What We're Asking For

This is a work of fiction inspired by recurring themes in today's news. All characters, names, and events are invented and do not depict real people or organisations.

Funmi and her husband Segun had heard every version of the reaction by now, the pitying head-tilt, the overly gentle voice people used the moment they noticed the white canes, the assumption, worn smooth from repetition, that the two of them were primarily in need of sympathy rather than opportunity.

"We had another interview today," Funmi told her sister on the phone that evening, her tone carefully neutral in the way it had become over the years of these conversations. "Same pattern as always."

"What happened?"

"They were kind. Very kind. They just couldn't quite get past being kind long enough to actually consider us for the role."

Segun, listening from across the room, had run a small phone-repair operation out of their home for three years now, a skill he'd trained for properly, certified for properly, and still found himself explaining and re-explaining to potential clients who arrived expecting, for reasons he'd stopped trying to fully understand, a lesser version of the service than what he actually delivered.

"They ask if I'm sure I can do it," he said, setting down the phone he'd been repairing by feel and familiarity rather than sight. "Every single new customer. Not unkindly. But every time."

"Does it wear on you?"

"Less than it used to. I've learned the fastest way through it is just to do the repair well, quietly, and let the finished work answer the question instead of arguing with the assumption."

Their neighbour, Mrs Adaeze, had watched the couple build their small household economy over the years with a mixture of admiration and, she readily admitted, her own initial version of the same well-meaning underestimation.

"I used to bring them extra food," she confessed to a visiting cousin one afternoon, slightly embarrassed by the memory now. "As though what they needed most was charity. It took me longer than it should have to understand they needed customers, not casseroles."

"What changed?"

"I actually asked them what they needed, instead of deciding for them. Funmi told me plainly. She said, 'We don't need pity. We need jobs, fair contracts, people willing to trust our qualifications the same way they'd trust anyone else's.' I'd never had it put to me so directly before."

That evening, Funmi and Segun sat together reviewing the day's disappointing interview, neither devastated nor surprised, simply recalibrating, the way they'd learned to do after each setback that wasn't really about their competence at all.

"Tomorrow," Segun said, already reaching for the next phone waiting to be repaired, "we try again."

"Tomorrow," Funmi agreed, "we try again."

Neither of them framed it as resilience exactly, not out loud. It was simply, to them, what showing up for your own life looked like, day after day, regardless of how long the world around them took to catch up to what they'd known about themselves all along.

End of fiction. For today's actual headlines, see the link to today's headline post and video