The Junta

The convoy that came to arrest me was of six cars, two siren blaring police saloon cars, two jeeps and two open trucks carrying a countless number of armed soldiers. It was about 2.00pm. I was at the office, hurrying to finish up the draft of an article for my blog site. Nonso’s birthday party was for 4.00pm and I had not yet bought his present. They stormed into the room, heavy boot soles against the concrete floor, guns, tear gas, walkie-talkie and all, like in the movies.

“By the order of the Commander in Chief, you are under arrest” The short one with two tribal marks running vertically on either sides of his nose, the commanding officer by my assessment pronounced. They hand cuffed me and led me out into the February sun.

The Junta had been in power for exactly one year. That morning, a year ago when they ceased power, my bed side radio had been tuned to Radio Nigeria, its permanent location and I was in the kitchen fixing an early breakfast when Ifeoma called out from the room sounding both excited and agitated

“Darling, there’s been a coup!”

“A coup?” I asked rushing into the room two mugs of hot water in hand.

“Yes a coup. Listen”

It was 7.00am normal time for the AM news. To have martial music playing at that time meant just one thing: a coup. She was right. The music continued for a while before a voice with an unmistakable northern accent came on air.

“Good morning Nigerians. I Major Ibrahim Bature of the Nigerian Army, on behalf of my colleagues wish to inform you that we have taken over the leadership and control of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria …”

Another Major! I thought as I dropped the mugs gently on the side stool and replaced Ifeoma who had risen and was making for the bathroom, on the bed. My eyes followed her until she disappeared through the bathroom doors. It was now two days past the expected delivery date and the anxiety was high. My attention then went back to the radio.

Later that day, the baby came; a boy and I named him Nonso. It was his first birthday and I was being arrested by the Government that had seized power on the day he was born.

Being an internet blogger was my crime. The Junta had initially given the impression that they supported the freedom of the press and when after six months there was still no clear transition timetable as they had promised, I joined the growing band of citizen journalists, demanding on be half of the people, a return to civil rule, a duty The Junta clearly didn’t think I had a right to.

“So this is where you stay and write rubbish about gofment?” The commanding officer remarked as he led me out to one of the jeeps, amazed I could imagine at how shabby the office looked.

I made an incomprehensible sound with my throat and continued walking. He stopped just at the door to one of the jeeps, looked me over, and shook his head in unsolicited pity before opening the door for me.

“This is what you get for making trouble with gofment” he jeered exposing his brown set of teethes.

“No” I disagreed. “This is what happens when criminals find themselves in power”.

He stared back blankly either not having heard well or not having understood. I didn’t wait to confirm, I got into the car and the sirens came on.

Pix credit; BBC.

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.

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

Scourge of the Vandals

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Professor Nweze was his usual self. This day, he had chosen the Principle of Federal Character as his punch bag. Bouncing round the stage in his 1960 style coat, he proceeded to describe the idea as the most unprogressive and retrogressive policy under the sun, wondering which sane society would hold such disdain for merit as to gazette it officially. The policy was in his view what was responsible for such phony nomenclature as ‘state quota’, ‘catchment area’, ‘ Educationally disadvantaged states’, which was the reason why we were where we where as a nation.

He was saying so many other things but that was the much I got. More than half of his class, those of us who sat from the center of the class to the rear, who had to strain to pick out what he was saying, were engrossed in our own private discussions.  There was a hot new topic which held every body’s attention. The shot out last night had left about seven people dead. There bodies had been deposited at the Medical Center makeshift morgue and echoes of the war could be heard even by the deaf.

We had known of an impending war. The signs had been all over the place. Four tiny wooden coffins with blood marks had surfaced at strategic locations on campus. I had seen the one at the Freedom Square before it was taken away by men of the security unit. It was feast of Ascension and I had walked all the way up school from the Franco Hostels to attend morning Mass at St Peters.  I was walking down the road that led to the Library after Mass when I noticed the gathering of people most of them also from Mass as their hair Scarf and Hymn books showed around something in the center of Freedom Square. The coffin sent down cold shivers down my spine. We were still speculating on which group could have dropped this and against whom, when the security men arrived and made a big show of taking it away.

Three others had been similarly discovered at the Green House gate, the route into Odenigwe and behind Ziks Flat Halls. An uneasy calm had descended on the campus. The last time coffins surfaced on campus, a blood bath had followed, one which left over twenty students dead. I was then only a freshman and but for the troubles of taking another JAMB, I wouldn’t have returned to school at the end of the forced vacation the Vice Chancellor had announced to stem the killings. They said it was a retaliatory war, that a particular group was avenging the death at the hands of the other group of some of their members two semesters ago.

But it wasn’t just the concerned cultists that had died. Bullets didn’t posses the intelligence of discerning who it was intended to kill. It only struck down who ever it met in its path. So many innocent students had fallen victims, either hit by stray bullets, struck down on mistaken identity, or killed for being friends or roommates to persons who had already been marked for execution. I had known one such person, Garba the northerner who sold beef suya at the Students Union Building. We had bonded easily because I spoke hausa which I picked up as a student of Federal Government College Kaduna. That fact availed me to such privileges as having quite a generous addition-jara- each time I went to his shop to buy suya.

Garba was at work as usual when the vandals struck. One of the students lurking around the Suya spot had been a target. There was sporadic gunfire and in the ensuing mille, the target got away leaving several injured students and a dead Garba. When it became obvious the ill trained and ill equipped campus security unit couldn’t handle the situation, the Vice chancellor, the bearded one closed down the school, till further notice.

We returned after four months clutching court affidavits of non membership of secret cults. A campus anti-cult squad was set up and a renunciation ceremony was organized during which students came out, publicly declared they were cultists but ready to give it up. They were prayed for by the Chaplain of the Christ Church Chapel, presented with copies of the Bible and told to “go and sin no more”. Even to my inexperienced eyes, this couldn’t be real and it wasn’t long before words started spreading that the whole ceremony was stage managed by the University administration. It was all part of efforts to justify the embezzlement of the juicy amount the Federal Government had released to Universities to fight cultism.

While the Vice chancellor ceased every opportunity to boast about his monumental success in eradicating cultism, the boys were regrouping and re-arming. We all knew it wasn’t going to be long now before the vandals struck again. Of course they were all over campus, though not at war but causing unrest at parties and drinking pubs. They didn’t hide their identity, berets, handkerchiefs, shirts and all.  We knew them, the security unit knew them, but no one did any thing about them.

So when these fresh coffins surfaced on campus, I knew we were in for a show down. I was now in my third year and I knew much more about the workings of these boys. I now had a good number as friends, in fact my room mate; Snoop Dog was one of them. He was born Chinedu Aguwa, but had acquired the name Snoop Dog along the line. A rather intelligent young man from a good home, he had once confided in me that the biggest mistake he had ever made in life was joining a cult and had sternly warned me never to contemplate joining one. So why doesn’t he just leave? I had asked.

“Guy, it’s not as easy as it sounds” he had replied puffing out smoke from both his mouth and his nostrils.” You are in, you are in”

The explanation was simple. Any one who attempted dumping a cult became enemy to both his former cult comrades who now see him as a potent threat and members of rival cults who under the protection of his erstwhile cult might have hurt in some way. The wisest option seemed leaving school entirely but even that wasn’t fool proof. People had been traced to their father’s homes and killed there.

Snoop Dog never set out to be a cultist, a party he had attended as a fresher, still eager to catch all the thrills of campus life had turned out to be a compulsory initiation.  Many he told me joined in like manner, while some had done so from the weight of peer pressure or an ambition to live large and free on campus. That desired freedom often turned to bondage, one which Snoop Dog wished he could set himself free from.

The night before the latest shot out, Snoop Dog had not slept in the room. He had rushed in like some one being chased in the evening, reached out into the wardrobe, picked something I suspected was a pack of live ammunition and spirited out even before I could ask what was wrong. Seconds later as if to answer my unasked question he had returned to give me privileged information.

“Guy, Campus hot. I no fit crash here. So make I shift small. Tell Ben and Mike them make no body commot after seven oh. It is safer to be indoors” Ben and mike were our other two room mates.

“wetin dey happen?”I had asked in desperation, memories of two years ago flooding back.

“we go yarn later” he had replied rushing out.

That night, we had heard distant gunshots all through the night. No one had slept for a second. The Vice Chancellor had drafted some police men to protect the hostels, so nothing much had happened there. But the war had been grave at Odim gate and Odenigwe, two areas just off campus which were densely populated with students. Before morning, seven corpses were recovered and the war was just beginning.

I joined two other friends after Professor Nwaeze’s class to the School Medical center morgue to also have a look. As a member of the campus journalist union, I needed to have first hand information. Quite a crowd of students and staff had gathered there. You could feel the mourning in the air, with some students openly wailing. I elbowed my way to the front, fighting the fear that had established somewhere in my heart. It had first flashed as a thought which I immediately put off. But then it came again and again and as I walked towards the front of the crowd to have a view of the corpses, I felt my heart beating faster each beat sending streams of chilling fear down to my legs. “ It wasn’t possible”, I kept telling my self. God, it wasn’t possible.

My eyes caught sight of the black shirt the third corpse in the row was wearing, sending flashes of recognition to my brains. I froze. My heart was now racing, my whole body shaking like it would after bathing on a cold harmattan morning. No it couldn’t be, I reassured my self. The next two steps took great effort. Then I had a view of the face, a bit swollen now and stained with blood which had issued from a bullet hole just above the left eye. I took a deep breath to keep my legs from giving away. I could no more wish. It was now all over. Snoop Dog was free at last.

(In Memory of all Nigerian students who found their early deaths by their misguided participation in campus cult activities. May the current crop of students find lessons from your gaffe.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

My Abroad Husband

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I met my husband two days to our wedding. I had met his face in pictures which were delivered in beautifully coloured parcels by UPS, his voice on the telephone, in calls that were transported through the atlantics, his writing in countless banal yahoo mails, his money in piles of Western Union claim forms but I had not met him.

I knew his mother who in active connivance with my own mother, colleagues at work, midwifed this contraption. I knew his younger sister, Nkem, who did the dirty job of convincing-insisting- that her brother was the best guy on earth and who had since the whole issue started, been fronting like one big caring sister. I knew his other brother, Chuka my classmate in college, a nard of a boy who always brought up the rear in class and who held me in silent disdain. I knew his father, my father in-law to be, a retired Permanent Secretary who called me his Nne and seemed too eager to get a grand son. But I did not know him.

The news was all over the place, that I was getting married to an abroad man. Mother’s pride dwarfed that of a peacock as she doled out the invitations cards and went to great lengths to see to it that all arrangements for the day were near perfect. Every one seemed to be so convinced that I was such a lucky person. He was, like they said, a successful young man from a good home and was known for his exemplary conduct as a Mass Servant at St. Mary’s before he left the shores of Nigeria. He would make a good husband was the general verdict.

“Do you know how lucky you are?” Aunty Ebele, Mothers overbearing elder sister had asked when my parents first muted that I wasn’t in agreement. “Do you know the number of girls out there who can only wish to be in your shoes and you are here saying no?. It is true you’ve not always known him, but you will get to with time. So please eh, Adannaya, be positive about it, this is a golden opportunity”

That had been as much pleas as I had gotten. For Father and Mother, it was a concluded arrangement. Much of my twenty four years on earth then had simply been me walking according to their dictates. It was their call. Every thing had to be the way they wanted it. They gave me the name I bear, decided the schools I attended, decided the friends I kept, choose what course I studied in the university and felt it was perhaps equally their prerogative to decide which husband I married. So my opinion wasn’t at the least important to them. All they did was to tell me, and while I was still grumbling, skipping meals and locking my self up in the room upstairs, crying my eyes out, a date was fixed for the wedding.

That afternoon at the Enugu airport when I first saw him, I made up my mind that this wasn’t going to be. The wedding could be, but not the marriage. I had gone along with his mother and Nkem in the red jeep to receive him like he had requested the last time we spoke. It was an hour journey from the village to the airport and I had felt like Isaac must have felt when Abraham wanted to serve him up to God. He walked into the hall where we had waited for close to two hours a luggage in hand with a smile playing at his lips. He was tall, too tall and massive like an American football player. His hair was cut low, perhaps to hide the fact that he was bald. He wore a dazzling big neck chain which didn’t seem quite right for the ‘good boy’ he was meant to be and an air that said something like “take note, I am a big boy”. I stood in awe as I beheld my new husband, my feet threatening to give way.

That was five years ago. The wedding had gone on as planned. Every one of note was there, even the Executive Governor sent a representative. The occasion was covered by Ovation magazine, the cover paged paid for by his committee of friends who turned up all clad in Italian style suits complete with bowler hats. It had a special shot on the State Television news and every one seemed very excited about the whole thing- the excess food, well chilled drinks, sumptuous cake, lively music, and I had to wear a smile all through just to complete the picture.

But the smile soon faded as we retired for the night. Some one was eager to consummate the marriage the wedding-night style but not me. It wasn’t like I was a virgin, but I simply didn’t fancy parting my legs for a total stranger, wifely duties or not. He didn’t equally help matters, feeling like It was he’s for the asking. If I observed well, his reaction went from surprise then to anger that a girl, a common Nigerian girl;-his wife- was denying him of sex. My plea that we needed to talk, that we (or I at least) needed to know him a bit more, that there would be enough time for sex as time went on, that I needed time to get use to being his wife, sounded on deaf ears. He took me like a beast and as soon as I felt the sticky fluid in between my legs with announced the expiration of his desire, I pushed him off, and headed for the bathroom where I remained and cried till day break.

Two weeks later, he left back to the US. We had together visited the Immigration office in Lagos and the Embassy in Abuja. It was going to take a couple of weeks to get my papers right and I was to join him as soon as possible.Those two weeks which were supposed to be our honey moon had seen me develop a dizzying hatred for him. It wasn’t just about his insisting to have sex every night and in various gymnastic positions too, but about his rather irritating American-ness which he exuded from his accent, to his reaction to situations and his insistence of making it seem like he had done me a big favour by marrying me. He expected me to worship him after all; he was releasing me from the prison called Nigeria and taking me to America. Of course with close to twelve years in between us, the biblical refrain “wives be submissive…” assumed a whole new meaning.

Something else developed in me at the end of those two weeks, Steve, who was now almost four and to who I was now tired of reviewing my promise on when he was going to see Daddy. I never made it to the US to join his Daddy as had been the plan. Something about a security report had stalled the whole process. My husband, the American Authorities had found out was a member of a drug syndicate which had been responsible for the largest distribution of cocaine locally in two American states. He was arrested shortly on arrival in the US following a tip off. A member of the syndicate, the members of who were the Italian Suit wearing men at the wedding who had been spraying United States Dollars and trampling on it, had gone to sing to the police after he couldn’t stomach my Husbands ditching of his sister who he had earlier promised marriage there in the United states.

Annoyingly, he kept insisting to me on phone through the period of the trial and through Nkem his sister that he was innocent, that he was a IT expert and did legitimate business in the United states, that he was only wickedly framed up by people who were jealous of his accomplishments, that he had never trafficked drugs and never associated with people that did, that he was going to be vindicated. Alas, the jury thought otherwise. He got ten years which I understand was mild considering the heap of evidence against him.

Now I don’t hate him anymore. He is no where around for me to hate. But I hate my parents who forced me into this, his parents who fed my parents with all the lies that he was a Soft ware expert when he was really just a criminal, his sister, a young girl like me who played a huge role, my self for not doing enough to insist on my refusal and pitifully, Steve, the innocent four year old, who was never meant to be.

I feel like a widow. At twenty nine, my life has already ended.
Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

The Funeral didn’t end

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

The funeral didn’t end with the dismantling of the last canopy or with Niko the record man packing up his old skool music equipments which in the last three days had played every thing from Rex Lawson to Sunny Bobo. It had continued, not for the different dance troops or for the village layabouts who had turned up early on each day for the free booze and food, but for me, my two sisters and Mother.

The funeral actually began on that afternoon in the sickly smelling Intensive Care Unit of the Teaching Hospital when Father silently faded out. In truth, he had been fading for longer than anyone wanted to admit. Actually death began knocking when two years ago the rampaging FCT Minister knocked down his just completed hotel building in Abuja despite a court order to the contrary. The bricks of that building, every drop of sand that made up its frame were lined with over fifty years of hard labour and it had been a bit too much for the old horse to handle. The resulting high blood pressure would have killed him but for the doctors intervention. Since then, he had been living on borrowed time.

And so when news came in that the goods that just arrived from Japan, ten 40 feet containers that represented a last desperate effort to save his business from final collapse had lost its value almost by half as a result of the Naira crashing under the weight of the global economic crises, the barometers in his arteries shot up and this time even our tears couldn’t hold him back. The young doctor with a gap tooth had looked from me to my wailing mum, shaken his head in the negative, whispered something that sounded like a condolence and spirited out.

A great man had died so a great funeral had to be staged. I was only twenty, but as the only son I had to stay through endless long meetings with uncles who converged like vultures at a feast, pretending to be so concerned when they rarely visited when he was alive, with members of his age grade who seemed determined to make this a record breaking funeral, with members of my towns union whose former chairman he was, with his colleagues in the importing trade most of who were also fading away, with the Catholic Men’s organization from our parish, a group of aging civil servants and traders, with the Peoples club, an elitist club of money bags he had joined years back when the going was good and with another group that consisted of people from all the other groups; the committee of friends.

There was so much to be done and with uncanny frankness, my Uncles had insisted on every thing being accomplished to the final detail. It didn’t matter to any one that there was hardly any money, for as far as they were concerned their brother was a wealthy man and left behind riches a chunk of which must be used in seeing him off to the other world.

At the center of the tapestry was Mother who had a silent task of proving she had no hand in her husband’s death by not being stingy with his supposed wealth on the one hand and ensuring that her beloved husband of over twenty Five years got a befitting funeral on the other. When the pressure got so much she did what she had to do or was forced to do.

First she sold her Rav4 jeep, then the Mercedes flat boot. Two properties at Victoria Island and festac went up similarly too. Finally, using her Boutique in Oshodi as collateral, she took a bank loan.

Posters were printed. Announcements were placed in both the television and radio. Full paged “A rare gem is gone” adverts were taken out in news papers. A gloss paged brochure had to be printed. All the in-laws had to be informed of the death with a goat and some tubers of yam. His age grade got a cow, it was their law. The Igwe’s cabinet got the same. Branded tee-shirts that didn’t last beyond the first washing were printed. Two other materials were also sewn as mourning cloths. The peoples club brought their own list, a retinue of criteria that must be met before they would turn up. The Ozo cult of titled men brought theirs, even the church too.

The church’s emissary was the village catechist. The Priest wasn’t going to set a foot into our compound for the wake keep nor would he welcome the corpse in his church for the requiem Mass if every penny owed by Father and Mother were not fully paid. This included all sorts of dues, levies and ‘taxes’, some of which dated back to the year of my birth.

The old house, a two storey building that was inhabited only when we came home for Christmas was renovated. Even in mourning the point had to be made that this man built a big house in his fathers land while alive. Interlocking tiles had to be laid in the compound to bring it up to 21st century standards. One or two trees had to give way and a grave site lined with imported tiles was built at the Far East corner.

For the three days the funeral lasted, ten cows died. Chicken and goats were not to be counted. Food and drinks had to be in excess as it was unheard of that sympathizers left a funeral hungry. Much of the food was wasted, swept away in the mornings. The men went home staggering from alcohol only after Niko had put off his musical instruments signifying the end of activities for that day.

Now the funeral ought to be over. The canopies are gone, the music is gone, and the people are gone. But not for us. There was Chineye’s school fee to be paid. It was her final year in college and there was so much to pay for and exams to register for. Ifeoma in addition to her own school fees needed surgery on her left eye which doctors say could only be done abroad. I had my text books and handouts to worry about. Besides all that, we needed to feed but there was no money.

The funeral didn’t end, no it had only began. With uncles angling around hoping there was anything left to be carted away. With the bank sure to take over Mothers shop. With Ifeoma gradually going blind. With Chineye not meeting the jamb deadline. With me staying back at home, to become the father at twenty. The funeral didn’t end.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

My Born-again Girl friend

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

There was something deceptive –almost sinister about the born-again phenomenon; I thought of this every Sunday when I drive down Church Road to the golf course to honour my weekly challenge with a couple of friends. The buildings-some mere batchers- of different designs which lined the entire length of that Road with their noisy loudspeakers directed at each other told many tales of what cynicism and hopelessness could do to a people. But perhaps more absorbing were the church goes themselves, clad in their Sunday bests with Bibles or hymn books in hand, waiting for buses, crossing the roads, emerging from or disappearing into those rat-holes of church buildings, bringing to reality one of Karl max’s most popular quotes.

But that wasn’t what the deception was all about. Since I caught or rather chanced on my roommate back in the University, a pastor of one of the hip and happening campus fellowships necking feverishly with one of the “sisters” who supposedly visited for a special Prayer session, I had ceased to take any one who flaunted a born-again status seriously.

I was then just a fresh man and before my second year, I had come to appreciate the easiest tactics for acquiring a new girl friend on campus. All you needed to do was to attend a fellowship session and make sure you walked out to the dais when the call for “those worshiping with us for the first time was made”. Sisters were always assigned to follow up the new male members and for so many, I inclusive, the follow up visits of these sisters ended up turning from spiritual to emotional sessions. I have never ceased to marvel at just how creative these “holy” girls could be behind closed doors.

So when I first sensed the born-again thing in her, I knew I was in for some thrilling experience. Stacy was her name. We met at a poetry reading. I wasn’t a big fan of poetry my appreciation of it not going quite beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but on that day I had gone all the way to Wuse II to listen to the shy Jumoke Verissimo read from her new collection; I am Memory.  A review of the collection I had seen in a local daily had one of the most respected names in Nigeria’s literary circle remarking that “Miss Verissimo remakes language beyond lyricism”. I wanted to be a witness.

Just as the usually drab Q&A session began with such banal questions as why do you write, what inspires you, who are your favourite writer’s etcetera? beginning to fly around, I felt a soft touch from behind accompanied by a soft voice demanding to have a peep at my copy of the collection. She had just arrived I guessed and still had this look of a pupil arriving late to a mathematics class- cursing herself silently for coming late and wondering just how much she had missed. I felt some pity but I didn’t however fail to notice the radiant beauty, one which had me speechless for a couple of seconds before my hands got to pass the book over to her.

I saw something more to the beauty; brains, later that evening as we shared a meal at the Wuse II Mr. Biggs outlet and all the way as I drove her to her house in Lugbe. Before that evening was over, I knew we were going to repeat this and indeed we did.  We met every day of the coming week talking -arguing really-on a wide range of issues; on why Kongi isn’t the greatest, or why Achebe deserved a Pulitzer, or just what could be done to restore the glory of creative writing in Nigeria. She was passionate and I had often intentionally taken the less popular side in the argument, making very illogical claims just to tease and get her adumbrating to the point of near infuriation.

We took the same stand on an issue for the first time when we made love on one hot Saturday afternoon at my place two weeks after the poetry reading. In a way, it was essentially also an argument, she on top riding, whining, moaning and digging her finger nails deep into my flesh, me, beneath bearing over 60kg, galloping in the alternate direction with my waist doing the salsa dance. Her sensual vituperations sounded as though she was speaking in tongues like I had heard her do the other day she invited-virtually dragged me- to the mid week fellowship of her church.   

I had entered the place feeling like an alien. I was an orthodox Christian by birth but I had not been to a church in a long while. I had found it almost impossible to justify why I should toil so much only to deposit a share of it weekly for a man who does nothing but tell me about what is already written. One day I decided I had had enough of contributing for the Reverends new car or his wives new adire business, so I stopped going to church. I knew what it entailed to hurt another person and I avoided such. That to me satisfied the primary requirements for living a good life. It wasn’t long before I started feeling that familiar irritation inside Stacy’s church. Without sounding insolent, the place looked more of a social gathering than a church with girls so lewdly dressed, gyrating excitedly, their firm mounds joining in the rhythm, inviting-tempting- any man who decided to take more than just a careless look.

The pastor, one of those returnee Nigerians dished out his American accent-coated sermon like water from a sprinkler. Better came out as ‘berra.’ His hair was curled and a glistering suit, the type with price tags that ran like telephone numbers clung to his shoulders. He was saying something about Psalm 23, a psalm I had memorized at age six, and for some reason his congregation kept jumping up excitedly at the end of his reading of every sentence like they were hearing it for the first time. The high point of the day was however when the prayer started and I heard and watched Stacy reel out phrases, which became sentences which soon turned into pages and pages of incomprehensible jargons. When I asked later in the car what it was all about, she had told me she had been overtaken by the spirit.

So as we lay backs to the bed and eyes to the ceiling, exhausted after our feverish bout of desire had expired, I imagined that she must have been overtaken by the spirit a while ago. It had all happened in a flash. She had arrived looking edible in a tight jeans and a sky blue blouse which gave more than a generous view of her twin pointer. I remember swallowing hard when I first caught sight of them while opening the door to let her in. Her demeanor betrayed her desires. I didn’t need to demand, she gave. I was afraid that perhaps the spirit might have now left her and she would soon begin to regret every thing. But not so, it soon became a routine, at her place, in my place and once even in the back seat of my car. The sex was good no doubt, but I couldn’t help the feeling of guilt that seemed to sip out along with the sweat as we lay gazing at the ceiling and the circling fan hanging from it after each bout.

I wasn’t a righteous person, I never laid claim to being one. Issues like fornication mattered very little to me but with Stacy, a supposed born-again it felt so wrong. Unrighteous people appreciated the existence of the righteous and wished they remained so, at least to maintain the balance between good and bad while nursing a silent desire that perhaps one day, they too would become righteous.  My born-again girl friend was born-again in every other issue but in my bed. Every speech was laced with lines like “My pastor said”, she paid her tithe as at when due, had every tape of all the Sunday sermons in a rack in her house, spoke in tongues and was a worker in the church. Often she rushed off to one church meeting or the other right from my bed still reeking of the Passion play we just acted. It didn’t feel right. It filled me with a dizzying urge to act out on God’s behalf, like it hurt me so much that He was being cheated.

My discomfort which came in the form of a needle-like pricks beneath my feet had every thing to do with my strongly held principles; you are either here or there, no in-betweens.  I felt those pricks each time Stacy’s actions had to conflict with her born-again status, like when we met one of her fellowship sisters in Ceddi plaza and she introduced me blankly as Mr. Bode, like I was some stranger she just met, or when I on her invitation attended a Talk their sisters fellowship organized for singles. Stacy had been one of the speakers and had with a lucid oratory spoken on a wide range of issues among which was a reminder that “our Body was the temple of the holy spirit”.

I had felt those needle-like pricks, so strong it felt like I was going to die of them on the day we broke up. It was a Sunday afternoon. We had just exhausted with a wave of desire and she was her hand mirror in hand making up to meet up with the Evening Service of her Church. She had spent the night at my place and had a ready excuse for any one who asked why she wasn’t at the morning service; “ I was on Night shift”, an excuse I had heard her give on the phone to her co-church workers right from under the covers of my bed on countless occasions.  The excuse found justification in the fact that she worked at The Sheraton and sometimes, she was genuinely on Night shift. As I watched her artistically line her eyes with a pencil that evening, the pricks of guilt overwhelming me, I decided to tell her I didn’t think it was right for her to still attend Church that evening.

Initially Stacy thought it was a lure for more. “Common baby, can’t you ever get enough of me?. I mean I was here all night.”

“You seem not to get me”

“I understand baby just that I have to attend church. Ok, I will head back here and go to work from here tomorrow. Is that alright?” She spoke with all her attention at the mirror.

Her reply only served to increase the pricks.

“Must you go?”

“Of course you know I have to”

“why?”

“Because…why all the questions?” she dropped the mirror and turned to face me. Her face had that look she always had when we argued. She thought I was in for an argument. She always won the arguments or rather, I always let her win just so as to make her happy. Like some days ago when while watching television together, an advert on the new Information ministers effort at Image laundering was aired and I had made a derogatory remark about it, describing it as another ill fated effort at deodorizing dog poop, Stacy had taken it personal saying every thing good, or she thought was good about it. Essentially she was celebrating the Minister whose efforts at freeing Nigeria of fake drugs is celebrated, not offering any logical justification for the millions to be spent on trying to ‘pancake” our image as a nation. I knew better, that over a billion was expended by a similar effort in the past that yielded no result and that common sense provided that you don’t succeed in riding a room of the foul smell of a decaying rat by spraying an air freshener. You had to take time to find and remove the offending carcass before your air freshener would be of any worthwhile effect, but I just let her talk and talk, at the end, I planted my lips against hers, conceding defeat.

She wasn’t going to win this particular argument however. It wasn’t really an argument; it was me telling her that she was doing a lot of disservice to her self by living a shameful life of deception. The loud bang of my door as she stormed out summed up how she felt at hearing me say all I said, and those I did not have to say. The pity I felt for her was genuine and I thought I needed to apologize but she wouldn’t pick my call and when I called at her place, she refused to let me in.

I saw her again at the next Reading. She was sitting three rows behind me. The Guest writer this time wrote short stories, and while he was busy explaining the complex use of present and past tense in his stories, I turned my neck in an effort to make eye contact with Stacy. I had done that repeatedly all evening without success, but this time, our eyes met and I could see that beyond the chairs and people that separated us in that little hall was a mutual feeling of regret; gallons full of regret flowing from the knowledge of what was and what could now never be. When I turned my neck again, she was gone.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

 

  

 

Between me and my laptop

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I share an unusual relationship with my laptop. It’s like an affair only this time we don’t go out on regular dates. In actual fact, we are always on a date since it’s always with me and only with it do I share my deepest thoughts….joy, excitement, anger and frustrations.

Within it also is stored my many musings and many unpublished and perhaps never to be published works. It lies next to me on my bed because it is the last thing I talk with before bed and of course I turn to it first thing in the morning… to finish up an unfinished piece, add a new idea to a completed piece or simply just to make sure it is still alive.

Of course this is not always the case. Principal to the functionality of my laptop is the sanity of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. Since I have not quite gotten my self to obtain the toy generators from China-I big pass my neighbour-, and with the Power Holders expertise at holding Power getting better by the day, I am often not able to keep my laptop breathing, so some (most) times we have to go through the troubles of break in communication which other relationships often suffer.

But we generally cope and those times we can talk to each other, we make up for the time lost due to PHCN’s insanity. The communication is actually a one way traffic, I speaking and it listening. It just opens itself up and allows me to pour out the inner vituperations, adumbrations and ranting that have built up in my gut since the last time we spoke.

And like a good friend, it takes it all in and dutifully helps me get to push them out from itself to the media through which others could also share from it or stores them in its deepest recesses until such a time when it would be accepted for sharing by others.

Imagine then how it felt when my special friend fell ill and wasn’t there for me for close to a week. A second act of carelessness had led me to cracking the screen and the cost of the attendant plastic surgery to give it a new face had been beyond my finances at that time.

Those were indeed unhappy and lonely days. Then only did I get to appreciate the level of intimacy we shared as I couldn’t readily get my self to pour out those thoughts into my roommate’s laptop. It felt like adultery…a sin against the ten commandments of God and one which I felt not just God but my laptop would not forgive.

 So for those seven days and twelve hours when my lover was defaced, I experienced a massive build up of thoughts so much so that I felt I was going to explode anytime. I couldn’t sleep well at night neither did I concentrate at work. When I couldn’t take it any more, I asked a friend for a loan.

Surgery is done and my lover is back alive and breathing, best of all with a new face. Now I can tell it all I missed to tell it all those dark days.

About how unfair it is for the Government to be playing hide and seek with teachers as regards the meager 27% increase in their salaries while political office holders, some of them motor park touts in nice clothing, smile home with amounts that can make the devil grin in envy.

About how our lawmakers did some thing worse than defecating on the alter; declaring Maurice Iwu a saint, telling him to ride on-tazarce style- and telling the rest of the 150 million Nigerians to go to blazes.

About how the Federal Executive Council is reviewing the Report of the Electoral Reforms Committee after the twenty two man committee had worked tirelessly for weeks to develop a document which seemed a certain solution to the PDP’s rigging of our elections.

About how I foresee an even more entertaining drama in the National Assembly when the FEC after its weeks of cut and join will submit the draft paper on electoral reforms to the lawmakers.

About how I have just passed out of the National Youth Service and I don’t seem certain of what direction I am headed because my certificate can’t get me a job and of course the leaders are too busy grabbing to care.

About how certain I am that this country was sinking. I wish to say more ‘cos there are many more issues begging to be talked about.

But this much I say now so that I don’t over stress my laptop that is just recovering from ill health.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo