looking at the sun going down the hill by the village he asked "Guess why I came to your school that day Precious?, my bike broke on the highway and when I was waiting to get it repaired I could hear children being read to so I decided to check in", I laughed and said "so you are telling me that we would not have met without your bike breaking down?" he said "the stars may have predestined it" while he looked at me smiling. Everything changed after that experience, Micheal and I started dating while the reading club stayed in operation for several years even after my service year, the NGO extended its operations to other schools in the countryside.  The good news is that tomorrow I will be getting married to Micheal, so I just wonder how a faulty motorcycle can lead to such a beautiful thing to the extent that I feel there is something in this world that had been written or predestined in the stars. Thank you so much for staying this far, hope you had a good read with me, see you again next time 😁 Noted: All pictures are generated on Meta AI