I am getting bald

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I am getting bald! Chei!!!. The reality first struck me as I shaved my rough jaw at the barber’s two days ago. The barber’s aproko mirror had made the revelation. Oh, how I hate mirrors. I don’t own one. My visitors after grumbling their displeasure about it always made do with the shiny surface of a CD plate or my laptop cam coder. Fine people don’t need mirrors, I always argue. We already knew how good we looked.

On this day, the poke-nosing mirror in the barbers shop decided to carry out an assignment no one asked it to. Oh, how I hate that mirror! It did some good job though. It first showed me my soft dark lips made more inviting by the strip of mustache just above it. The barber had just shaped the mustache out and hey I was feeling like Prince Hakeem…Coming to America, remember?

Then, there was my not too pointed and not too flat nose, which sat there like the creation of a master sculptor. Nobody has my kind of nose in this world. Oh! My special nose. I have doubled checked on my parents and I am convinced neither of them gave me that. With my nose, Obama might just have garnered the primary requirements for being described as ‘Handsome.’ You just didn’t read that. Oh, my special nose!!

Did I ever mention to you that I had sexy eyes? Well, now you know. The barber’s mirror confirmed it. I am not just bragging. Eyes that tell a million tales. Oh, how many dames have I scored with those eyes. The spectacle in the eyes is their ability to modify in diameter depending on the occasion. Those eyes started having medicated eye lenses over them since primary four. Now, I hide them from public view with big dark glasses. The celebrity kind. Wouldn’t want to cause a stir in public you know, with chics starring and walking into gutters. Believe me, it has happened before. But even with them glasses on, I still cause the stir. Ever seen Sean Combs, I mean the American record producer and rap artist, also known as Puffy, Puff Daddy, and P. Diddy? He looks kind of like me when I am on those glasses.

And this; my eyebrows. Wonder brows. Amazing sight. The eight wonder of the modern world. Never carved by any razor blade, yet so perfectly curved. Bushy patch of jet black hair, that runs in semi circular fashion over both eyes and rendezvous at my nose ridge. Are you shocked? Yeah, indeed my eyebrows meet. Even the barber was impressed or was it appalled? What ever, just know that you will not find too many of my kind even on Google earth. Special me.

Then the yeye barber’s mirror spoilt every thing. The next thing it revealed was a long stretch of hairless skin. This can’t all be my forehead I wondered. Jeez!!! What is happening?. The place looked like a deserted patch of land ravaged by desertification. What I was seeing was the Kalahari not my head. Not the remaining part of my fine boy face. This mirror must be playing a trick.

Where did all the hair go to? Oh God, I am dead. As I looked at it, I could swear the hair had retreated by at least close to an inch especially at the edges. So I was going to end up looking like Daddy after all? Ewu Chi m oo! Gregor Mendel’s law in action…for my head? Na wah oh! This was what my classmates in vet school would have called a case of “frontal alopecia.” And just imagine, I was planning to keep an afro like Wole Soyinka when I am forty and see it turn grey as I approach seventy. Pipe dream!!

But wait a second. Bald is good. Yeah. Bald is cool. Bald is beautiful. Bald is sexy. Most successful men I know are bald. I think it confers some kind of manliness. Cool, manly me. Isn’t that something to cheer about? Check this out: cool, manly, fine boy Sylva. Complete picture. Perfect picture. Are the ladies listening?

What am I saying? Life is not a perfect walk. Nothing is perfect. Perfect is nothing. Things happen along the line. Things we wish were just dreams. Things we wish we could change. Things we can’t change. But in most cases we fail to see the beauty in those things. We pitch ourselves against ourselves. We struggle to make it perfect. We end up hating ourselves. We fail.

I imagine me at forty. Not with the Soyinka brand afro. On my extremely cool low cut. A fitting designer suit hanging down perfectly. I would look into a mirror and remember this first day the barber’s mirror showed me a glimpse of the future me. I would smile. Fine bald daddy Sylva. No regrets. Thank Goodness I am bald. And oh, did I mention I am going shopping for a room mirror? I need to keep track of this hair retreat process.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

The hired supporter and his donkey.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

“Fiii Diii Fiii”!!!, The voice of the speaker boomed on the loudspeaker. The excited crowd responded. Clenched fists waved in the air.

“Fii Dii Fiii” !!!, Musa opened his mouth and closed it. He has been shouting the same response all day. It was now afternoon. The sun was hot over head. Its rays struck the heads of the people in the crowd and the tarmac beneath their feet. Musa used his palm to wipe away the sweat from his face. The party leaders in the podium had a roof over them. Musa felt the heat from the tarmac burn through the thin layer of his old bathroom slippers. His heel was in direct contact with the tarmac.

“Fiii Diii Fiii”!!!, Musa didn’t open his mouth at all this time. Much of his kaftan was soaked. He had no singlet on, so the kaftan held to his skin. It was all he had on him when he was invited to join the bus. His palm ran across his face again. Not sure of what to do with the stream of sweat he collected this time, he rubbed it on his kaftan. The crowd was packed thick. Shoulder to shoulder. Groin to buttocks. The crowed cheered in excitement. Musa wasn’t sure what it was about. The only words of English he was familiar with were the monetary denominations. He had only just learnt a new one,”fawer”, the response to the call from the podium.

The speaker on the podium started singing. He glided from side to side like someone high on brukutu. Musa listened. He could only make out the Fiii Diii Fiii that occurred intermittently in the song. He felt lost. He was aware that much of those cheering around him were also lost. But they still cheered. He looked at the two persons closest to him. One was waving a white face-cap with the party symbol high in the air and making a sharp sound in his throat. It was the kind women from in his village made in celebration of a happy event. The other who was dressed in a cloth lined with the design of the party symbol was bouncing on two feet, screaming aloud like some one who just won a wrestling match. Musa tried to share the excitement. He couldn’t. His heel hurt like fresh pepper in the eyes. His kaftan was like a second skin.

Giving up, he began to make his way out of the crowd. He needed a drink he thought. When he was invited along with his fellow kola nut hawkers on their way to the market that morning to come and fill up the bus, he had not imagined this was what it was all about. They said they were taking them to Abuja, to see the President. That the President was organizing a big gathering for Talakawa’s like him. That the President would dole out money to those that came. At first he had ignored the man making the invitation, but then the prospects of a free ride to that big city; Abuja was too hard to ignore and then of course, the money. He signed up.

First one Alhaji, with a big car came to address them. Words went round the recruited crowd that he was a big man in Abuja. He was one of those people that ate breakfast with the President daily. Some one called him a Cenetah. A police man walked behind him carrying his bag. His well starched babariga swept the floor. Musa recognized the man. During the last elections, his face had been everywhere. Those coloured posters doted the streets. Musa had not seen him since then. The man promised all gathered plenty money if they made the trip.

Then, they were asked to queue up. Crispy one thousand naira bills were doled out to each person. All the Kola nut Musa had in his wheelbarrow didn’t come up to that figure. He became more convinced that he made the right decision. What was more, the cenetah had promised that more would come. The President in Abuja was a very generous man.

Then they tutored them. When they heard “Fiii Diii Fiii”, they were to shout “Fawer”. That was all they were required to do. It sounded so easy. The cenetah had promised that the louder they shouted, the happier they would make the president and of course, the more money they would receive. They had boarded the buses for the long trip from kaura Namoda to Abuja, the prospects of making easy money high on their minds.

Musa elbowed his way out and joined the stream of other supporters like him who were equally now tired of shouting “Fawer”. He was yet to have breakfast. He walked to the nearest pure water hawker and bought two sachets. One rained down his head. The other went to quench his thirst. As he made to walk away, he remembered his heel and bought a third. Only four hundred and thirty was left of the one thousand naira. He wondered when the second installment the cenetah had promised will come. They had been shouting fawer all day.

Under a little shade, Musa gathered his two old slippers together and sat on them. This was not the Talakawa gathering he had looked forward to. It was a rally for the rich. The party leaders like the cenetah drove big cars. Their robes swept the streets as the walked. Musa and the others had just been recruited to spice it up. The realization irked him. He fished out a piece of kola nut, the last he had on him, and threw it into his mouth. His bowl moved in anticipation of some food. His teeth bit at the kolanut. His coloured molars went to work.

What am I doing here? He asked himself. All round the rally ground were big buildings. Massive walls of concrete. His mind briefly flashed at his mud hot in Kaura Namoda and he remembered he was yet to re-thatch the roof. The rains were already around. Ah! He should have been doing that now he thought. Then something else occurred to him, his donkey. He had rushed off to Abuja without making arrangements for her feeding. How would he cope without that donkey?. Great fear arose in him. Images of his donkey blurred his vision. I must get to my donkey he said to himself.

He rose up, shuffled his feet into the slippers and began to walk towards the entrance of the rally ground. In the distance he could hear the continued chorus; “Fiii Diii Fiii”….”Fawer”. It grew fainter as he walked away. That didn’t matter now. He needed to get to his donkey. He needed to get to her before she died of hunger. He couldn’t survive the farming season without her. How would he convey the millet home from the farm?. He could see her in his sight beckoning. He walked faster. He almost ran. In his delirium, it didn’t occur to him that Kaura Namoda was over five hours away by car.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo.

Random Thoughts; I wan yarn nonsense.

I am tired of writing sense. I am tired of bashing the nitwits we have in power. I am tired of writing stories of distant characters conceived from the abyss of my very active wide imagination. I am tired of writing about the experiences of my friends. I am tired of writing about myself. I am tired of writing sense.

Today, I want to write nonsense. I get my inspiration from a Naija musician. Sorry I don’t seem to remember his name now.  He declared, I don taya to make sense, this time around I wan yarn nonsense. He justifies his actions in his belief that e be like say the nonsense dey make sense. If he could do it and get away with it, why cant I ?.

Well if you think the example above is not tight enough, then think of the popular D’Banj’s album The Entertainer. I am not talking about track Igwe, that became the toast of all beer parlours or Track Fall in Love, without which weddings are now incomplete. No, I am talking about the track 10, Entertainer. D’Banj stops short of telling us that he has a right to sing whatever he wants and as an entertainer he should be paid his money. He doesn’t need to make sense.

So I figure I can also write nonsense and as long as some one enjoys reading it, I am making sense. 

Ever taken note of the kind of stuff folks post as their status on facebook these days? Jeez!!! Simply amazing.  I see stuff that blows my mind off.  Some are simply meaningless. “Phew”, what does that mean abeg?. Some folks wax philosophical. Just copy and paste something they read somewhere. Others tell us about something they are thinking of doing. Some others just leave us guessing. “I am thinking…” There are those who chose to use it to express their frustration.  Did I hear you say like me?. Well I am over that now. But the interesting ones are those who really tell us what they are doing. “I am brushing”, “I am having breakfast”, “I am at work”. My fear is that with time some more excited folks will have course to post things like “ I am Coommiinngg!!!!!” as their status.

Last week a very naughty friend posted a note. She wanted to resign from adulthood. I feel like that this morning. In fact, I want to be re-born. And when I am coming next, I want to be female. Gosh, girls don’t seem to appreciate the kind of powers they have. I will be ready to even bribe God so that I wouldn’t be a first child. Folks with elder sis/bros don’t know what they are enjoying. In that new life, I very certainly would not study Vet medicine, tufiakwa!!. I wouldn’t also be a writer. Writers are almost always broke. How about being born by an immigrant kenyan father and an American mother? Makes sense shee? Get to tell the world about ‘Change’ and get elected into the white House.

Hmm, this is funny. The other day a friend told me a story that was rib cracking. He recently subscribed to an ISP and now browsed on end at home with his laptop. As expected, he was now always on his laptop. His dad noticed this and asked what he was always “pressing”. He made to show off to his non internet compliant dad. He told him vaguely about the internet and boasted that every thing was on the internet. To buttress this, he was able to show his dad a funeral tribute he (his dad) wrote for a late friend. The late man’s children based in US had hosted a site and posted the contents of the funeral brochure there. My friend’s dad was fascinated to have seen his name and his tribute on the computer screen. He went away convinced that indeed ‘everything’ could be found on the internet.

Days later, my friend’s dad had a special request for him. He had missed the last meeting of their umunna in the village and thought he would be better prepared for the up coming one if he was able to see the minutes of that meeting. He requested his son to check his laptop for the minutes.

Just yesterday, PDP theiftains and their rented crowd stormed Abuja to carry out a coup against their former Czar. What goes around comes around. Well, I don’t usually concern myself with PDP. I didn’t vote them. I didn’t even see a ballot paper. Luckily, my state is not PDP. What interested me however was the sight of certain top members of the gang. Did you see Ahmadu Ali? He was looking weather beaten. You know the man is not blessed with so much handsomeness. Even when smiling, he looks like my village deity. I almost started having some pity for him.  No body even noticed him there. No wonder they always want to hold onto power.

At the last count, there were about 57 Governorship aspirants in my state. Shouldn’t that be in the Guinness Book of world records? In addition, there is someone, one very criminal character parading himself as “Governor in waiting”. How more interesting can it get? I love politics. What better way to keep your blood pressure low.

My lone shoe had to undergo surgery in the hands of an aboki shoemaker yesterday too. Guy, tu dey trek for Abuja no easy oh!!. The shoe sole don hear nweyiii. Before you start laughing let me point out that in Abuja, trekking is normal. Why waste precious change on drops?. So my shoe was only obeying Newton’s law; To every action…The aboki did wonders. No see alignment abeg. Now I can bounce around again, like I am the Lord of the manor.

I strayed to the Federal Civil service Commission some days ago. Phew!!!, Issues!!!, With me on the queue to collect and fill the employment forms were persons who graduated when I was sitting for Jamb. Within the about one hour I spent there, I could estimate that close to a hundred Nigerian citizens were there. As I was leaving, more were coming. This is a daily affair oh….just routine filling of forms, not like any jobs have been advertised. Do the mathematics. Our Government is dead.

I am not done yet. I regretted not having a digital camera a few days ago when in full public glare, two mobile police men in uniform, jointly pummeled a Traffic warden. Damn!!!. Let me leave the rest to your imagination.

Do have your self a great day jare. I hope my nonsense made some sense after all.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

 

 

 

Ninety Minutes of Peace.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I stole another look at my wrist watch. It was the tenth time I was doing that in the last two minutes. The time was 7.47pm. It was the same when I last checked. In few seconds, my eye would be straying in that direction again. My right leg went in front of the left with greater force. I wish I could widen my stride. I needed to cover more grounds in a shorter time. I was already two minutes late.

The hall was parked full. It was 7.50pm when I got there. The heat hit me like stench from an uncovered pit latrine as I stepped in. where was I going to find a seat? I wondered. Few seconds later I was seated. One of the female waiters had motioned me to a vacant chair. I was a popular face at the place and deserved such special treat. The treat meant I was going to buy at least a bottle of drink. I settled into the plastic white chair, a table in front of me. I didn’t exchange pleasantries with the two others who were already seated. They didn’t even seem to have noticed me. My eyes soon joined theirs. The screen was bright and green.

On the screen; lush green grass and a sea of chanting spectators. Twenty two men chasing about a round leather ball. A man in black runs along, a whistle in his mouth. Two other men, in black too run along the lines, bearing flags. I can hear the commentator rattling away. The spectators are cheering.

In the hall; close to hundred able bodied men (and women) scream at the twenty two (plus three) in the screen. Instructions, insults and commendation are rendered to people who are so many miles away in England as though they were standing some feet away. Shoot that ball….pass your ball now….man on you…. Just look at what Berbatov is doing?…this guy is a fool…Anderson is not controlling that midfield well…Ref dey f*ck up…

And then one of the twenty two does something good, saves a goal or displays a new skill and a section of the hall rise up in applause.

The analysis goes on. Heated arguments prevail. Glasses are emptying as fast as they are refilled. The waiters’ mill around taking and delivering orders. My order arrives. I feel the usual irritation of paying more than the normal price for it. The owner of the guest house gets richer by the second. The extra cost he claims is to pay DSTV for the subscription.

A goal is scored. The scream is deafening. Some are standing and bouncing about. Some have their chairs on their heads. Some one kisses the television screen. Drinks spill from glasses. A bottle tips, rolls down the table and shatters. Palms clap. Eyes strain to watch the play-back on the screen. Some others not happy about the goal are seated, cursing silently. Na offside some one grunts.

The jubilation elapses. Some one shouts “United”, which sounds more of “You knighted”, the response of “For life” is thunderous. I feel like I am in a church, with the usual “Praise the Lord” and “Alleluia” thing. New rounds are ordered. The goal needed to be washed down with liquor. Plates of nkwobi, isiewu and pepper soup begin to emerge. I salivate. I wished unemployment benefits were paid in Nigeria. The waiters’ mill around. The twenty two men (plus three) run around in the screen. The argument continues in the hall. The bank account of the owner increases.

Some thing else maintained a strong presence in the hall; smoke. It is so thick you can almost hold it. Burning cigarette sticks stick out of many mouths. New ones are being lighted. Initially, I am disgusted by the offending odour. What happened to the “FCT no smoking in public places rule?” I wonder. Soon my nose begins to feel at home. I drain the last of my malt. My eyes are on the screen.

Phone calls are made. Some receive. Yes, yes, we dey win…shebi you dey watch the match?…i dey for summer Guest House….light don come for yard?. A generator labours outside the hall, its humming sound drowned by the noise inside. I remember a friend who had boasted on facebook that my team would lose the match. I taunt him by flashing him. I smile at my mischief.

I wish I was listening to Brila fm. I imagine all the crazy things listeners would be calling in to say. There was this particular caller who excited me a lot. He usually gave his address as somewhere “Opposite Old Trafford, near the European capital of trophies”. Can you beat that? Some had taken up new surnames; the names of their favorite players.

I note something else. There was happiness in the hall. For that moment, the world was at peace for us all. No talks of unpaid salaries due to the new government e-payment scheme. No talks of the global economic melt down. No talks of Yar’Adua and his Do Nothing Team. I wasn’t thinking of where next to submit my CV. it was ninety minutes of peace. Palpable peace.

The match ends. I stand up to leave. Some others sit back to watch a re-play of the goals. A few others order more drinks, for the road. My team won. I am satisfied. Now we are through to the next stage. Did I say “we”?, well, actually I mean, eleven of the men on the screen. I had my own battles to fight. It was reality again. As I walk away, I think of dinner.
Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

UBA’s ATM Machine

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I had used that ATM machine a couple of times in the past. UBA had no branch in Kubwa, a satellite town in Abuja but the presence of two ATM machines at the popular Ignobis Hotel sort of gave we, their customers some relief. Parting with extra N100 each time I used another banks ATM wasn’t quite funny. So I usually trekked all the way to Ignobis, by-passing Fin bank and Oceanic, to withdraw from my meager finances at the UBA ATM machine.

I arrived Ignobis this afternoon particularly very broke. Dinner at Little Villaije, the new eatery close to my place the night before had taken up every kobo in my wallet. I needed to get into Abuja town, a distance of about 25km to continue my job hunt. I needed to eat. I walked into Ignobis like someone being chased by a beast. I approached the two money “vomiting” machines and fished out my wallet to produce my card.

I immediately noticed there was something different about the machines. They both were now singing. It was the popular UBA television advert song. Something that sounded like “Wise men bank with UBA….”. I was fascinated. Not because an ATM Machine was producing sound, but because a UBA ATM machine was producing sound. Who said my good old bank wasn’t getting in on the groove?.

Then just as I wanted to slot in my card, I noticed the motion picture on the machines screen. It was an advert of one of their many packages. Wow!!. I stood back and watched. A man’s car breaks down in the middle of the road; his friend drives past with a healthier car. The children in the healthier car wave at those in those in the broken down car who are hiding in shame. Man with the sickly car is in front of a computer screen applying for a UBA loan package. The man drives a brand new car home and his wife and kids rush out and give him a rousing welcome. It looked so simple.

I smiled and pushed in my card eager to pick my little change and go. The hunger was biting. It was 12.07pm and I was yet to have breakfast.

My fingers punched in the pin numbers. I selected all I needed to and then the usual “wait as your transaction is processing” was announced. I stole a look around. At a guest and a lady, his girl friend by my assessment just arriving the hotel. The lady clung to the man, like her very existence depended on him. The thought of what she was really clinging to, his money, amused me. I shifted my eyes to the cars parked at the other end of the hotel; I could recognize a Nissan Xterra, a Honda Baby boy and a Peugeot 504 saloon. The latter reminded me of my Fathers’ old jalopy which he had refused to discard close to twenty five years after. My attention returned back to the ATM.

I couldn’t believe what I saw, “Your Financial Institution is unavailable”. This had happened to me a couple of times in the past when i used a card on a different banks ATM, never when I was using a card from the same bank. I inserted a UBA card into a UBA ATM which was alive with so much music and video a while ago, and was being told my financial institution which was UBA was unavailable. It didn’t make sense. I ended the transaction and re-inserted the card. The hunger was biting. Time was running.

This time, after the “wait” announcement, it took close to five minutes, during which time I was almost concluding that the machine had swallowed my card for keeps before it came alive again. My relief was immeasurable. I couldn’t add the troubles of going to a UBA branch in town to complain that one of their ATM machines in Kubwa had eaten my card. It would have taken perhaps a whole week to retrieve my card after long grammar and “please help me” pleas. In any case, I didn’t even have the money that would take me into town to lay the complain. I was happy the card was still safe.

But then the message on the machine’s screen was heartbreaking “Temporarily Unable to dispense cash”. I almost exclaimed aloud in pain. I punched the side of the machine twice in subdued fury. “What sort of nonsense in this?” I asked to no person in particular.

Someone however volunteered a response. A passer by, a girl dressed in the hotels’ waitress uniform. She must have noticed my anguish as she walked by.

“That machine no dey work of oh”

I turned in the direction of the voice, my ears seeking to hear more.

“Since how many days now, e no dey pay any body. E be like say money no dey inside”

I made a sound with my throat that roughly translated in words to “is that so”

A dizzying feeling came over me. Perhaps just to confirm what I had been told. I slotted the card in once more. I knew was running the risk of not only leaving without any cash, but also without my card.

After another long wait, the machine pushed out my card with the message “Out of service”. Reacting would have been unnecessary. I gratefully picked my card and walked out, my head in the clouds.

Down the road from Ignobis, I was forced to eat the humble pie. I walked up to another ATM machine (not UBA). I needed the money badly. I knew no one who could give me a raise. Summoning courage, I slotted in the card. This particular machine wasn’t singing. Between my slotting in the card and collecting the money, I must have said a million Hail Marys. The money graciously came out. I was happy to part with the extra hundred naira charge.

I mentioned the incidence to a friend later that day. He took time to gist me of his own travails. For three weeks now, he has been battling to get a refund of an amount he never withdrew. He had used an Intercontinental bank card in a UBA machine. The card came out without the cash, but his account was duly debited for the said amount. Between UBA, Interswitch and Intercontinental bank, his ten thousand naira went missing. I began to feel lucky after listening to his sadder tale.

So many other such sad tales abound. I hate to say the technology is ahead of us. But the troubles we go through due to poor maintenance and inefficiency of the IT department of these banks are overwhelming. It feels cool to walk up to an ATM and in less than two minutes you have your money. But it sure feels different when they tell you one of their many stories. You begin to yearn for the good old days of queuing inside the bank, a pass book in hand.

On Call Room

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

But for Fathers’ insistence, I wouldn’t have gone to med school. In fact, I had no business in the science classes in the first place. It was the tradition in my secondary school for bright students, regardless of their interests to be placed in the Science classes. Even at that, I still stole into Literature classes and scored higher than those in the Arts. When I muted the idea of wanting to be a writer, Father had in that his all knowing voice asked if something was wrong with my head. As far as he was concerned, no right thinking person will want to study a course that left him broke most of the time. Certainly not his son-his only son and heir. “Study medicine, that’s the course for people with your brains. You can be sure of a job immediately you graduate” he said. I knew better to think of it as a suggestion.

In med school, I got the nick name Ghost from my classmates for my disappearing acts. I was seen more with the Arts students. They constituted the bulk of my friends. I found our arguments on real life issues more appealing than the drab talk of muscles and bones. I joined them to the weekly Drama and once I got unto the set of a play, though it was a minor backstage role. I rose through the ranks to become the editor of the campus magazine. I was the first non journalism student to do so in the Fifty years history of the school, blazing a new editorial ideology that made us- I and my crew-constant guests at the security office. But for my being a Medical student- an adored group of students, I should have earned myself a rustication.

As graduation neared, what I looked forward to wasn’t the relief of graduation, the comfort of a well paying job or the change that the prefix ‘Dr’ would do to my personal profile. I looked forward instead to having the opportunity of my own On Call Room experience.

Long before I went to med school, I had seen a movie on M-net, a Hollywood bestseller. The main characters, a team of brilliant surgeons who seemed so sold to their careers of saving lives, used the On Call Room in between series of surgeries to remind them selves that it was blood they got running in their veins.

There were On Call Rooms in the Teaching Hospital but as students they were not available to us for such luxury. Really, we had so much on our hands to think of such human weaknesses. Med students were super humans dead to the flesh and the world around them. I couldn’t wait to graduate.

Three months into my one year housemanship programme and nothing had happened. My female colleagues seemed of the crudest form of med school species. They only talked about how thrilling it was to have been asked to scrub in for surgery by their Consultants. The Nurses- the few that were still young and shapely treated we Doctors with the gravest form of disdain. Our relationship ended with our giving instructions to them as to the treatment regiment of a patient. No social talks. Were they all lesbians? I once wondered, always hurdled up in their Nurses Station giggling excitedly to themselves while the On Call Room begged for action.

Certainly, I couldn’t invite patients or their visiting relatives to the On Call Room. I wasn’t that desperate to lose my freshly acquired practice license. The only other females in the Hospital were the cleaners, women now haggard from the long years of scrubbing the floor. Not me. I rather spent many lonely nights On Call roving from one news channel to the other on DSTV.

Then it happened. Not the way I had planned it. Not like in the M-net movie. But it happened. I was on pediatrics. One long week of tending fragile innocent infants, the most boring of all postings. Earlier that day a week old baby had been admitted for a suspected case of Tetralogy of the Fallot. It was a congenital malformation of the heart walls that allowed mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood pumped by the heart. Surgery to correct it had been put off till the next day when the father must have paid every penny. I was listening to the new guy in White House, Obama address the G-20 summit in London in the On Call Room that night when my attention was called. The baby’s condition had taken a turn for the worse.

For the first time I saw why infants with this condition are often referred to as “blue babies”, the baby’s skin was now discernibly blue. I was shaken and so was the Mother who was sobbing by the bed side. All around me were nurses, their eyes boring through me and seeming to ask in Unisom “How do we precede Doctor?” I honestly didn’t know. Panicking I called the consultant pediatric surgeon. It was 1.00am.
“Clear up, Doctor Vincent, I am done here.” She said taking off the bloody gloves. The surgery had lasted two hours and she was visibly tired. 1.00am was an odd time to have called a woman out of bed. I felt sorry. I could understand why she was in a hurry to leave.

“No problem Doctor” I replied, handing over a kidney dish with blood stained artery forceps to one of the nurses.

“The On Call Room” she said just at the door to the theater, “it does have a bed right?”

“Yes” I replied then added “a bunk actually, the six springs kind.”

“What ever,” It came out as woreva “I need to stretch out a bit. Could you join me there when you are done here?”

I could count three blunders I had committed through that night. First in my panic I had not administered the necessary palliative treatment to the baby before calling her. She had been mad when she rushed in with a lab coat over her pajamas to find out I hadn’t done so.

Secondly I had wrongly gripped an artery during the surgery which had led to a panic moment. There hadn’t been time to scold me so I expected enough bashing and perhaps a review of my knowledge in Pediatrics when I joined her in the On Call Room. It was the normal drill.

I walked in face down. She had just her pajamas on now having discarded the lab coat. The top two buttons of her pajamas was loose. My eyes caught sight of the mounds. Was the button left open in error or by intention? I stood at the door, like a pupil in the Head masters office, waiting to be flogged.

“That was a risk you took there” she said in her soft voice, her left hand straightening out the stands of her hair.

“I am sorry Doc” there was fog in my throat.

“That was your first TOF experience?”

“Yes Doctor”

“You did quite well…”

Did she just commend me?

“Calling me up promptly saved the baby…”

“You were awesome there ma” I chipped in.

She smiled “Not too many first timers see it through their first TOF experience. Handling a baby’s heart isn’t usually a mean affair”.

“I am privileged to have scrubbed in with you Doc.”
Some moments of silence.

“Ever thought of taking up pediatrics?”

The question sent shivers down my spine. The truth was that I didn’t plan to practice medicine. I didn’t fancy sitting back daily to listen to people tell me about their problems. I certainly couldn’t stand walking out to tell desperate relatives that “we did all we could”. I had just completed my application to study Medical Public Health at UCL. I could as well practice my journalism in Medicine.

“Come…come and sit here” she said tapping the space on the mattress beside her. She had noticed the riot in my brain.

I walked over hesitantly. This was my consultant surgeon. This was 3.00am or there about.

Every thing happened in a flash. Kisses. Fondles. Hands seeking and grabbing. Our cloths in a heap. The bunk shaking. Giggles, whines, moans. Then exhaustion. It was my first experience with an older woman.

The next day after ward rounds, she dragged me into a side room and without prompting gave me a quick kiss. As I hurriedly wiped off her lipstick from my lips with a handkerchief, it dawned on me that my On Call Room experience was going to be a protracted one.

www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

Of NFF’s Missing $200,000 and Dora’s Re-branding Campaign

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Saturday SUN of 21st march 2009 reported the disappearance of $200,000 from the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) office complex in Abuja. This time, we didn’t hear that the money was misappropriated, embezzled or given as bribe, we were made to understand that the money simply developed wings and flew away in a ‘the more you look, the less you see’ style.

My conclusion after reading the highly embarrassing news item was that this was only possible In Nigeria. That in this time of hardship when the whole world is running from pillar to post, a body of people who are supposed to be learned enough to differentiate their right arm from the left would be bold enough to announce to a nation in financial crises that $200,000 in its custody just vanished, is to say the least a huge indictment on us as a people.

Today 2nd April 2009, I read in The Nation that the Police was yet to make any meaningful headway in its investigations. Now I wonder what they are still trying to find. By every reason, the magic winged $200,000 should have had a safe landing where ever it was headed at takeoff by now and we all know that the Police are simply trying to act like something was being done.

What baffles me is that the NFF where the money vanished from has a leadership. In some other parts of the world by now those persons would either have resigned or would have been put under great pressure from both the people and the Government to explain how such a huge amount would vanish before their very eyes.

My worry here is that soon, it would be a forgotten issue and the thieves would settle down to their feast. With such a success, we might have just developed for ourselves another very potent way of stealing government money. All you might now need to do as a Chief executive would be to withdraw an eye popping amount, keep it (or claim to have kept it) in a safe in the office, and the next day, call a press conference and announce that the money has vanished.

This therefore must not be left to die off like that. Bolaji Ojo-Oba and Sani Lulu, Secretary General and President of the NFF respectively who I believe are public servants must be held responsible for the missing money and they owe us, over 150 million Nigerians a chunk of who are avid football followers an explanation.

It is stories like this that you read of and you begin to wonder what sense Dora’s re-branding hullabaloo makes. With what terms do you sell a nation where $200,000 simple vanishes into thin air in broad day light to an outside world where every dollar is accounted for?