‘It’s all stolen money,’ he often said with a voice stuffed full of pride, whenever he saw yet another person who had built a house or bought a new car. ‘How could he possibly afford that on a civil servant’s salary? At least ‘I’ll always be remembered for my honesty. Nobody can say I stole a farthing.’

I did not think anybody would have been blind enough to accuse my father of stealing public funds. Anybody could see that he did not have any farthings. Uncle Boniface, on the other hand, was foul-smelling rich. Popular gist held that he was a 419er, living large off funds he scammed from unsuspecting foreigners who believed the yarns he spun through emails and faxes. Each time his name was mentioned, my father would go into a tirade.

‘I don’t know why you people even mention his name,’ he would say to my mother. ‘You people need to realise that such a person is a disgrace to have in one’s family.’

The pregnant woman beside me brought out a small bottle of water from her bag. She sipped in small, hushed gulps.

The preacher returned to Luke and to the deep voice. To further illustrate The Rich Man’s sorrow, he knelt down on the cement floor, placed one of his palms upwards in the other, and switched to a high-pitched voice. He mimicked how The Rich Man had begged Papa Abraham to allow Lazarus to fetch him a drop of water and how the patriarch had declined. He described how The Rich Man had requested that Lazarus should go on an errand to warn his family of this place. For one split second, I assumed that he had been there while it all happened.

Suddenly, the preacher’s voice evaporated. The electric fans stopped swishing, the lights stopped shining, and the hall became still as death. One of the omnipresent hitches with the National Electric Power Authority supply had struck. In keeping with their more popular acronym – Never Expect Power Always – power had been cut.