With nothing else to do, he decided to start a livestream since he had time to kill, and it also brought him some great benefits.
This time, knowing that his following had grown from the usual 27 and was now slowly approaching a hundred, he decided to offer a new service that might earn him some money. He decided to teach programming.
Although he knew many would pay to learn programming, it was a subject that many people were offering. Rather than making it a paid service, he planned to add a donation link. If viewers enjoyed his teaching and learned something, they could donate.
"Come to think of it, why didn't I think of this sooner?" Richard thought.
His following might not have reached a hundred yet, but his viewership had long since surpassed a thousand. The comments under each of his short-form videos almost always reached and sometimes surpassed the 500 mark.
He had been helping people solve their issues for a while now, and if the donation link had been up, they might have used it.
Then came another problem: most of such websites didn't function in Nigeria due to local laws, so he had to find ways around it. It was easy to do, considering his know-how, but he couldn't deny that he found it annoying.
With that in place, he uploaded the links to where they were needed and immediately continued his livestream.
Just like the days before, he continued coding to create Oasis, but today he was much more patient and explained in greater detail than usual.
Hours passed, and it was almost evening before Richard finally went offline. Today had been fruitful, far more than he expected.
"Withdraw!!" Richard said aloud in excitement.
It turned out that helping programmers with their problems was profitable. Although he didn't make it mandatory for viewers to donate, he made it clear that any question asked after a donation would receive special treatment and a thorough answer.
Just a simple business strategy. With that, he had made over three hundred dollars in just five hours of streaming.
Abroad, this might be a small amount, but here in Nigeria, it was the equivalent of 340,000 Naira. He still couldn't say he was rich yet, but he definitely wouldn't starve again for a while.
After an hour of dealing with the frustrating withdrawal process, Richard was finally ready to go eat.
"Guy, Gabriel, I'm going to the market. Are you coming?" Richard called out.
As a friend, it was his duty to look out for Gabriel. He knew for a fact that, as he didn't have any food to eat today, neither did Gabriel. Besides, he couldn't cook, but Gabriel could.
"I'm coming oo," Gabriel's voice resounded throughout the compound.
Hearing his voice, Richard immediately smiled. Unlike him, who had been alive for the past five hours, Gabriel had probably been bored out of his mind.
Richard prepared himself and got everything he might need for the market. Minutes later, Gabriel was downstairs and ready to go. Gabriel was a young dark-skinned man who looked to be in his late twenties.
However, that was only due to stress; it was somewhat funny how potent the effects of unusual stress were on the human body.
Gabriel didn't come from a high-end family. Well, then again, which family in Nigeria is high-end nowadays? Those could be counted on one hand. However, the young man was doing well for himself for now.
"What do you want to buy?" Gabriel asked.
"What else? Man must eat… let's go first," Richard replied as he locked his door.
Making their way to the market was easy, but deciding what exactly to buy wasn't as simple. Nigeria had a large variety of dishes to choose from, each with its unique preparation and ingredients.
After about an hour of haggling and more, the two finally made their way back, even hungrier but still laughing as though they didn't have a care in the world.
"Did you see that?" Richard said as they both gossiped.
"It's that boy who was doing…" Gabriel replied, sticking out his hand as though carrying a handbag and imitating the generic way some women walk.
"Guy, someone carried a child for nine months only for that person to be walking like this 20 years later—ancestors be shamed," Richard replied.
He wouldn't say he knew the person to understand why they walked like that. After all, there were many reasons why someone could behave this way.
One such reason was growing up around many females, but this was 2021, and people generally don't walk like that if men don't want to be called gay.
Deciding to ignore another man's behaviour, they both focused on the food at hand. Gabriel carried the ingredients upstairs to his room to prepare since Richard had no cooking gas left.
"Come to think of it, there is no water left either," Richard said, finally noticing the missing items in his tiny apartment.
Noting them all, he immediately ran out of the house to the nearest mini-market to buy them.
He returned several minutes later, but Gabriel still wasn't done. He wasn't worried; when Gabriel finished, he would bring the food down for both of them to eat. With that thought in mind, Richard opened his email to see if there were any new messages.
[You have been invited to a Zoom meeting by the Numerical Company. Please join using the code 292SU.]
"Yes!!" Richard shouted as the hunger immediately vanished.
Without wasting time, he texted Gabriel to eat first and that he would come later, then closed his door. He turned on his laptop, connected the light, and made sure everything was set up for the meeting to go smoothly.
After a while, he was sitting in his common plastic chair, staring at a small team of people on the other side of the screen. It seemed they had taken him much more seriously than he initially thought.