Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani: I Do Not Come to You by Chance
This book, the first novel from Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, is hilarious, with moments of pathos, and a fresh point of view.
Amazon.com recommended it to me as I was busy buying books by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; I thought ‘OK, I’ll read a series of Nigerian books as part of my summer reading.
Young Kingsley Ibe is the family’s first born male, and with that status goes many privileges – and responsibilities. After graduating with a Masters in Chemical Engineering, he has no success in his search for a job with an oil company in Nigeria, and consequently loses the love of his life, Ola, to another who has secure employment.
Worse, his retired father has a stroke, and the family discovers that with all the fees required, they haven’t enough for his continued care, so Kingsley must approach his uncle, Boniface Mbamalu, more familiarly known as Cash Daddy, for funds to transfer his father to a long term care facility, and, later, for his father’s funeral.
Serious Kingsley’s eyes nearly pop as he sees the life his uncle is living, cars, women, designer watches, shoes, suits and all the trappings of new wealth. Soon, his uncle makes a convincing case for Kingsley coming to work for him, the better to help out his family of mother, brothers and sister, now that he is the senior male in the family.
Kingsley discovers he has a gift for the work – which is writing 419s, those scam letters which I frequently publish in this column. I loved being on the inside, learning how strong possibility e-mail addresses are netted, how response e-mails are massaged – not unlike fund raising techniques by charitable organizations in the US. Kingsley’s education helps him achieve enormous financial success in a very short time – but he finds that all the cash and designer goods in the word do not solve his problems nor make him happy.
I learned a lot about how successful many of these scammers are, and how the money made is spread throughout the Nigerian communities. The author takes a balanced view, balancing the way the cash makes life easier for people – a lot of people, because the rich man has many obligations to his community, balanced against the disgust, and sick fear felt by his religious mother and aunt, and his one time girlfriend, when they learn the work he is doing. They are disappointed that a man of such promise has sunk to making so much money in a dishonest way. The book also does not deal sympathetically with those who have given or lost money to the scammers, nor, in my opinion, does the ending satisfy.
This is one of the funniest parts of the book – a group of Nigerian scammers is about to meet with a representative of a major US investment firm. He thinks he will be meeting with the Nigerian Minister of Transportation to discuss building a new airport; the reality is that Cash Daddy, in disguise, will be pretending to be the minister. Kingsley protests that Cash Daddy looks nothing like the minister, and Cash Daddy responds:
“Let me tell you something . . . Me, I really like these oyibo people. They’re very very nice people. See how they came and showed us that the ground where we’ve been dancing Atilogwu has crude oil under it. If not for them, we might never have found out. But Kings,” he dragged in his dangling foot and sat up in the tub, “white man doesn’t understand black man’s face. Do you know tht I can give you my passport to travel with . . . Even if your nose is ten times bigger than my own, they won’t even notice?”
It was a fascinating book. I understand better now why 419 scams work. (419 is the section of the Nigerian criminal code making scam e-mails a crime; thus the crime is called ‘a 419’) There are some very funny and very insightful moments in the book. It is no where near the level of literature that you experience with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but there is more humor, and the book shows a more modern day Nigeria. Not a bad summer read, but not great literature.
Jeannette Walls: The Glass Castle
The Glass Castle was a hugely popular best seller in the USA, and it must have been while I was gone. A part of me remembers reading a little bit about it and deciding it wasn’t my kind of book, but after reading Half Broke Horses, I had forgotten what the subject matter was and was excited to have another Jeannette Walls book I could read.
Big mistake. This book is nothing like Half Broke Horses.
Or maybe it is. Maybe what I loved about Half Broke Horses was the voice of an amazing woman, and maybe what kept me reading The Glass Castle is the voice of an amazing child who tells a heart breaking story. Or maybe it isn’t so heartbreaking, because the children survive. They are scarred and damaged, but never so damaged or loony or self-deceived as their parents.
I don’t like reading books about kids whose parents don’t take good care of them. Oprah chose a lot of those books in her book club. These books depress me. I cannot imagine how parents can be so self-absorbed, how they can take on the responsibilities of children and then not put those children first. How can they?
The Glass Castle stars the daughter of Lily Casey Smith, who is the mother of Jeannette Walls, and her husband, who is Jeannette’s father. The book opens with little three year old Jeannette proudly cooking up a hot dog. Her mother is busy painting and has told her to find something to eat. Her nightgown catches fire, and she is terribly burned. She spends a long time in the hospital, which ends with her father taking her out in a hurry, bundling her into the car, already loaded with her family, and “doing the skedaddle” which is leaving town just in front of the bill collectors.
This is her life. From time to time, their alcoholic Dad will take a job and bring home some of the paycheck (he drinks and gambles most of it) and when he won’t work, on rare occasion, their mother will take a teaching job, but the kids have to get her out of bed in the morning, have to grade her papers and make her lesson plans. Often there is not enough for the family to eat. They don’t stay in one place; they ‘skedaddle’ before they are evicted for non-payment of rent. They eat cold food – when they eat – because the parents didn’t pay the electric bill.
The Dad is smart, charming and cajoling, and when he is sober, the kids learn amazing things from him, and educated engineer. Unfortunately, he is not often sober. He chases after alcohol and he chases after women; the people in the towns where they live know it and the children learn to know it, too, to their constant humiliation. When he wheedles money off his kids, and promises to repay, he asks “Have I ever let you down?” The answer is so stunningly obvious as to be heartbreaking – Yes. Yes, again and again and again.
The Mother is equally irresponsible. One time, when the family is starving, she is in bed and occasionally goes under the covers, where Jeannette discovers her mother has a chocolate bar hidden that she can eat – while her children go hungry.
The author’s voice is never self pitying, she just lays it all out and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. Each child escapes the family as soon as possible; the children plan and save their money to get out, first sending off the oldest sister, then Jeannette, then the son. They all head for New York, where they find work and support themselves. Like bad pennies, Mom and Dad show up in New York, cadge meals and money and join the ranks of the homeless in New York, going from food pantry to soup kitchen, and diving dumpsters for their worldly needs.
This is not a feel good novel. The good part about it is that children can survive this kind of criminal neglect, and become a successful author as Jeannette Walls has done. I am so glad I read Half Broke Horses first, because her grandmother is such an admirable character, whereas her parents are scum and I just felt so angry when I read the matter-of-fact descriptions of their behavior that I was glad they were not where I could get my hands on them.
I don’t know any parents as bad as Rose Mary and Rex Walls, but I know I believe this – if you choose to marry, and if you choose to have children, know that children require time, and love, and energy, and patience. Know that if you have grand ambitions, or an addiction, or a character flaw, you won’t be able to provide for your children’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs, unless you are willing to sacrifice your own needs and wants. While the children in the book loved their parents, they recognized that their parents were sadly lacking in the parenting roles. The way these children were neglected will make me remember this book for a long time.
Would I recommend it? Yes. It is a gripping book, at times even horrifyingly humorous, as when Jeannette figures out how to find lunch food in the garbage cans when all the other kids have finished eating. It is not a feel-good book. It is a horrifying indictment of self-absorbed, neglectful parents, parents you will love to hate.
If I sound a little overwrought, it’s because I worked with the homeless. We were able to help many, but I also ran into families like this family, families who would prefer not taking any help if it meant they had to play by the rules, you know, rules like “you have to take care of your children.” We had all kinds of classes and forums and mentors to help with learning skills, like feeding children well on a small budget, learning to discipline, simple skills, survival skills.
The problem is that these skills require self-discipline, and many of the parents would rather not take help than have to exercise self-discipline. I saw women who would sacrifice their children for their current boyfriend, a woman who was severely angry with her daughter for reporting a family member had molested her, a man who didn’t want to take a job that would ‘tie him down’ when his family was starving. I saw this, with my own eyes, and there is no way you can MAKE people take good care of their children. You have to ask if the children are better off with these parents, or ‘in the system.’ Not a pretty choice.
This book, too, is on Amazon.com. Reading it is like watching a disaster on CNN. You don’t want to believe it is happening and you can’t look away.
Jeannette Walls: Half Broke Horses
About a month ago, I picked this up off the stack of “Read Me’s” . . . ummm . . . errr . . . one of the stacks of “Read Me’s.” (If there is some sort of emoticon for mild embarrassment, insert it here; one of my fatal flaws is acquiring book I WANT to read and having more books than I have time to read.)
I think Amazon recommended Half Broke Horses to me, and I didn’t know why. They keep track of what I buy and make recommendations, which over the many years I have been using Amazon.com to buy books has become more and more relevant to the kinds of things I actually buy and read. So I bought Half Broke Horses, and another one recommended by the same author, then put them in the stack. It is only because I had read whatever I put on top of them that I ended up reading.
I casually started reading, without a lot of anticipation. The first chapter starts off in the early early days of our country, in the wilds of West Texas, as a girl and her younger brother and sister are out checking the cows, who suddenly go crazy, even jumping over fences which under almost every circumstance successfully pen them in. The young girl recognized something strange was going on and figured it was a flash flood coming, got her siblings up in the tree and keeps them awake all night, as the flood hits, hoping the tree will hold and not wash away.
What is your first thought, reading that? Mine was – Where are her parents?? No one is out searching for them?
The next day, the flood recedes enough for them to make their way home back to a primitive dwelling hollowed out in the high side of a riverbank, dirt floors, dirt crumbling down on them, dark, small, smokey. Yes, there is a mother and a father, and they love their children, but these are very different times. These are hard times, where there is no grocery store, no nearby doctor, where babies die and children have fatal accidents all the time. Life can be short and brutal. The kids have some schooling, mostly at home, they learn to read and write and add and subtract, so they can keep track of home related business. They also work hard, every child has work around the ranch that needs doing, and work comes first or the family won’t survive.
The heroine, Lily Casey Smith, is a real person, the grandmother of the author, Jeannette Walls. This is called a true-life novel. From all the stories she heard about her grandmother growing up, and from knowing her grandmother, and from all the legends about her grandmother she was able to verify, she built a skeleton, and then filled it in with conversations and even a few events that she had to imagine.
Lily Casey left her family at 15 to ride her horse 25 days across Texas to take a teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse. (My jaw dropped, too!) After several years of teaching, she goes to Chicago to become educated and licensed as a teacher, marries, annuls the marriage, returns home, finds a teaching job, races horses, marries again, has children, has a huge ranch, loses the huge ranch, manages a huge ranch . . . her story is bigger than life, but so is the person of her grandmother, who never falls apart, but looks life in the eye and copes with it. Better than coping, she dominates.
Her major opponents are tough economic times, and dramatic and devastating weather conditions. Rain can fail to fall for months, cattle can die in an unexpected cold snap. At the best of times, you have enough to eat and a roof over your head.
I never wanted the book to end, and, in a sense, it didn’t. Jeannette Walls big best seller, The Glass Castle, takes up with just a little overlap where Half Broke Horses leaves off.
Here is what I loved: I loved the voice of Lily Casey Smith. She’s the kind of woman I want for a friend. She’s smart. She has a sense of how things work in the world. She experiences tragedies, but she doesn’t let them hurt her self-confidence. She can be beaten, but she always gets up again. She’s a problem solver. She never once lets being a woman get in the way of being the person she was born to be. She overcomes. She doesn’t sugar coat; she tells it as she sees it. And you know you can count on what she says to be the truth as she believes it. I truly hated for this book to end.
You can find this book at Amazon.com used under a dollar to new hardcover around $15. It is worth every cent.
Listmaker
“Why are you smiling?” AdventureMan asked as he read the Sunday paper on our bed, the ceiling fan whirling madly to cool him down after his post-Church yard work – feeding the birds, shoveling up all the birdseed hulls, putting recycle materials into the compost bin.
I was doing something I do only rarely, changing purses. At the last minute, all in navy, I decided to do the navy purse instead of the tan. Now, back home, I was re-transfering all the important things, and checking pockets for stuff that accumulates and needs to be thrown away.
“I found a list,” I began. “It says:
fruit cake
kick board
book
peanut brittle
photos in frames
calendar
soap”
He laughed. “I know exactly what that was, “he remembered, “my Christmas box.”
More specifically, my tag on the outside of the box reminding me of what was inside when I had to affix a customs tag to send the box to hubby in Kuwait. These days, as I send boxes, I (mostly) no longer have to fiddle with customs tags or leaving the box open until I get to the post office so that customs officers can affirm what I included in the box. Every time I send a box, still, I think of those customs tags and give thanks not to have to do those irksome little steps.
I keep my lists now, in a folder marked, predictably,
-
To Do Lists
This one goes in there. On days when I feel bad about myself, or overwhelmed, I can look at my to-do lists and have a record that my time was not mis-spent. I can see all the little chores and fix-it projects we have finished, all the dinners we have done, house guests we have had . . . These little to-do lists keep track of the little things you do that take up so much time, and then at the end of the year, you ask yourself “where did the time go.” These help me know that I didn’t waste the time, I used the time, a little here, a little there, to bring order out of chaos in our daily existence, to brighten a life, maybe to help others, or to meet a goal I have already forgotten.
Some of the lists, like the moving lists, remind me of God’s gracious hand in helping me to do the things I’ve had to do, and could never have managed without his help. When I read some of them, I almost laugh out loud thinking “I did all that??”
It also reminds me how very happy I am to have AdventureMan back home with me, not far away at Christmas time. 🙂
Elderly Women Prime Targets for Cons
Found this fascinating article this morning on AOL News/finance There was a time when I worked with transitional homeless people, helping them to find ways to re-enter the mainstream. A percentage of them didn’t want to enter the mainstream, they didn’t like rules, and they were looking for an easier way. One of the paths was by being part of the elder-worker force. I would watch them take a job and then work their way into a position of dominance in an elderly person’s life. Partly, the elderly were lonely, and thrived on the new attention, and interpreted it as caring.
Then would come the sob stories. School starting and not enough money to buy shoes and books for the children. A broken-down car, and funds needed to get it fixed so she can get to her job. Once it starts, it never ends.
The key to prevention is staying engaged with friends, neighbors and family who are paying attention, and can give perspective to this new relationship. The one question I asked is “if there were not money involved, would this relationship exist?”
Elder Abuse: How to Protect Grandma From Con Men and Thieves
By Sheryl Nance-Nash Posted 9:00AM 06/03/11 Retirement, People, MetLife
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/lXHooJ
Who would pick the pocket of your grandma or grandpa? Apparently, any number of people. Older Americans are losing $2.9 billion annually to elder financial abuse, a 12% increase from the $2.6 billion estimated in 2008, according to The MetLife Study of Elder Financial Abuse: Crimes of Occasion, Desperation, and Predation Against America’s Elders, released Wednesday.
According to the study, 51% of these abusers are strangers, but 34% of the perpetrators were family, friends and neighbors. As for “trusted advisers,” exploitation from the business sector accounted for 12% of reported cases. Medicare and Medicaid fraud accounts for 4% of reported cases. As a subset, the percentage of robberies and crimes classified as “scams perpetrated by strangers” increased from 9% to 28% from 2008 to 2010.
Who’s on the top of the target list? Women. The study, produced by the MetLife (MET) Mature Market Institute in collaboration with the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, shows women were nearly twice as likely to be victims of elder financial abuse as men.
Also prime for the picking were people between the ages of 80 and 89 who lived alone and required some help with either health care or home maintenance. Primarily, men were the menace: Nearly 60% of perpetrators were males, mostly between ages 30 and 59.
Predators lie in wait, watching: In the most common scenarios, strangers targeted victims who were out shopping, driving or managing the financial affairs, and often looked for particular flags of vulnerability like handicapped tags on cars, canes or displays of confusion. Crimes included cons, purse snatchings and associated physical assaults.
But that even those closest to an elderly person can give in to temptation or desperation. In cases involving a person known to the victim, trusted helpers like caretakers, handymen, friends, “sweethearts,” children, lawyers and others seized upon opportunities to forge checks, steal credit cards, pilfer bank accounts, transfer assets and generally decimate elders’ finances, the study revealed. The holidays apparently bring out the worst in people: At that time of year, overall dollar losses due to family and friends were higher than any other category.
Married to the Con Job
People can get quite creative with abuse. One unusual method — caregivers secretly marrying their elderly charges, says Susan Slater-Jansen, an attorney at Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever.
There have been numerous lawsuits over cases in which a caregiver married a mentally incapacitated older patient and the patient’s family didn’t learn about it until after the patient had died. Once a person is dead, it’s too late — in all but three states, you can’t void a marriage if one spouse has died, says Slater-Jansen. To help lower the odds of such a thing happening to your parent, adult children should make sure they receive duplicate monthly statements from all bank and brokerage accounts; install nanny cams; carefully and thoroughly check references for all caregivers; visit parents often, both while the caregiver is there and when they are not; and discuss with your parents the treatment they are receiving from caregivers.
If you discover such a fraudulent marriage has taken place, act quickly to get it annulled.
After the parent dies, heirs can sue to recover money from the “spouse.” More and more, courts have found ways to deny spouses if the marriage was fraudulent, says Slater-Jansen.
“The most flagrant abuse is perpetrated on the elder by the hired caregiver, neighbor, or ‘new’ friend,” warns Karen Maarse Fitzgerald, a principal in her own elder law practice. “A simple power of attorney signed by the elder can give to the “agent” broad and sweeping powers over the elder’s life savings. I have seen bank accounts drained within days, the money and perpetrator vanishing to another country.”
Protection Yourself and Your Relatives
The worst forms of elder abuse go beyond money: There can be physical abuse and sexual violence as well. “The vigilance of friends and family can help protect elders from those who are predatory, which may, unfortunately, include strangers or even other loved ones,” said Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D., director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, in a prepared statement.
What can the elderly do to protect themselves? Among the guidance offered by the report’s authors:
“Stay active and engage with others; socialize with your family members and friends. Avoid isolation, as it can lead to loneliness, depression, and make you more vulnerable to financial abuse or exploitation.”
“Use direct deposit for Social Security and other payments to prevent mail theft. Sign your own checks whenever possible.”
“Stay organized and keep important papers and legal documents in a safe, secure location.”
“Review your legal documents (i.e., wills, trusts, and power of attorney), as well as other important documents (i.e., insurance policies) at least annually, to make certain they continue to represent your wishes.”
Ted Sarenski, who chairs the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Elder Planning Task Force, would add to that list. His tips:
Subscribe to national and state Do Not Call lists;
Keep Social Security cards in a safe place;
Remove mail promptly from the mailbox;
Shred all confidential and financial information prior to discarding.
“Consider allowing the bank to send a duplicate copy of your bank statement to a trusted family member,” advises attorney Andrew Stoltmann, who has a large client base of seniors. “Usually, most financial elder exploitation cases are only reported or discovered six to 12 months after the initial losses have occurred.”
Elders whose sight is failing are at even greater risk because they may rely upon the very person who is stealing from them to ensure that their financial transactions are in order, says Stoltmann. “An independent pair of eyes that is able to review bank statements every 30 days will be able to catch suspicious activities in the early stages and cut it off. This is crucial.”
Advance Planning Can Help Dodge Dangers
When you are the responsible caregiver, know too, that your prudence can go a long way in preventing financial abuse.
Have some tough conversations. You need to know whether there is a will or a durable power of attorney, and where such documents are. Does your parent have a living will? If so, does it give you clarity about what your loved one’s wishes are? A health care power of attorney would permit a trusted individual make medical decisions if your elderly relative was unable to.
It’s important not to wait until the eleventh hour to have these talks. Ideally, those documents should be drawn up when your relative is of sound mind and body. It’s not a bad idea either, to have a trusted adviser, not only know where the documents are kept, but be able to get to them if needed.
Beware of the appearance on the scene of the “trusted new friend.” If mom and dad have a neighbor, caregiver or other outsider who is suddenly their best pal, running errands, going to the bank, and generally being around all the time when they never were before, it can be a warning sign that someone is taking advantage, warns Sarenski.
“Elder financial abuse invariably results in losses of human rights and dignity,” said Karen A. Roberto, Ph.D., director of the Center for Gerontology, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. ” Despite growing public awareness from a parade of high-profile financial abuse victims, it remains under reported, under-recognized, and under-prosecuted. The 2010 Passage of the Elder Justice Act may bring more attention and resources to this crime leading to prevention among the expanding older population.”
The bottom line, says Maarse Fitzgerald: “Protect elders from isolation, which allows the perpetrators to take control of our elder’s lives.”
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/lXHooJ
Storm Damage
We’ve taken a brief trip to be with friends for a wedding and reunion, and en route, passed through the areas of Georgia and Tennessee where there was so much storm damage.
The damage was shocking. Entire areas just flattened, with people’s lives, their accumulations, scattered to the winds. It looked like a tsunami hit.
There was one room at the inn, and it wasn’t cheap.
“Why are all the hotels so full?” I asked. “They’re never this full!”
“We’re full with families whose homes were destroyed,” the clerk explained quietly. “They’re trying to figure out what to do, what the insurance will cover, what it won’t.”
Oh. Oh. Oh. We saw this in Pensacola, too, after the stunning Hurricane Ivan. Hotels were full of people trying to get back into their houses, and also full of builders and roofers and carpenters and finishers, there to try to help people put their lives back together.
It puts things back into perspective, quickly, when you are surrounded by those whose lives changed in a heartbeat, and who are trying to figure out where to go from here. We’re just glad to have a room. And a home.
Dear DADDY Intlxpatr
I get the feeling he doesn’t really read my blog . . .
Dear DADDY,
I am Johnson Koroma, from the Ivory Coast (D.R.C) in Africa. I am the first son and the eldest child of my late father, Late Capt. Suleiman Koroma.
My late father was killed by the rebels in my country as he died in the hospital, two days after he was shot on his chest.
I am in Jakarta-Indonesia now; I was smuggled in here with the help of the United Nations (U.N.).
The U.N assisted me to convey my inherited fund($15,500,000.00) to Jakarta-Indonesia, as I told them that, the fund was supposed to be delivered to my late father foreign partner here in Jakarta-Indonesia according to my late father’s instruction before he died.
I did this arrangement, as my late father told me before he died in my country Ivory Coast; to make sure I convey this fund to his foreign partner here in Jakarta-Indonesia for investment purposes since there is instability of power in Africa.
But on my arriving here in Jakarta-Indonesia, I could not find my late father foreign partner as I was told he died in a bomb blast that occurred in J.W Marot hotel here in Jakarta-Indonesia two year ago.
In this regards, I seek your urgent assistance, for you to come down here in Jakarta-Indonesia, so that I will introduce you to the U.N as my late father’s foreign partner for them to release my fund to you. This is because, the U.N said they will not release my fund to me, until they see my late father foreign partner as I told them earlier, as the said fund is too big for only me to handle as the U.N. officials said, since I am just 24 years of age.
Note: You are not expected to make any upfront payment before you make this claim, all you are required to do is just to come down here in Jakarta-Indonesia, and I introduce you to the U.N as my late father’s foreign partner, who will make the claim of my inherited fund and invest it into any lucrative investment according to your directives… Also, 15% of this total sum shall be giving to you for your kind assistant.
The U.N will deduct 10% of the total sum, for their service charges etc after they hand over my inherited fund to you, hence you will not be expected to make any payment for this claim.
Thanks and remain blessed, as I await your urgent response and arrival schedule here in Jakarta-Indonesia.
Yours son,
Johnson Koroma.
“My Wicked Uncle Who Is Threatened to Kill Me”
Holy smokes! This one is highly creative . . . a wicked uncle who will kill her if I share this information with anyone. Touche’, you are right, I do get some amazing scam letters.
Dearest One,
Compliment of the season, my name is Chantal Justin YAK am 25 years old Girl from Southern sudan. I want to have a common relationship with you, I need to tell you more things, but first I need your help to Stand for me as a trustee.
My father Dr. Justin YAK Arop was the former Minister for SPLA Affairs and Special Adviser to President Salva Kiir of South Sudan for Decentralization. My father Dr. Justin YAK and my mother including other top Military officers and top government officials where on board with the plane crashed on Friday May 02, 2008. You can read more about the crash through the below site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7380412.stm
Some months after the burial of my parent, my uncle conspired with my step mother and sold my father’s properties to a Chinese Expatriate. On a faithful morning I opened my father’s briefcase and found out some vital documents which my beloved late father used in deposit some Money and GOLDDUST worth 250KG 22/23 carat alluvial Gold Dust deposited in a Finance& Security company in Burkina Faso , with my name as the next of kin beneficiary. I travelled to Burkina Faso to withdraw the money so that I can start a better life and take care of myself.
To the great disapointment when i arrived here in burkina faso, the director of the finance company whom I met in person told me that my present status does not permit me by the local law to clear money or make a transfer of money into an account, he advice me to provide a trustee who will help me to receive the money into an international bank account or I should wait till when I will get married then i can come for the claim with my husband as it was demanded by their Authority..
I have chosen to contact you after my prayers and I believe that you will not betray my trust. But rather take me as your own blood sister and help me. Though you maybe wonderring why I am so soon revealing myself to you without knowing you, well, I will say that my mind convinced me that you are the true person to help me. More so, I will like to disclose much to you if you can help me to relocate to your country because my uncle has threatened to assassinate me if care is not taken. The amount involve is $4.5 Million USD and I have confirmed from the Finance and security here in Burkina Faso.
However, you will help by recommending a nice University in your country so that I can complete my studies. It is my intention to compensate you with 15% of the total money and GOLD for your services and the balance shall be my capital in your establishment As soon as I receive your interest in helping me, I will put things into action immediately. In the light of the above, I shall appreciate an urgent message indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely.
Please do keep this only to your self. I beg you not to disclose it till i come over to your country after the transfer hits your bank account because I am afraid of my wicked uncle who is threatened to kill me. my emil add chantal.yak@blumail.org
Sincerely yours,
Chantal Justin YAK.
Scamese
This was in my newest New Yorker magazine, originally given me by Little Diamond, now I can’t live without my subscription. 🙂 There is the kind of news you get on television, like what they have pictures of, maybe not the most important stuff but visual. Then there is National Public Radio news, and the New York Times, and The New Yorker. The New Yorker also has some of the greatest, funniest covers ever, and great cartoons. This one, as you might imagine, is near and dear to my heart:
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