While we ascended the steps I had a few minutes to think about what my plan of action would be. I decided that ending the charade there and then would probably earn me some nice slaps from my mum so I preferred to wait until we were actually in the doctor’s office.

Doctor Olalekan I think that was his name. He had a ready fake smile for everyone. Fake I say because it was with that same fake smile that he would over-bill my parents every time they brought us in. His favourite chant was ‘you people are the ones making the money, so you can pay it’ and then he would laugh like all those lecherous old men in tv dramas. Anyway, I hated him and his hospital which was on the third floor of the building. For goodness sakes, who put a hospital on the third floor? How were sick and dying people supposed to make it up there? So what if I was truly too weak to climb up and my mother with her protruding tummy couldn’t take me up by herself? Pscheeeeew.

‘Oya, doctor say you can come in’, said a smiling, gap-toothed nurse who worried me with her bad grammar. In my thinking, God help you when a nurse who cannot speak ordinary English, is attempting to jab you with a needle. There was no way she would get it right! Dad had told me a few times that a person’s inability to speak good English had no direct influence on their skill in other areas but as far as he agreed that academic lectures were held only in English language, there was no convincing me that those nurses knew anything. ‘Daddy, but how did they manage to pass their exams…?’

With a loud and grossly irritating laugh, Doctor O welcomed us into his office. ‘I saw your stomach before I saw you sef! Long time; no see!’ he said, as he hugged my mum. She however wasn’t smiling at his dry joke as she ushered me into a seat opposite Doctor O’s huge, brown-leather swivel chair. A few times when he was busy talking about football with dad instead of doing his job, I had managed to steal into the chair and score myself some minutes of play-ground type fun. I would spin around in the seat until my dad would notice and call a dizzy me away from it.

‘So, this is number what?’ He pointed at mum’s belly as she went through the long process of getting settled in the narrow chair. She was truly not in the mood for all this jabbing but the clueless man didn’t quite get it. ‘I thought my friend was doing family planning? This is five now, abi?’ So he knew the answer to his question. Pscheeeew.

‘Doctor, please leave that one. She is very sick…’ said mum as she held on to my shoulder. That was when he became serious. ‘Ah, ah…my friend, what is wrong?’ and he planted me with that annoying gaze of scrutiny as if he could tell what was wrong by just watching me closely. ‘I had malaria’, I replied, causing my mother to look my way.

‘You had malaria ke?’ She hissed in annoyance and faced Doctor O again. ‘Actually she’s been sick with malaria and we took her to hospital…’

‘You see? You don’t want us to see your money; you keep taking them to other places…’ This guy was supposed to be a doctor, why was he always going on about money? Mum didn’t seem prepared to explain anything so she flashed an apologetic smile and continued with her story. ‘But today she suddenly started crying and shouting about her head. And her stomach. I was really afraid o, Doctor…’

And that was when he rose and walked round the desk to squat in front of me. ‘So tell me by yourself, how are you feeling?’

‘I’m getting better. I’ve been taking my medicine’. My plan was going into action no matter how confused my mum looked and how intently Doctor O stared at me.

‘What do you mean? What about your stomach?’ asked mum who was now piercing me with one of her famous looks.

‘It has stopped’. I was defiant. Only very few hospital trips ended without injections and I was going to make sure this was one of such trips. She must have heard my thoughts though, or maybe she remembered that this particular child had a huge problem dealing with needles because mum  laughed quietly and told Doctor O not to listen to me. ‘You know she hates injections? So she won’t tell you the truth. But she is very sick. Her stomach is hurting as she’s sitting there, and she has a very serious headache…’

I jumped in protest and declared my healing with a loud voice. ‘I am well, Doctor…see…’ and I begun to jump around in circles; huge leaps that eventually gave me the headache that I had asked for. This made my mother and Doctor O share a good laugh.

‘Nk’iru…sit down’ Doctor O said as he gathered me back into my seat and placed a hand on my forehead. With a shake of the head he declared that I had a raging fever. And I did. But that was because I was here in this hospital and so had missed my afternoon dose of Paracetamol.

‘Doctor, when I go home, I will take my medicine and the fever will go…’I responded feebly. But he was hearing none of that. He had fished out a thermometer from somewhere and stuck the cold thing in my armpit. I turned to my mother and pleaded with my eyes but she was not going to entertain my anti-hospital behaviour so she ignored me and pretended to scribble on a piece of paper in front of her.

‘This fever is high’ said Doctor O as he beat the thermometer in the air and read it a couple of times. Then he went back to his seat and punched a stupid looking buzzer that looked like the control pad of our Atari video-game set at home. ‘Doctor, are they going to give me injection?’ I asked in fear as a nurse pranced in and he handed her a small sheet he’d been scribbling on, the same which mum had doodled on a few minutes before. Even with all the money he was making; he was recycling office stationery!

Just then and as though on cue, Doctor O and my mother looked up at each other for a second before Doctor O shook his head and said, ‘no, my dear. You and mummy just wait outside. They will bring your medicine.’ I might have been eight, but I wasn’t completely unaware of fraudulent adult behaviour so I was very sure that the look had meant something. However I couldn’t quite put my finger on it therefore I went with the flow and studied my mother’s face as we sat at reception waiting for my prescription.

After about five minutes of waiting through out which my mother looked tired and very eager to go back home, a nurse approached us with a sachet of medicine which she handed to me. I eagerly took it from her. I hated tablets, but much less than I hated needles so for me it was a case of ‘the lesser evil’. She then reeled out the instructions to me and while she held my attention, something very terrible happened in a blur. I felt myself being lifted, spun around and gripped in a something that was worse than a Karate hold. Next thing was I felt several hands holding me including the hands of the elderly cleaning lady; I caught a hint of her blue uniform in the melee that followed. I was to find out that there were about five pairs of hands holding me down when Doctor O showed up with the needle. He pushed my shorts to the corner and found a nice spot on my bum whilst I continued to struggle for dear life.

‘if you don’t stop moving, the needle will break in your bum-bum and that means surgical operation….’

I knew a girl in school who had had the same problem and I wasn’t about to let it happen to me so as the tears flowed freely I managed to convince myself to stay still amidst the many hands that were gripping me tightly. The ordeal was over in less than twenty seconds but it seemed like hours to me when the hands finally left me and Doctor O announced that he was done. I jumped down from my mother’s legs and unto the floor; dripping from my nose and my eyes as I glared at her and her swollen body. She couldn’t carry me up the stairs but she was Bruce-Lee enough to perform the magic she just did eh? Wicked woman.

What made the day even worse was that apparently, my good Samaritan neighbour had been long gone; he had to pick his kids from school and so as soon as he’d heaved me up to the clinic, he had rushed off. With a painful bum and now aching legs, I had to do the bus ride with my mother back home.

I cursed my mother. I cursed Doctor O, and most of all I cursed The Staff Canteen. Little wonder when a few years after it was demolished due to renovation issues, I was the least sorry. No matter how mum complained about the inconvenience of the exercise, I never took sides with her. After what The Staff Canteen had put me through? Who cared?!

Nk’iru. Njoku

It happened in my eighth year. I had been battling with a particularly bad round of malaria and woke up one morning too ill to go to school. Mum was heavily pregnant and was feeling a little poorly herself so had to call in sick. And so it was that I got to spend time with my rather antsy mother who made sure I lay still by her side whilst she slept away her pregnancy issues.

Now if you were brought up in my household you would know that ordinarily, my mother’s word was law, and if she was sick or in a bad mood it was law plus commandment and you only disobeyed at your own risk. Therefore the fact that she was snoring away beside me wasn’t enough to make me get up and look for something to occupy myself with. After sleeping ten hours at night and another six after everyone had left for school, even malaria wouldn’t make me sleep some more but I dared not move. And so I lay there, idle.

But you see,  while for some this much talked about workshop is nothing but a small carpenter’s shed or at worst a plastic-making factory, that early afternoon, the devil came and built a full-blown crude-oil industry in my little head! Picture turbine powered machines and important looking fumes and you get the idea. If I developed a fever whilst lying there beside my mother, it was not malaria’s fault! The Staff Canteen was guilty and should have been punished with a good number of years in prison because you see it was the thought of the double portions of luscious chicken and the adventurous looking pieces of cow intestine that got me suddenly writhing and moaning in false distress beside my sleeping mother!

You see, I have always hated hospitals and needles. There was only one doctor who I allowed to come near me with a needle without my screaming his hospital building down. He was my favourite paediatrician and I had met him as a two-year old. He used to call me his wife whilst showering all sorts of praises on me and he always gave me my favourite pack of biscuits. In between giggling and bathing my biscuits with spittle, I would allow him jab me with the most scary needles I had ever encountered and no a whimper would be heard!

However we had long moved away from the city where my husband practiced so getting me to hospital was always a dramatic episode for all involved. Apart from him though, the only other Doctor I would permit to touch me was whichever doctor that was on duty at the Staff Clinic at my mother’s place of employment. Now, I didn’t care very much for the place because of the consistently unfriendly faces of the doctors and nurses but I withstood every trip for one reason; the Staff Canteen that stood a few blocks away and held so many exciting promises…

Again, if like me you were brought up on a diet of home-cooked meals and the occasional fast-food indulgence, you would understand the excitement of that rare visit to a canteen or what is known as a bukateria. And if the buka was run by a lovely buxom lady who never failed to double your portions just because she loved the way you spoke English and made your mother proud, then you would understand why every visit was very well looked forward to!

And so my writhing and moaning intensified. However, when after a few minutes of my play-acting my mother staunchly refused to wake up, I decided to get a bit creative.  And so, to turn things up a notch, I poked her in the side! In auto-response, a hand flew to her side and her eyes popped open. She turned to me and became immediately alarmed at the sight before her! I was wriggling like a worm and at the same time managing to fling my head from side to side in pain. I decided within me not to produce fraudulent froth from my mouth only because I was seriously disgusted at the thought but making my eyes bulge was a worthy replacement and the general picture was satisfactory to me. By and large, mum nearly had a heart-attack!

‘What is wrong?!!’

‘Mummy…my head!! My tummy, my tummy…!!!!’

She flew up from the bed and rushed out of the house to alert the neighbours. Most adults on the block were out but the man who lived next door was miraculously on leave from work so it was he who answered her call. A few sentences in Yoruba afterwards, they both came running back into my parents’ bedroom and Baba-ibeji as he was known, lifted me bodily and took me downstairs to the car park. However, he didn’t walk towards my mother’s car as I expected. Instead he unlocked his white Toyota car and flung me into the back seat motioning for my mother to join me. She promptly obeyed and a few seconds after, we were speeding off into the humid afternoon. I was curious about the fact that my mother wasn’t driving and so I conjured up a weak but concerned tone.

‘Mummy…why are we not using your car…?’

‘My car is bad, but don’t worry…we’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes you hear?’

I nodded and smiled inwardly. Poor woman; she was trying to pacify me by reducing the time span of our travel but even I knew that Ahmadu-Bello Way in Victoria Island was not a few minutes away from home. However I was in no hurry. The Staff Canteen never ran short of food during office hours and in my head I could already see all the lovely pieces of meat jumping up and down in the huge pot that looked more like the aluminium basin mum used for Saturday laundry…

Then I heard the sound of children’s laughter and out of sheer busy-body, sat up to see where it came from. On the other side of the busy express, was my school bus on its way from the direction of my school. I shifted down in my seat as I was plunged into deep thought. Yes, it was probably close of school already so it wasn’t strange for the school bus to be on the road. So what was it that was immediately bothersome? Why was I so uneasy…?

Then slowly, the situation became clearer. Mum’s office and my school were polar opposites so we were on the right express, but on the wrong side of it! We should have been driving towards the same direction as the school bus! As soon as I figured it out I inched up closer to my mother and in my best martyr-voice I alerted her about our mistake…

‘No, we’re not going to the Staff Clinic’, she replied.  ‘It’s too far. We’re going to another hospital…the one near your school’.

Then, the real headache came and my stomach began to rumble. I was in big trouble and there was no getting out of it!

To be continued.

Nk’iru. Njoku.

Anyway, here was the catch; they both lived abroad, were both in their early thirties and ‘doing very well’. So he had taken it upon himself to help them search for good girls from good homes who would eventually become their wives. And so, after he came visiting a few weeks before and ate some food that I made, plus overheard a discussion with my mum that suggested to him I was ‘well brought up’, he had then thought to himself…why not? But you see, I am rebellious, however,  my mother puts the ‘r’ in the word so I was not surprised at her reaction…

The first time I saw this ‘Uncle’ during that visit was when I had gone to serve him some cold water. It was one of those Saturdays that should have been christened ‘Sun’-day, for obvious reasons. By the time I came back about twenty minutes after to retrieve the glass and saucer, my mother and her visitor were both red in the face. I was to find that her colouring was induced by anger whilst his was of embarrassment in the face of his ridiculous request.

Later on whilst in our bedroom with the rest of the bunch, I heard sharp, snapping sounds from mum, and what sounded like the mumbling of quiet negotiation from my uncle. A few minutes after, my mother’s voice graduated to a high-pitched yell and we had to rush out to see what was happening and heaven bless us, we were on time! Mum was getting ready to do the man some bodily harm; it was in her eyes!

When he saw me, this wife-seeker rushed to the door and motioned with twisting and turning of his hand for me to unlock the door. Without asking too many questions I did what he asked but the unrepentant fool that he was, he still managed to stutter,  ‘I’m just trying to help their future…’ but was out the door and into the wide arms of safety just before my mother could pounce on him!

You see, in ‘my time’, it wasn’t very common to have a ten year old in form one so I was a bit of a celebrity when I landed in my very first secondary school. But these days, eight-year olds are traipsing up and down secondary school corridors and it’s nothing! While I find this quite a genius-defining trend, I still feel that there is something very wrong with a child becoming an adult way before his or her time. It’s just not right. And this is firsthand experience. My age mates were playing with sand and fighting over bicycles whilst I was busy cracking sums that seemed impossible, and grappling with the wickedness of my secondary school teachers! Seriously, I suffered. But I digress.

I have no beef with my parents for encouraging my fast-track education but I do like to think that it was this speed-racer sort of development that had probably caused my dear uncle to assume that I was somewhere near old enough to be considered for marriage. Well, before he had gone too far into the discussion my mother had quickly corrected the notion. ‘She is fifteen and she is not looking for a husband…’

Of course uncle had been shocked but you know how the gods first make a person mad when dem wan kill am? The man continued to say that fifteen wasn’t too young afte rall he remembered that my mum’s mother had been married off at fourteen so what was the problem?

‘Dede…are you okay?’ my mum was still trying her hands at civility.

‘Of course. If we send her photograph to the two boys – ’

‘You want to send my child’s photograph to men to look at?’

‘Yes…I know she doesn’t have visa, so she cannot travel and go and see them and they are not coming home till December…’

‘So when you send her picture to them…?’

‘Yes, one of them will surely pick her, and then we can keep them in contact for three more years…’

I imagined my mother in a rage-like trance by now. ‘Then…what will happen?’

And probably with his Adam’s apple bobbing eagerly, Uncle answered, ‘then when she is eighteen…, we carry her away, fiam!’ and he gestured with a snap of his fingers.

Then she lost it, my mum. And she is quite an expressive woman, hence the yelling that ended the conversation.

There were a few other episodes with different other parents trying to marry me for their sons before I was seventeen. Most of them were shocked at my age declaration and while some of them backed down, others tried to convince my mother that marriage is best when a girl is very young. I know some parents who allowed their girls become wives before they were twenty. They usually had a splendid reason but in the end it all boiled down to money. While I try not to play judge over the decisions of families who ‘wore the shoes’ and therefore knew how much the poverty hurt, I was quite sad that people could allow themselves descend to such depths…

And so, when this whole thing with the forty-nine year old senator and the pubescent Egyptian girl begun, my first reaction was to attempt to take a step into the minds of parents who would readily exchange their daughter for hundreds of thousands of dollars in dowry. I couldn’t fathom it…in fact, forget how much was involved…as far as I’m concerned, only a very un-nice breed of parents would give a barely-teenage daughter out in marriage to a forty nine year old! Come on! Even the age ratio should be bizarre enough to rattle the most sex-crazed mind. And yes, for the offending adult, I think it all boils down to sex and the filthy desires of a lecher’s twisted mind! The sick thought of having your way with a fresh, un-cut little thing young enough to be your grand-daughter! Oh, or could it have been the Egyptian girl’s wit and charm then? Her presence and captivating aura?

For the love of all things good, thirteen-year olds are just babies! They don’t have presence except you’re in primary three and they’re your older sister. They don’t have wit and charm except you’re a ten-year old in love with your older sister’s best friend! Thirteen-year olds are children…just like everyone below the age of eighteen and only a sleazebag would see one and think ‘woman’ instead of ‘child’!

I don’t care how mentally mature a girl child is, I don’t care if she graduated from university at eleven, I don’t care if she is physically built like a twenty year old. Paedophilia is paedophilia! Otherwise it wouldn’t be paedophilia!

And it is disgusting. The Senator should return the girl to her parents, apologize to the whole country on national television, and then look for a good shrink for regular counselling. Like all the other people who practice this kind of nyama-nyama, the man has issues and needs help. Fast!

The End.

Nk’iru. Njoku.

Conversation flowed very easily among us and I kind of got the impression that Osi was slightly tickled at the sight of his two friends hitting it off quite nicely. We talked about everything from my school and the recent strike to their own school from which they had only recently graduated. We talked about friendships and how new friends sometimes seemed more fun that the old ones because it was an adventure and you never quite knew what to expect.

‘I hate surprises so the predictability of old friendships is a nice thing…’ I mooted.  And even though he agreed my point was valid, he did also think that new friendships tended to propel you to achieve greater things.

‘When you’ve been friends with people forever, they don’t criticize you and sometimes you need to be on your toes so that you can hit your goals…’

Very soon, as Osi was probably predicting in his big head, my conversation with this interesting pair of eyes progressed to a full-fledged, good-natured argument. Femi believed that sometimes we had to leave some friends behind if we were to ever succeed in life. And to buttress his point, he went all elderly on me by quoting an adage. ‘Twenty friends cannot play together for twenty years’ he said, but in Yoruba.

With a smile I translated his little piece of wisdom to English and while Osi was still protesting our use of vernacular that he didn’t understand, Femi experienced a zip-zap light-bulb moment. Einstein would have been proud of him.

‘Come, wait o…Nk’iru…you’re ibo, right?’

And in my head I heard the sound of the pedestal as the hinges started giving way…

‘Does my name sound Japanese?’ I was mildly irritated but it must have sounded like comedy because the boy was just laughing and flashing his sexy white teeth.

‘Yeah, of course you’re Ibo. I should have known from the name. But you see it just struck me…’ and he paused, with his head cocked to one side in that way that one of my most annoying lecturers did when we stupid students were supposed to hang on to his every word.

‘You are not like an Ibo person’. Gosh, he was not only hurtling down from the pedestal but in a dangerous way too. A few bruises were sure.

By now my smile had gone to roost and my serious face had resumed duty. ‘Excuse me Femi, but…how do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re just like us.’

‘Really? So, who is this…us?’

‘Us…as in we Yoruba people’. By now Osi was bowing his head tiredly. Old friends know just how you’re going to react don’t they?

And then to finally nail his coffin, Femi turned to Osi with an annoying smile that was half all-knowing and half-surprised. ‘Guy, if every Ibo person in Lagos was like her…Lagos would be a better place’.

And so the pedestal came crashing down…

‘My friend, please don’t even go there. Who do you think you are? And who told you I am like you? What did Ibo people do to you…?!’

By now Osi was on his feet and pulling me up by my right hand, ‘Nky no…let’s go.’

And you would think Femi would get the message, right? But of course he didn’t. He tried to defend his foolishness with some even more inane sentences the summary of which was ‘I was paying you a compliment, you should be happy to be compared to Yoruba people…’

Talk about a clueless idiot! As I spat out my rebellion at him all I could see was a worm with bright eyes and white teeth. The bile rose from my throat and if my rage had let me remember some of my Judo moves I probably would have attempted to knock him out bodily!

Of course Osi was unhappy with my behaviour but like he explained to me when we got back to my house, he was quite used to Femi’s idiocy. Apparently when they had been room-mates at university, Femi had constantly referred to Osi as ‘minor’, short for ‘minority’ because he was not from one of the ‘major’ tribes. I felt like performing some Judo on Osi for allowing us have lunch with an unrepentant bigot. Pscheeew…

A few weeks later, Osi came visiting and told me he had bumped into Femi at a party and after they had exchanged greetings, the silly boy had asked, ‘come o, so how is that your Ojukwu lady? Tell her that if she is so angry, she should go back to her village or go and fight another war!’

Shebi I told you there was something wrong with that boy’s upbringing?

Anyway I have since gone on to learn that no matter how enlightened or educated people are, these biases are an ingrained part of some of our lives and unfortunately, it is a horrible continuum which head or tail can no longer be deciphered. However, I choose to continue as my father taught me.

Without diminishing the importance of my cultural background, I am first Nigerian. It is who I am. My nationality takes precedence over my ethnicity therefore every other thing is a matter of personality.

The End

Nk’iru. Njoku.

‘What is Biafra?’ I spoke the word like it was the name of a poisonous plant.

I thought I was from Imo state and Lagos state like my mother used to say? Imo because it was the land of my ancestors, and Lagos because I was born there…so what did Abba mean by Biafra?

‘My daddy told me, he said you people betrayed Nigeria and then you wanted to have your own country but we won you people and now you people are ashamed!’

‘But I’m not ashamed…what did I – ’

But she cut me off and went on to explain that her father had also said Ibo people were very pretentious but they would always show their true colours in the end. ‘He said you people are the green snake under the green grass!’ As was expected, those within ear-shot found that bit quite entertaining and they had a good laugh. Although what was funny about snakes, I didn’t quite get…

Anyway, at that point, my curiosity had morphed into mild anxiety. My best friend was talking gibberish. Yes, I was upset with her for not playing with me and ‘disgracing’ me in the presence of girls whose necks I often wanted to wring, but I was also genuinely worried that something may have gone wrong in her head! My mummy once told me of a primary school friend of hers who had been very ill with Malaria and the high-fever had caused her to be talking nonsense. Was Abba falling sick?

It didn’t seem like it though, as she seemed to enjoy herself throughout break-time whilst I sat in a corner of the playground brooding over all that she had said. Biafra. Ibo people…bad people. So why hadn’t my dad given me all of this information? Was it because he was ashamed, just like Abba’s dad had said? I couldn’t wait to get home…

Dinner was cold and bitter that night. As I sat and watched my parents act like all was well, I wondered what my father’s reaction would be when I finally broached the subject of Biafra; the thing he was too ashamed to tell me about. He could teach me folklore and songs, he could buy me books from the Pacesetters series, he could even teach me better French than my teacher did, but the one thing I needed to know; the truth about where I was from, he had kept from me. I was an unhappy child…

‘Adanne, you are not from Biafra…’ he said with a sigh when after the Nine’o clock news, I finally blurted out my accusatory question.

‘But Abba’s daddy said we Ibo people are from there and we are bad and ashamed. Is it true?’

Enter the ‘during the war’ stories that went on to be a favourite sort of macabre entertainment at home; informing, scaring and saddening us at the same time. The horror that my parents described was until then only possible in books by authors my mummy referred to as sadists.

Abba and I stopped being friends after that. It was too hard for me to play with a girl who thought I was evil because her father said my whole ethnic group was! There was just something about her behaviour that day and afterwards, that made me realise even at that age, that no matter what your personal make-up is, some people will only ever be willing to see you in pre-judged bad light and will therefore treat you accordingly. What hurt the most was that the end of our friendship seemed to affect me more than it did Abba…in fact; the foolish girl was not pained at all! It seemed as though all the time our friendship lasted, she had only been tolerating me and when I finally ‘showed my true colour’, it was time to let me go. It cut me deep. Was it so wrong to be Ibo?

And so it took a bit if convincing to assure me that there was nothing wrong with me. Dad however warned that no matter what, I was to see every Nigerian as a Nigerian first. Oh, and of course, he wouldn’t tolerate talking down on other ethnicities in his house so what was expected of me was to respect everyone; it didn’t matter where they were from. He however didn’t fail to tell me that as I grew older, I would meet people who didn’t quite see things the same way and who would treat me like dirt because of where I was from. I also realised that I really wasn’t from Lagos just because I was born there, at least not by Nigerian standards! I was Ibo; some people would love me, some would hate me, and it didn’t matter…I just had to accept it and be the best person I could be, and that was that. Wow.

They were hard lessons for a six year old but they sunk in and over several years began to make better sense. All dad’s warnings about ethnic stereotypes and biases, unfolded like a prophecy but no matter how many times it happened, I would never quite get over it.

So Abba’s words hurt me when I was six? Well it was all child’s play, literally. The older I grew, the more I came face to face with this demon called ethnic prejudice.

Several vivid incidents remain with me. Sometimes the result was uproarious arguments about the equality of all ‘tribes’; we are all the same, nobody is better than the next person just because they’re from a certain region. Other times it ended in cold blooded insults hurled from one end of the lecture room to the other, and until I learned more effective, less aggressive methods to handle the scathing ethnic bias, I was quite the militant!

However my most interesting encounter with ethnic prejudice was at a first meeting with a potential love-at-first-sight boyfriend. You know, it was one of those periods in life where you wondered if you would ever meet anyone that would be truly suited for you; a young university student, waiting for love to happen to her. And one day he did. He was tall, dark and handsome like the fabled heroes in romance novels. He was smooth talking and obviously well educated; we had the same interests and a few mutual friends…everything was perfect until I realised that this fine-boy-no-pimples, kiss-me-and-let-me-die Greek-god in black skin, was the product of a very flawed upbringing.

Unfortunately for him though, I was still in that phase of verbal-militancy and temperamental patriotism; therefore I made sure he regretted the meeting as much as I did!

To be continued…yet again!

Nk’iru. Njoku

When we did our art, hers was always more colourful than mine. She knew how to work with bizarre combination of colours and she always came out with the most eye catching however grotesque designs for anything. It didn’t matter that she only drew stick figures and stupid shapes regardless of what we were told to do. No matter how nice my drawings were, she would use so much colour on hers just to drown my work and what more, she often admitted it. ‘I want my own to be finer than your own!’ Luckily, our fine-art teacher was reasonable enough to not pick garish colours over sensible drawings so I often scored higher than she did in the subject.

There was this time Abba brought a fashion magazine to school and we were flipping through and lying to each other that our mother’s had all the dresses in the magazine. Then we came to this page with lovely long gowns that had heart-shaped necks and no sleeves. Wow! Just the kind I used to make the ladies in my drawings wear!

Of course Abba said her mum had the dress and since we were telling tales anyway, I joined her in proclaiming a lie. I told her my mum had the dress in every colour of the rainbow! Unfortunately, I drew a crowd with that declaration. I luxuriated in the attention I got but between me and her, Abba knew I had just lied and so in her usual fashion, to trump me and perhaps divert attention, she chirped, ‘it’s a lie! I was just joking! I only said my mother had the dress just to hear what you would say because every time I say my mother has a dress you say the same thing too!’

And as was expected, the admiration of the crowd quickly turned to suspicion. Unfortunately for my best friend however, my writer skills were probably already being honed so cooking up a worthy come-back in the face of the getting-ready-to-boo-me crowd was almost automatic.

‘No! My mother really has all those dresses…it’s not my fault if your mother doesn’t have them too. And why were you lying sef?!

Abba was very well booed and that day nearly marked the end of our friendship. But I didn’t want to lose her. I’d joined my school late in the term and being the shy kid that I was, making a best friend was not beans so I wasn’t interested in starting from scratch. Our friendship survived that day though, after sharing my lunch with her and generally playing kiss-arse for the rest of the day, all was fine and dandy.

The following day however, Abba wasn’t speaking to me. I was confused. Was it because of yesterday? All through the first couple of periods, I kept wondering. Why was she avoiding my eye? She always loved to use my pink eraser but today she was making do with her blue one. When it was break-time and she pointedly moved to the other side of class to play with a group of girls we both despised, I knew there really was a problem. I was shocked though because I hadn’t expected her to take our little joke so badly. After all she had meant to make me look foolish so why was she acting up just because I’d been smart enough to turn it on her? She bullied me all the time and I took it because I really did like her; she was a good person if you overlooked her regular bouts of wickedness.

I don’t know how I summoned the courage to actually walk up to her and ask what was going on but I did. And this is what she said. ‘I told my daddy that you are a liar and he said it is because you are Ibo and Ibo people are from Biafra and you people are bad people so I will never talk to you again!’

And there my baptism of fire begun.

TO BE CONTINUED.

Nk’iru. Njoku.

*Abba, not real name of said best-friend.

It was a balmy evening with no electricity. My siblings were already asleep and I was hanging out with dad in the living room even though mum had warned me to go to bed thirty minutes before.  She was tinkering around in the kitchen and all I could think was why wouldn’t she stop all that noise? I was playing with my daddy and she was disturbing us…

Then she strolled into the living room, sweat glistening on her forehead, and wiping her wet hands on her jeans.

‘It’s hot o..’ She announced.

‘Have you finished?’ my dad asked in response.

I saw her shake her head as she walked into their room whilst packing her hair into a bun.

A few minutes later she emerged from her room now wearing shorts. The heat was that bad and she was probably antsy. Knowing that I could get a nice yelling if she saw that I was still awake, I squeezed myself into my father’s side, struggling to stay out of sight. But the hawk-eyed woman caught me.

‘You what are you doing there? Won’t you go and sleep?’

I looked into my daddy’s eyes as if the answer to her question was there. He smiled and asked her to leave me. ‘When she is tired she will go, there’s no school tomorrow’.

Ha! I was the victor. I sat there chuckling as she walked back into the kitchen.

‘Be spoiling her o! Anyway why don’t you go outside for some fresh eggs…’

Okay. ..fresh eggs, huh?  So that was why she wanted me to go and sleep? So she and dad could sit on the balcony and eat fresh eggs all by themselves? Busted!

Dad got up and I followed, of course. We went outside and he sat on the bench while I resumed one of my regular positions at his feet. I clapped my tiny hands as we recited the folk songs he had taught me over the months. I jumped on his pot-belly and remained there ‘pinching’ the heat rashes on his chest. By the light of a lantern we solved a few puzzles from his news-paper crossword. I eventually became drowsy but the thought of the fresh eggs kept me going…

Several minutes after, mum sauntered unto the balcony, still griping about the heat and worried about mosquitoes as dad had forgotten to shut the front door.  I looked at her hands and didn’t see any saucer or bowl. What was wrong with this woman?  Who was she trying to fool? Wasn’t it obvious that I wasn’t going to leave without tasting this mid-night snack of boiled eggs?

So I blurted, ‘Mummy…where are the eggs?!’

My mother stopped in what I presumed to be mock shock. ‘What eggs?’

‘The eggs you were supposed to bring for daddy, you think I didn’t hear?’ my eyebrows shot up. I was like a cynical detective interrogating an obviously guilty criminal.

‘Adanne, what are you talking about?’ Dad patted my forehead with the back of his palm…checking for a fever, maybe.

‘I heard when she said you should go outside for fresh eggs! Me too, I want!’ I finished petulantly.

Then my parents looked at each other for a few seconds after which Dad laughed under his breath as mum hissed at me, ‘I didn’t say fresh eggs, I said ‘fresh-air’! My friend, will you carry your long-throat inside the house and go and sleep like your mates!’

Oh my goodness I was so embarrassed, I could have wet my pants! I ran into the house with a stomach full of shame and it was a very long time before I could sleep. I had been disgraced in front of my dad and tomorrow, everyone else would hear my shameful story…

The next day, I expected to wake up to mocking laughter from my big brother and sniggering from my younger sister. But it wasn’t happening.  Nobody looked at me funny or passed silly comments my way…my respect was still in tact. What was going on?

It turned out that dad had made mum promise to not tell anyone my story. He had told her that I would die of shame if it got out. Mum was willing to be lip-sealed, but there was however a catch. From that day onwards, I was to let them spend their evenings together without my meddling, daddy’s best friend behaviour!  It was hard, but in view of the situation, it was a small price to pay…

However, for a long time after, every time my mum said certain words, I would diligently check to be sure that I wasn’t hearing things. I’m not sure I could have lived it down a second time if I one day heard ‘rice and stew’ instead of ‘give me my shoes’!

The end.

Nk’iru. Njoku

‘You know what? It is getting quite late; my brother will wonder what’s keeping me. See you some other time’ I said calmly and slammed the door of his car, not caring if the vibration would crack its windscreen. Damn him and his marriage proposal. I’d rather marry my father’s wicked brother!

It started on a dry Harmattan evening. I’d been invited for a party by an older friend and it was New Year’s Day so it didn’t seem like a bad way to start the calendar.

A few hours into the evening, she had to rush off to chat with her old school mates, leaving me all by myself; well not quite, as I was in the company of my plate of fried rice and chicken curry. And so, there I sat, wondering what everyone found fascinating about chicken boiled in a greenish gruel with the occasional pea or carrot-cube floating by. I always thought plain old jollof rice made more sense at parties, really.

‘But this one tastes nice, come on….’ I looked up and shot off several curious blinks at this light-skinned stranger…

‘I heard you saying you preferred jollof rice, but I think this is really nice’.  I laughed nervously at having been caught talking to myself and I can’t remember what I said in response but I do know that before long we had progressed to a debate about the effectiveness of a certain anti-inflammatory in treating allergies. Neither of us was a doctor; in fact the closest we both came to it was being members of the Red Cross whilst we were in primary school! Along the line we found ot that we did have a few more things in common and so it wasn’t surprising that by the end of the evening a friendship had formed and phone numbers were swapped.

A few days later, I turned nineteen and of all the gifts I received, his was the perfect one; an alarm clock! Don’t laugh, its true…I really was blown away. The night that we met, I had mentioned in passing that I was often late for classes because I never could manage to wake up early. It wasn’t even a topic we dwelled on; it was just an off-shoot of one of our many debates.  And he remembered! That singular act solidified our friendship and opened the door for many more evenings of easy conversation and friendly arguments.

One day, we were seated in his car as we talked about everything from his master’s degree which he’d acquired after three years in Europe, to the fact that he came back to Nigeria because he was desperately in search of a wife, to the odds of a nineteen year old getting married to a thirty-two year old…I know, dude was probably a pervert, but don’t blame him much; I was in my final year in university and I did manage to carry around a convincing air of wisdom; those were the days before the dredlocs and anti-establishment leather wrist-band…

Anyhow, I loved the smell of Chinedu’s car. It was an old Volkswagen Santana….something from the eighties and there was nothing fancy about it, but it smelled very…comforting; like the smells from an old bakery…it was really curious. And as I watched and laughed at the speech he planned to recite to my father, I had a flash-bulb moment. It dawned on me that Chinedu had never tried to grope me in the darkness of his car. My respect for him shot to astronomic heights and I remember just staring at him as he continued to lay out his plans for our future.

‘Will your mother come to your wedding?’ he asked, suddenly. I giggled in response and when he raised a questioning brow I responded, ‘ah-ah? Are you joking? In fact, we would have to beg her to sit down on that day so she doesn’t break a leg!’ but realised that I alone was laughing at my attempt at a joke.

‘My mother will not come anywhere near my wedding’, he dropped the words very casually; as though he’d mouthed them countless times before.  I wondered about that but before I could finish my question, he leaned back in his seat and hissed, ‘If I allow your mother come to our wedding, you have to promise that she will never visit our home afterwards’.

Screeeeeeeeech! Halt!  Poof! And I had another flash-bulb moment! This guy was tall, handsome, and remembered the little things, but he was also stark, raving mad!

To be continued….

Nk’iru. Njoku