Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The wedding, Nigerian police and my reflections

I was at a friend’s wedding this weekend in the far away town of Ado-Ekiti, it was fun, stressful and it set me thinking. It was also a sort of reunion for all my friends from University but before then let me humour u guys a little. My girlfriends, two whom are corp. members and i decided to travel to Ado together and so we did, early Friday morning we were already at the pack in Ojota before 8am and we got into a van/bus and waited and it didn’t seem we would leave soon, we then decided to throw down all them ajebutter airs and start hassling for passengers.
As soon as we started, it seems that everyone was really fascinated 3 fine gals in a park trying to market a transport service line, we virtually ended up stealing other transport line passengers, who wanted to be in the same bus with 3 interesting ladies; yes i tend to be very unhumble(anything like dat) about these things... lol. In all we manage to round up 13 humorous people of which 5 of them were old enough to be our parents but they were quite crazy enough. Our driver too was a young man and we had fun, gisting and catching up on gist until we entered Ogun state.

Suddenly we met a police roadblock that just refused to go away, they stopped the driver of our bus and asked for the essentials, license, papers n co.. He gave everything and they still wanted more. Instead of the police guys to come out straight and say they wanted money, they asked the guy for something else, i think the tint permit for the van, the driver gave a receipt saying that they had just renewed and the papers were not given yet but he had evidence of payment. One short police office didn’t agree oh! He just seized the drivers licence and everything that he would need to drive along the road without harassment. Just as we were looking on waiting for the driver as he was making calls to his head office, we saw all them police men jump into their van and kick off instructing the driver to follow them.

We even thought they wanted to move to a less busy place and then negotiate how much money they wanted when they started taking us to a bush filled area. Everyone in the bus started shouting at the driver that he was a fool for following them. One of the elderly men in the bus said that their station was way off route and another extra hours journey. Now for people who were supposed to make up the bride for her native law marriage that afternoon at 2pm, we started screaming at the driver and we told him to overtake the police van, which he did but the crossed us again, it was like the police chase in ‘Madea Goes to jail’ only that we were the ones pursuing the police van. After some time we decide to turn back and continue our journey, it seems that the police guys realised that we were not following anymore and they took one way and decided to cross us in front.

Funny, the passengers were ready for the police men, one mopol guy, opened the front passenger door and ordered the passenger there to get down, the passenger refused saying he had paid his dues and wasn’t standing up. The police guy thinking his gun brandishing self was intimidating had it coming for him, becos a s soon a s he entered the bus and ordered our driver to follow the police van, snide comments started flying the air, with the majority chanting insults and asking the guy where they were taking us to. We ordered the driver to park and we forced the police guy down. He was still talking big like he was going to deal with us, we seem to have been creating a scene when one official came and brought the drivers papers saying the oda guy should let us go that one said no oh! That one passenger talked to him rudely, see me see wahala oh, someone that is old enough to be your father is whom is rude to you, we didn’t mind that there were guns everywhere we were ready to shout and scream till we gathered support from locals when they finally released the papers.

I am sure they would still quarrel about the issue when we left, for goodness sake if they wanted money, i am sure we would have found something for him, but he was acting all lord and saviour unfortunately he didn’t get anything except wasted fuel and time. After that every oda road block we met we simply opened the windows and smiled sweetly at the officers speaking words of persuasion and love to the officers who would quickly laugh and send us on our way. We got to ado just in time and we settled down at her father’s house where the native marriage was goings to take place. After enough dancing and picking money and all she was married according to native law.

Fast forward to Saturday and she was all jittery and we were everywhere; friend so the bride making her up, decorating the car blah blah blah. Then we went to the house we were put up to dress up that was after sending the bride off to get married. With the way chics dressed and made up little wonder we got to the church just as the last set of photographs were taken, we had missed the wedding but we were happy she had gotten married.

Ms Ap got married a virgin and that got me thinking, there were still people who enjoyed the good old way of staying chaste till they say i do. We promised to stay that way but well things happen! But it made me really moody and stuff and then i promised myself that even though i couldn’t undisvirgin (today is a new day with strange words) myself, i was going to stay celibate till marriage. So this is saying have a happy and fulfilled life together and may one of the twins be my God son cos i know it’s going to drop soon with the glow i saw the morning after the wedding oh! It’s so on. Happy married life Mr& Mrs De and to all them fine Ekiti brodas well.... who knows.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

I REMEMBER...

I remember the days when i was taken from Lagos and dumped in a secondary school in far away Osun state. It was a crème school my dad said just before he picked up my admission letter. How can a unity school be a crème school, agreed it was a pretty new school but still it was a federal school. I had heard stories of how students especially juniors were beaten in such schools and i wasn’t going to be beaten so i planned to watch my back in school. We had a good “princi” that time so flogging wasn’t allowed but as soon as they changed her we began to see pepper.

It started in ss1, the class in high school where u are allowed to braid your hair and your pinafores were exchanged for skirts. We thought we had achieved some level of freedom and audacity, little did we know that our seniors had it coming especially for the newbies that thought they were all, i was in a certain purple house called violet house, with the most evil prefects especially the house captain; Grace A. She was rumoured to have been a man in her previous life, she was Athletic, no seriously athletic, she played all sort of sports that time and she was in the school relay team and all and she was UUUgggglly... Damn! Looked like a man and she was just the one my mum handed me over to in junior 1.

Anyways, it was a hard and fast rule that all ss1 girls would get toilets as their daily morning chores. (Anyone that went to a pro unitate school should agree with me), so the day i was assigned my toilet i wasn’t surprised. We were 4 girls to handle 3 toilets and 3 bathrooms. I quickly chose my T and got a padlock to keep it closed from people who couldn’t control their bowels. One of us want quite lucky cos he toilet door was missing so we all agreed to let students use hers and then we would take turns washing it.

Every Saturday morning we had inspection, these was when princi and her cohorts would come into our space and decide if we kept it clean, any complain forthwith would attract severe punishment after inspection.

Unfortunately there was no water that period so we had to be extra miserly with water when we were washing and that led our fat /insanely obese Vice principal Admin to say “Can anyone see that smell coming from the toilet” we quickly disagreed saying we only perceived it, which got killer looks from grace A. That meant only one thing. We were in for it. So immediately they left our U-shaped hostel, the four of us were ordered to kneel down very close to each other.

Grace told us to pick a partner, i chose a short gal Bunmi, which i am grateful i did, i was beginning to get intrigued but suddenly grace told us to start knocking ourselves and that whoever didn’t knock someone would be in trouble. Just imagine four people scrambling on their knees trying to knock each other’s head and at the same time trying to avoid getting knocked. It was hilarious by considerably painful, after that experience we were extra careful to waste water even when there was none. The next term we were relieved of our toilet duties but as if that wasn’t enough encounter with grace, i had another one memorable one.

After lunch was siesta, lunch was tiny, old gal was trying to rush to the dorm before siesta so i could soak before siesta as eating wasn’t allowed at that time. Unfortunately i didn’t make it so the soaking had to wait till after siesta. As i got up rushed to take a shower, it was past 4 and time for prep,i wanted to soak s badly and some ass of a prefect was banging the dorm gate. After 6 bangs, it was lockdown, that day jazzy didn’t send her, i wanted to take my Ijebu garri so bad that i was willing to be locked inside.
I was locked with other gals but suddenly the gate swung open and madam grace was inside the hostel threatening fire and brime to whoever was still in the dorm. I was dressed, carrying my already soaked cup and was rushing out when grace saw me and held me, gave me the worst slap till date and poured the garri on my head, emptied the whole cup that is, and ordered me to leave the dorm. I have not really like garri since then and how could i forget when they finally left and we were seniors. It felt damn good.

We had this window that we called “Jumbosco”, actually any window could be called that but it had to have an opening that we could use to get in and out of dorm at odd times. There was always a chair at the entrance to allow us stepping into the dorm, and u can imagine how many jumbosco’s were sealed and many more opened. Or the time that we would cook sumptuous meals in the dorm and when we were caught, my house produced only one spoilt ring boiler, while other houses sold out with tubers of yam, various types of hot plates and of course quick cooks like noodles and rice.

Violet house was beaten and we were called cultists for cooperating amongst ourselves, just a day before our WAEC maths paper, we were detained in front of princi’s house for hours. It was fun, pure undiluted fun. Fun that doesn’t come easy these days especially with the stress of Lagos life and work... Still haven’t gotten one yet so if u need to hire a smart fine looking sista, u can reach me. All i want sometimes is to relive some of those experiences, not just the punishment part... sometimes i remember...I really do.