Hello Everyone,
For the readers in the house, relax and enjoy my story.
Topic: Endless Phantasmagoria

“ Today has been a hectic day” intoned the teacher after he dropped his chalk on the table. He concluded he was too tired to continue teaching for the remaining day. Writing on the blackboard with chalk in a country like mine demands being extra careful if you don’t want to go home with catarrh and or stained with chalk particles. That must have also remotely discouraged him from taking the class coupled with the fact that he was wearing a white shirt and a pair of black trousers. As one of the students in his class, I was very happy with his decision because my stomach was already getting ready to be filled with a bowl of eba and egushi soup. Eba and egushi soup is a Nigerian delicacy consumed by almost everyone in the country irrespective of their religious, ethnic or political affiliation. Before he said “see you next time”, I was already on my way home. Walking home was an exciting moment because it gave me the opportunity to feed my eyes with the beautiful structures along the way and the wavy movement of the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the time I envisaged myself on one of the boats exploring the water. When I got home, I went straight to the kitchen to help myself with some food.

As it is well known with the Yoruba culture in Nigeria, when greeting your parents or elders, you are expected to prostrate. It is very important to note that while prostrating, they stand to form the pillar. I was excited when I got home because mum and dad were not home to carry out this ceremonial activity of standing while I prostrated to form the normal perpendicular. I think they must have been preoccupied with the day’s activities or busy discussing the problems facing our country as this was common with the elderly in the society. After eating, I felt too tired to take my dish back to the kitchen or even pick up my bag which was sitting on the antique chair close to the door in the sitting room. “Maybe I will do that work later”. My eyes grew heavy and after some time, I fell asleep.

The first time I met Damilola was when I was on my way to visit an uncle of mine who resides at Lekki in Lagos. We became friends from the moment I got into the bus after sharing some pleasantries. I was more interested in the friendship because he was smarter and spoke well in public. We travelled along the bad streets with little to discuss because the old men sitting next to us in the bus chocked everyone with the smell of tobacco, perspiration and their unfriendly faces which were designed with tribal marks. Most people joke a lot about such tribal marks because they are too pronounced and took a large area on their faces. I once asked a lady whether the marks on her face were a result of her fight with a tiger. I regretted ever asking that question. It was regarded as an insult to the elders but I did not know. Unfortunately, I was given the beating of my life. My dad gave me twelve strokes of cane while the community head accompanied that with another ten strokes.

The silence was interrupted by 4:00pm when we heard in the news about the death of five doctors who once boarded a plane from Abuja to Lagos. These doctors were among the very best the country has had. The passengers in the vehicle made heartbreaking remarks about the incident. Some of them hissed and made no remarks. They were having too many issues to bother about. Some of these issues included: paying their children’s school fees, house rent, buying clothes for the family, food, medical bills, unemployed family members, pregnant wives at home and so on. That same evening, I finally arrived at my destination late. My uncle’s house was unusually calm and quiet that day. When I got inside, I was immediately welcomed with the news of the death of the doctors. (Let me know if I should continue)

My body became cold when I saw big uncle crying. He tried gathering himself back when he saw me but couldn’t. Little cousin told me that one of the doctors that died was uncle Dele’s friend. I refer to this uncle as big uncle because of his generosity, big heart and size.

Big uncle continued to mourn his friend’s demise for days. Any intelligent person ought to quickly understand that they were quite close. It’s okay to cry as my Dad always says when condoling his friends. At this point, nobody could explain what was the exact cause of the death of his doctor friend. Maybe time will provide the answer. After settling down, the next day I resolved to carry out a personal investigation into what killed them. I started by asking big uncle to provide me with the address of the doctor’s apartment. This he quickly did. He also provided other necessary information but was not ready to take part in anything called investigation. Fortunately for me, as I was still talking to big uncle, Damilola’s call came in. This call brightened my day because he offered to visit me the following day. I concluded in my heart that when he comes, I will siege the opportunity to convince him to join in my investigation.

The next morning, the alarm in my phone rang so loud that I jumped out of bed with a headache. I hurried to the toilet to do some cleaning as fast as possible to get ready for the day’s activities. By 7:00am, I was already in the sitting room waiting for Damilola’s call for I had already given him a detailed description of where I reside. In other states, apart from Lagos, 7:00am would be too early to begin the day with. But here in Lagos, if you don’t wake up as early as 4:00am to prepare for the day, you will end up getting to the office very late as a result of the traffic jam or sometimes grid lock. I never expected Damilola earlier than 12:00noon because he was only coming to pay me a visit. As I did all the thinking alone in the sitting room, a tall figure came close to the door and rang the bell. It was no other than the handsome Damilola. Without wasting much time, I grabbed my bag and met him at the door. He expected a display of hospitality which was the usual act of an average Yoruba man in Nigeria (though this was not the case). I was preoccupied with the thought of getting to Ikoyi, the doctor’s house. He sighed with dissatisfaction. Immediately, I apologized to him in order to avoid arguments and counter-arguments. We entered his old Toyota car before he decided to ask me what was going on. I responded “let’s go to Ikoyi,” we need to get to the doctor’s apartment early”.

Damilola and I had met just a few days earlier but we were already on the way to becoming good friends. Maybe, we had a lot of things in common. We agreed to carry out the investigation together. Though surprised with the level of interest he showed on the whole issue. When we got to the doctor’s apartment, a young beautiful lady welcomed and directed us in, for she assumed we were one of the doctor’s friends that came over to commiserate with her. She offered us drinks which we refused to take. As the saying goes, “mourn with the sad and drink with the happy”. It was quite clear from her body movements and her tone that she was still struggling to cope with the demise of her husband. We were very careful with our choice of words when secretly interviewing her. She explained how she lost her husband four days earlier to an illness that was beyond the comprehension of doctors after he arrived at the Lagos airport from Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. In her words, “he came home tired and hungry so I decided to prepare some yam and stew for him. That was his favourite dish. The next day, he started vomiting and could hardly stand on his feet. His temperature rose beyond normal, his body turned pale and he lost so much weight as he grew worse by the hour. I rushed him to a private hospital close to our house. It was in this same hospital that he gave up the ghost as a result of dehydration and excessive bleeding from the nose ”. While explaining to us, she started crying. I innocently held her hands and told her it was okay to cry but not okay to hurt herself. Damilola, on the other hand, was filled with emotions. He busted into tears. At that moment, he told us a story of how he lost his mum to an illness that showed the same symptoms. This was getting more confusing than I expected. Then I concluded that the country was at war with something it didn’t know or had ever experienced before.

We left the lady with words of encouragement and promised to visit her two weeks later. Fortunately for us, she never bothered to even ask if we were related to her husband. I knew for sure that nothing would have stopped me from telling a lie. We became speechless for a while as we went our way home. We were overwhelmed by the lady’s story. Meanwhile, we stopped by a restaurant close to the airport to take some snacks. As we ate, the news of the doctor’s demise, still the topic of discussion among the public, echoed in to us through three pilots smoking cigarettes in a bar close to the restaurant. We were very much interested in their discussion and as so, pinned our ears in their direction in order to hear them clearly. Coincidentally, one of the pilots was the one who flew the plane that day. He explained to his friends how a lady in the plane collapsed and how the doctors on board innocently attended to her. Unfortunately, these same doctors were the ones who lost their lives a few days later. The whereabouts of the lady that was helped still remained a question begging for an answer. >>>To be continued