Entry 12

PANDORA’S BOX I threw my bag angrily on my desk and stormed into the kitchen, I want to yell at somebody, arrgh! I wrote my final paper today and truthfully? I am honest to G*d pissed!! Angry, mad, stark raving bonkers!! I know I spent a better part of the semester enjoying my ’15 minutes of fame’ in the spotlight but please! That lecturer is a witch! ‘Azen’, marine spirit, ‘Ogbanje’, ‘Abiku’, Mammy water even!! It’s all her fault. Would you believe it? I have gone for three days straight with my phone on flight mode, I haven’t returned any calls from ‘mugu’s’, fans and admirer’s, I haven’t even let myself wander if Nneka sat at ‘his’ right or left hand. That should have been important because now I think of it; I have reason to believe that ‘herself’ and Nneka belong to the same mission! The woman comes in 30 minutes late for lectures, locks the door behind herself when innocent people like me who came to class 15 frigging minutes early walked out to buy a stick of gum, spends an hour 30 minutes plus an extra 45 minutes talking about her only and favorite topic of interest; why the price of garri would never drop! As if that’s not enough torture, she goes ahead to take attendance. Attendance!! She is a science teacher for Chris-sake, what has Nigeria’s economy go to do with her course?! It’s a little wonder I feel so rotten. Now, I have to go underground to see if she is ‘block-able’ just in case. Mother thinks am finishing exams next week buh, I lied! She needs my help and am not willing to voluntarily lend it. Some of her ‘conservative’ relatives that do not approve of her way of life are coming over for some sort of family meeting. She believes that if she dangles me in front of them, showing how well she’s done with me as a single mother they would lay off her case. Well, the only way I’d agree to curtsy and bow to a bunch of hypocrites is if she agrees to increase my pocket money by 40% [these are hard times, everyone is hustling!]… I fell asleep and forgot to lock the protector last night! Lucky me, the ‘real owners’ didn’t choose yesterday to do rounds and claim their property. Buh, at the moment, I am in an ‘almana’ tight bus headed to Bayelsa. Impulsive huh? For working so hard throughout the session, I decided to reward myself with a little R&R if you know what I mean. I have everything planned out, three nights and four days? It’s going to be a trip to die for! I’d see the sights; I’d feel the culture buh, make new ‘friends’ even! Then, I’d return home before Nneka goes to check on me at mother’s house. Buh, the way the driver is moving sha, na die o! Ibiela sent a text saying Akuna [a classmate from secondary school] gave birth to a boy the night before. The man responsible is a ‘bloody’ corper serving not too far from where she stays. Who could blame her? When students spend 7 years studying a 4 year course due to strike, missing heads of state, militant unrest, inadequate facilities and what have you, it’s a miracle that the students aren’t buying shares and investing in accommodation allocation’s, as for Akuna et al, blame it on faulty wiring of their biological clock I guess. Buh, its scary though Akuna, Zogie, Rachael and Ama are the Christian sisters of my time, as in the ones wey dey carry bible matter for head. If they are taking prayer sessions to another level with ‘alleluia’ sessions bringing forth children, what becomes of people like me, what of Nneka?!! The bus swerved, I looked up. Was it just me or did the bus driver just run over a police officer? The driver was simultaneously trying to avoid a port hole and the blockade they had built up. He should have seen him struggle to gain control of the bus but the idiotic being [more worried about his loss of 20 Naira bribe than his life] kept flagging him down. One instant, I had my phone in my hand reading Ibiela’s text message and pondering over the rate of teenage parturition, in the next, my hand was on my head [phone flung to G*d knows where] screaming like the child who saw tomorrow. Looking through the window, I spotted water below; a river? I watched in horror, the bus driver was fighting a losing battle; he collided with first an overzealous ‘okada’ rider driving on the wrong side then bounced off a broken down Honda forgotten in the middle of the road. I paused my screaming only long enough to shield my face from broken glass shooting at me from everywhere! Two deaths, am certain. In Nigeria? There is no way they’d survive. Still, the nightmare continued. An ‘ekene dili chukwu’ lorry was charging towards us in full force I doubted it had functioning brakes. There was a ‘Zulu’ chant playing in my head which sounded more like “you’re going to die- you’re going to die”. In a quick move, the driver pulled the steering to the right and burst through the railing of the bridge. The bus carrying me and 13 other passengers was airborne!! An image of me and Max walking down the aisle fluttered, perched and flew from my mind The bus is quiet, time has stopped. Silence. Blood tickles down my face and drops on my once white top. Mine? I try to move but blinding pain halts my attempt. My chest feels heavy, can’t breathe. I am tired. I’d close my eyes for a while - TABBY