Bribe - the bane of bureaucracy. I swear, I could almost feel our main character Akpan's frustration for not getting the job done because he couldn't pay the bribe.

The sad truth of life is the Bribery is a common place phenomenon in all corners of the world. In some places you bribe with money, while in others you bribe with things and in so called first world you bribe with favors. Bureaucracy is riddled with corrupt individuals who manipulate the system for their personal gain and usually at the cost of the hard working common man.

My congratulations to the author for depicting the plight of one such innocent individual with such striking accuracy. But what I really loved was how the emotional state of such a man and the people around him was captured with only a few words. The ending of the story and the resolution of Akpan's felt very realistic as such things tend to happen in the real world as well.