25/11/2025
🌄🌄THE PRICE OF SUNSET🌄🌄
The rain had been falling for hours, pounding the rusted zinc roof of the one-room apartment like a warning. Inside, Mama Teni sat on the cold floor, clutching her daughter’s school uniform to her chest. The power had gone out again, and the only light came from the tiny phone torch she placed in a plastic cup to make it brighter.
Teni’s cough echoed through the room, sharp and painful.
“Mommy… am I going to school tomorrow?” the little girl asked, her voice trembling.
Mama Teni forced a smile. “Of course, my baby. You have an exam. You must go.”
But her smile hid a truth she could barely swallow — she had ₦120 left.
Just ₦120.
No food in the house.
No drugs for Teni’s worsening cough.
And rent was already two months overdue.
She stood up, wiping her face quickly so Teni wouldn’t see her tears.
At midnight, she quietly left the house. She didn’t want her neighbours asking questions.
She walked to the bakery where she had been secretly doing night shifts. It was dangerous — the area was unsafe, and the men working there always looked at her like they owned pieces of her. But she needed money. Teni needed to stay in school.
The bakery manager, a stout man with a heavy moustache, met her at the door.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Sorry, sir. My child—”
“Just get inside.”
He didn’t care.
The heat inside the bakery was suffocating. Sweat dripped into her eyes as she kneaded dough, carried heavy trays, and inhaled flour until her throat burned. She felt dizzy, but she kept going. She couldn’t faint — the manager would gladly replace her.
By 4:36am, her fingers were numb. She had earned ₦1,800 for the night.
Barely enough.
When she reached home, she found Teni burning with fever.
“Mummy… my head is hot…”
Mama Teni panicked. She wrapped her daughter in a scarf and ran to the nearest clinic. Her heart beat louder than her footsteps.
At the clinic, the nurse barely looked up.
“Deposit is ₦8,500,” she said flatly.
“Please, I have ₦1,800. My daughter—”
“No deposit, no treatment.”
Mama Teni fell to her knees. “I beg you, she can’t breathe well.”
The nurse turned away.
Mama Teni carried Teni in her arms and stumbled back outside. Rain was beginning to fall again. People passed by, but nobody stopped. Lagos was a place where everyone carried their own pain.
She didn’t know when she started running — she just ran.
Ran past Okadas, ran across the market, ran until her legs felt like they were breaking.
She ended up at a pharmacy owned by an elderly man who knew her late husband.
“Mama Teni, what happened?”
“She’s not responding… please help me…”
The pharmacist checked the child quickly. “It’s severe. She needs real treatment, not just drugs.”
Teni’s breathing became shallow — almost silent.
Mama Teni’s heart cracked open. “Please… please… save her. I will work for you. Clean your shop. Wash the toilet. Anything. Just don’t let my child die.”
The old pharmacist looked at the girl, then at the mother who was shaking uncontrollably.
“Bring her inside,” he said quietly.
The treatment cost almost ₦28,000.
Mama Teni didn’t have it. She didn’t have even one-tenth of it.
She offered everything — her sewing machine, her late husband’s radio, even the wrapper her mother gave her before she died.
The pharmacist refused.
Not because he didn’t want to help — but because he saw something deeper.
A mother who was ready to give up her whole life.
After stabilizing Teni, he sat with her and said:
“Your daughter will live. But you… who takes care of you?”
She broke down for the first time in months — loud, painful tears she had been swallowing every day like poison.
The next afternoon, as she sat by Teni’s hospital bed, the pharmacist returned with a paper.
“Your daughter’s school called earlier,” he said.
Her heart dropped. Had she been expelled?
Had she missed her exams?
The man smiled gently.
“They said she won the school’s scholarship exam.”
Mama Teni blinked in shock. “Ehn?”
“They’ve been trying to reach you. She topped the whole school.”
Teni, still weak but awake, whispered:
“Mummy… I tried my best… I wanted you to be proud.”
Mama Teni collapsed onto the bed, holding her daughter tight.
Through tears, she whispered:
“My child… I will walk through fire for you. Everything I have, everything I am… it’s all for you.”
The pharmacist placed an envelope on the table.
“Take this. It’s not a loan. It’s help.”
Inside was money — more than enough to cover the balance of treatment, food, transport, and some relief.
She didn’t know how to thank him. The only words she could form were:
“God sent you.”
That night, as the sun set gently over the clinic window, Mama Teni realized:
The world may be hard.
People may be wicked.
Life may be full of storms.
But a mother’s sacrifice is never wasted.
And somehow… somehow…
God always sends light at the end of the darkest evenings
Once I get 50 next in the comment section I will drop part 2
