May 15, 2010
‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop’ is one of those sayings that only become real to you when you’ve seen them at play or like in my case, when you’ve been a poster-boy for the annoying truths they portray. Indeed I have had my bouts of foolish behaviour that have left me quite regretful, but on a scale of one to ten, this one easily scores twenty and if it were on tape, it could easily serve as blackmail material.
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.