Its 7:00 am, I woke from the sound of birds chirping on the guava tree close to my room on the first floor. It was a bright morning, angelic rays of light flooding my room. I thought to myself, nothing could go wrong on this perfect morning but I was wrong to judge a book by the cover.
Its sunday, 27th of December, 2009 and we are in our village for our church harvest thanksgiving service. When I say village, I mean “VILLAGE” where kids still ride tyre putting on only under-pants. Am not exaggerating here. Looking out through my window I could see men clustering the gin store, taking 5 to 10 naira worth of gin shots to charge their system (that’s what one of them told me later), the women and kids hurry to their farms barefooted. I turned to my room-mate and brother @Sensei_Muna who have been watching them with me and said, “O Boy, this people under foot go be like sandpaper o!” We laughed and went to get dressed for the harvest thanksgiving which starts in the next 23mins. I brushed my teeth, put on a white t-shirt and blue jeans… No time to bath and then off to church.

Standing at the church’s back door, I could see gifts for the thanksgiving all over the place, that was when I got the real meaning of the “harvest” thanksgiving. There were gifts like; Big bunches of Banana and Plantain, Basket of palm fruits, Cassava and yam tubers etc. Oh! My bro just reminded me of something. Yes, how can I forget the dirty, smelly and noisy goats tied to trees close to the church building especially the bearded he-goat that keep tasting the pee of the she-goat tied close to it and making a funny face after tasting the pee.

Inside the church I noticed that the grannys were sitting together. It was as if the younger ones were avoiding them and this didn’t go down well with me so I decided to follow my heart and do the right thing. So I sat in the midst of the grannys.

NB: please don’t always follow ur heart

Twenty minutes into the service, I was already feeling light-headed from inhaling concentrated mouth odour for the past 20 minutes on my empty stomach. I started to remember how perfect I thought the morning was going to be when I woke up. Suddenly, I was brought back to reality by this pungent smell, one of the grannys just farted. No! This can’t be from just one person because THE FART was so concentrated that I could feel the hairs in my nostrils dyeing and falling off. I glanced around to see the frown on the faces of my seat mates but to my utmost suprise their faces were calm and smiley. In my gasp for breath so many thoughts flashed through my head; is it that their sense of smell has gone with age? Or is it that they have developed the ultimate skill to cushion blows because when THE FART hit me, I almost lost consciousness. All these thoughts were running through my oxygen depleted brain as I staggered out of the church.

Outside, I felt like puking my lungs out. I could picture how my lungs would look like then; like that of Nicholas Cage’s cigarette damaged lungs in Constantine. One of the ushers that saw me staggering out of the church came after me. She met me furiously gulping fresh air with my mouth (my nostrils seems insufficient). she looked at me with fear and asked, “where is your inhaler?” Suprised, I said, “what?” That was when she asked if am having an asthmatic attack. I told her that I’m suffering from gas poisoning. It was then that I noticed lots of eyes staring at me through the church windows….

That day I was embarrassed but I didn’t mind because I came out with my life.