Paulina ! Was that you?

To understand the story, I am about to tell you, let me set the backgrounds. Growing up, we owned a mid-sized neighborhood store. The store was located not too far from a major highway that linked various parts of the country. As time passed, the store pretty much became a “bus stop” for those traveling long distances, headed to other parts of the country. My mom, the proprietor of the store spent most her life in the Western regions of Nigeria, leading to her shop becoming a reference guidepost for those traveling from Lagos, Ibadan, and other western cities. In fact, many people called her “Ijebu Queen” because she spoke “Traditional Yoruba”, which I do believe is different from “Lagos Yoruba”. The result was that, it was not unusual to see  total  strangers from the west hanging around.

Now, to the story. I had a beautiful niece named Paulina, who suddenly died of what I now believe to be brain aneurysm at a very young age, under 12 years. She lived about 20 miles away from us with the mom. On the day the event I am about to tell you occurred, it was a stormy rainy evening and night. As the clouds gathered for the impending rain, we closed the neighborhood stored early at about 5:00 PM and headed home to avert being caught in the rain. Soon as we got home, it started pouring rain, nonstop, all night.

Early the next morning, as we got ready to head out to school, we saw a stranger walking around the compound. You could tell he was looking for something as he was wandering around looking in every direction.“Who are you and what are you doing here this early”; we asked. He told us his name and then narrated a story of what he saw the previous night, coming to our house, during the stormy night.“I am a Truck driver from Ibadan heading to Port Harcourt. I was coming to your house last night and standing right there, (pointing to a spot under a tree) was a young woman. It was pouring rain, but she was standing there in the rain, looking down; without an umbrella. From under my umbrella, I yelled, “what are you doing standing in the rain without an Umbrella ..”?

Without saying a word, she calmly walked away and kept walking. The farther away she walked from me, the taller she seemed to get.  I was overtaken and frozen with fear. I dropped both the Umbrella I was holding, the flashlight I had, my wallet and  took to my heels. So I am here looking to retrieve the items I dropped from last night as I ran”.

At this point, my mom had joined us to listen to his strange story. Being that everything about him seemed normal, he was invited into the house, given Tea, and as he drank the Tea, my mom brought out the family Photos album and asked him to see if he could identify the person, he saw standing in the rain the previous night. As he flicked through the album pages, he instantly and unmistakably picked out Paulina, my niece as the person he saw the previous night standing in the rain!

But how is this possible? How could a man from more than 800 miles away, who had never set eyes on my niece identify her as the person standing in the rain? We showed him more and more pictures, and, in each case, he picked out and insisted, Paulina was the young woman he saw standing in the rain. Baffled and confused, we listened to his story in disbelief.

It wasn’t long after the truck driver left that words came that, Paulina had suddenly died the previous night. We were told, she had gone to fetch water, but came back with a sudden blinding and terrible headache. She laid down to get some rest, but never woke up.

Each time I remember Paulina, I always wonder if it was truly her that the man saw. If it was not, who was it?  The more I wonder, the more unanswered the question becomes.