Latte and a Dream
Amina bought an expensive coffee and it was worth it.
When a car hit Amina and shoved her to the curb under the Obalende bridge, she didn’t get mad. She held up the framed picture to be delivered to a client in Falomo and checked the contents of her camera bag. She heaved a gigantic sigh of relief as she stood up from the curb.
Caring for her old mom, paying for her drugs and the loan she took to buy her UK-used Canon EOS were bigger problems than a hit-and-run driver that could not kill her or her struggling career as a photographer.
After delivering the picture, Amina, contemplating the best route to go home on foot, saw the array of colonial homes. Click. Click. She captured the essence of the weathered shelters. Wondering if the pictures were any good, she didn’t notice a storm was starting. Amina ran into a nearby cafe. “Please, can I stay here till the rain stops?”
“No, you can’t,” said the attendant. “Unless you buy a cup of coffee.”
Amina smiled, knowing a cup of coffee could cost an arm and a leg in this kind of place.
“It’s just one-five,” she said.
“One thousand five…for coffee!” Amina put her camera bag under her dress, ready to go, when she saw him inside the cafe. Fate sometimes served lattes. “Coffee, please.”
Sitting across from Ola Jones, Nigeria’s award-winning artist and thinker, with her overpriced coffee blowing steam up her face. “Good afternoon, sir.” She turned the camera’s LCD screen to him.
His eyes lingered on the photos. “Wow! These are good.”
“Really?” Amina laughed. Her stomach buzzed with the excitement that Ola Jones likes her photos.
“You should put this on a website and sell them. Put yourself out there. You’ve got a gift,” he said. “Don’t let it go to waste.”
“I won’t.” The rain had stopped, but a storm of optimism and ambition brewed inside Amina, as she stepped out of the cafe into a world that seemed brighter and ready for her.
