25/10/2025
The Reunion
The sun had just begun its slow descent over Umuchieze village, painting the sky with streaks of orange and gold. Children’s laughter filled the air, mingled with the rhythmic pounding of fufu and the rustle of palm fronds.
By the stream, Ngozi bent over a basin, washing clothes with weary arms. Life had not been kind to her since her husband’s death five years earlier. Her once bright eyes now carried the weight of worry and hunger.
She was wringing out her last wrapper when she heard a soft, familiar voice behind her.
“Ngozi? Is that really you?”
Ngozi froze. That voice—soft yet commanding—stirred something deep within her memory. She turned slowly.
Standing there in a neatly tailored Ankara gown, her skin glowing and her smile bright, was Chinelo, her childhood friend—the one she used to climb mango trees with, who had moved away to the city when they were only twelve.
Tears welled up in Ngozi’s eyes.
“Chinelo! Is this truly you?”
The two women embraced tightly, laughter mingled with tears as years of separation melted away.
As they sat by the stream, they shared stories—how Chinelo had gone to live with her aunt in Enugu, studied nursing, and later started a small clinic that had grown into a thriving maternity center. Ngozi, on the other hand, had remained in the village, married young, and now struggled to raise her three children alone.
Chinelo listened quietly, her heart heavy with compassion.
“Ngozi,” she said gently, “you were always the one who helped me fetch water and shared your food when my father’s farm failed. Let me return that kindness now.”
Ngozi tried to protest, but Chinelo waved her off.
The next week, the entire village buzzed with news: Nurse Chinelo, as she was now called, had opened a small health outpost near the market square. She hired Ngozi as her assistant—training her to take blood pressure, keep records, and help expectant mothers.
At first, Ngozi was nervous. But Chinelo’s patience and encouragement rekindled the confidence she thought she had lost. With the little salary she earned, she could feed her children and even send her eldest, Ifeoma, to secondary school.
Soon, the villagers began calling them “the sisters by the stream”, because their bond reminded everyone that friendship, like the stream itself, may wander far but always finds its way home.
One evening, as the two women sat under the same old palm tree where they once played as girls, Ngozi said softly,
“Chinelo, when I thought life had forgotten me, God remembered me through you.”
Chinelo smiled and took her hand.
“No, my sister. It was never forgetting—only waiting. Friendship has its own time of harvest.”
The crickets sang, the stars winked above, and the gentle hum of night wrapped around them—two friends, two lives intertwined again, proof that love sown in childhood can still bloom after twenty long years.
