Prologue

One may say it all began seven years ago. One may also say it began way before that, stressing the point that it had begun a year before that. But regardless of what one chooses to believe of the two, it's fair to stand on the common ground that one would still be right.

There's a saying that there are always two sides to a story. Well, in this case, there's a third. Rare? Yes. But no less a first as far as first goes. But believe me when I say that all that would be shared in this account is entirely true.

For the first set of people that believed it started seven years ago. On that humid afternoon, the individual this story was about first swiped that #500 change from that man's pocket at the market square. It may be said of them that they are not farther away from the truth. For indeed, the wheels of destiny had been set in motion that very day.

For the second set of people who believed it had started a year earlier. That dismal rainy evening when the main character of this story had stood under that shed and watched his father breathe his last in that moldy culvert. It may be said of them that they know their ass from a hole in the ground. Simply because that very event sealed it for him.

However, what either set of people failed to see is the fact that this story had begun even way before all of that. But the fault isn't entirely theirs. Or is it? Anyway, I do think the blame hinged solely upon this old truth, older than any man that people tend to see the effect and not the cause of events/smoke but not the cause of the fire.

You might wonder why I know so much about this person and why I'm the one narrating this tale. And rightly, so. That's because the main character of this story is me. And the account I'm about to tell you is mine.

If I were to be asked the same question of when it all started. I would say that it began twenty-two years ago. The very moment God blew his breath into my lungs. For it was written in the stars even before I was born that I would wound down this path. It was woven into the thread of life that I would become this person even before I took my first earthly breath. It was there in the umbilical cord I had around my neck at birth that I would turn out the way I did. To put it like a wise man once said; the pen has been lifted and the pages have dried even before I arrived on this planet.

Although, people may say we're the master of our own Fate. But, I say they couldn't be more wrong. For we are in fact nothing but Omo Ayo—Ayo seeds—in the hands of fate.

This, I know for certain. And if not so, what else could it be? Or, why else is life so dour and unforgiving? And why do we struggle so if not that we are mere hands for Fate to play?

Chapter One

From what I can recall from my early life, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn't born or bred with a silver spoon. My family, if anything, gets by each day on a hand-to-mouth basis.

Even though I like to think that we weren't as poor as some families in Nigeria back then. Nor are we living in abject poverty as the skin and bones kids shown in the footage generally used as promotional videos by UNICEF and the WHO on TV. The ironic bit remains, by no means can my family be considered rich, either. At least, that much could be backed with proof that; we didn't own a V-booth Benz which was the trendy automobile owned by the cream of the society at the time. This, plus the fact that my parents couldn't afford to send us—myself and my two siblings—to the Montessori schools that were cropping up in the country then.

However, in retrospection, I sometimes wonder if living in the cramped space of a studio apartment—or a room and parlor as it's commonly referred to here—infested with bed bugs and roaches, and lacking general modern conveniences like an air conditioner, and seldom eating two square meals a day is anything but that.

Although some people who grew up in a family like mine at the time may go on to identify as being in the middle class. Thing is, I will have no part in such fantasies. Because I believe a midpoint had ceased to exist in the social classes in Nigeria at that time. From that point on, you're either rich or poor. It's that simple.

Even while my dad was alive and working whatever job it was that he worked, which as it happened I didn't know at the time because I was too young to understand anything. All I know is he leaves home dressed in a pressed shirt and slacks bright and early in the morning and returns late in the evening, tired to his bones. I can still recall us saving up the tubes of our Closeup toothpaste after they must have been squeezed flat as a pancake and refused to spill out their content. These stored away tubes my mom would make sure to put to later use on our rough days as she called them by blowing air into them before cutting them evenly into two with a knife.

Another thing I picked up from that time was watching my mom put away the second tin of Peak milk for a tea meant for five people every time we breakfasted on bread and tea. This special tea of hers, she usually made with four Lipton bags with no Milo or Bournvita beverage as an additive. After finishing up with this tea alagbada as it's commonly known, mom would cut up a paper into neat pieces of twos or threes. It was with these pieces of paper that she often covered the tiny holes she had made earlier with a bread knife on the lid of the tin milk after greasing it with her saliva. Not to mention, myself draining off the bottles of soft drinks I was asked to return to the retailer every time someone paid us a visit.

If this is not living in poverty, then I wonder what else is…

I still remember growing up with my family of five in what is commonly called a face-to-face in our part of the world. My earliest memories come from tottering from door to door in one of these types of apartment buildings, which have their rooms built in adjacent rows of three to six rooms lined up opposite each other on the backwaters of Lagos that we lived in.

The house we lived in on Tejuoso Street, Surulere was a barrack. Bear in mind that, a barrack in my part of the world doesn't necessarily mean buildings where soldiers live. Well, in this case, what I meant is that our house is one with a lot of buildings in it. First, there's the main house where my family and five other families reside. Then, there are two Boys' quarters—each with seven rooms apiece—in the backyard. So technically, there are a lot of rooms. Which inversely equals a lot of tenants and troubles. Fights broke out every time over trivial things like who made use of the toilet and left it untended after use, whose turn it was on the house-sweeping roster, who shirked the bathroom cleaning duties, who inadvertently or advertently unspread someone else's clothes on the clothesline, and so on.

I remembered waking up every morning to first; the crows and gabble of the gaggle of cocks and hens in our area. Then to the Adhan—the Muslim call to prayer—by the Muezzin from the nearby mosque. And, ultimately, to the permanent fixture of blended waves of the noise of married women, spinsters, and bachelors fetching water from the taps of the three-storied building on our street.

This house owned by a calabashbellied Alhaji who has four wives in different parts of Lagos boasted not only as the painted house on our street but the whole of Tejuoso at the time. Alhaji Karashi as he was known by everyone in the whole of Surulere and half of Lagos mainland sells cars at the famous Oshodi's Ladipo market. Alhaji, a socialite and born philanthropist, whose smile is often readily cocked to reveal his sets of silvered teeth which serve as a subtle indicator of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Mecca always felt obliged to give back to the society. Hence, after the successful completion of his house, he arranged a borehole for the whole community.

This made his house, the one he spent just two days out of the seven in a week whenever he visited his first wife a hotspot for brawls and shouting matches. From there every morning, you can always hear the frequent trading of insults and the string of curses. Statements like "Mi o nigba, mo shaju yin de idi odo. E le cheat mi," "Aye yin o nida", and "A bi ko fe da fun yin ni?" are always flying around. It's worth noting that the latter statement is often said with a rising tone, so it's always safe to assume it's a question. Which you can then easily reply to with, "O ma da fun emi oo. Eyin ni ko ni da fun oo."

Aside from this, Alaanu ni Oluwa villa —Alhaji Karashi's house—also serves as another side attraction. Funny that, it's only in Lagos that you will see strange houses with even stranger names. Only, this side attraction is an esoteric knowledge shared between the perverted and lecherous men on our street. I wouldn't become privy to this information myself until I turned eleven and was able to partake in this major rite of passage with the Egbon Adugbos—area brothers—on our street.

If you are wondering what side attraction the house serves. Then this is it: Being that all the women on our street as well as others from neighboring streets, all of whom have shunned the Baba Ijesha selling water in our area for the free water offered them by Alhaji Karashi are always in need of water. And for the most part are on this quest every morning in their naturally unguarded state. For this reason, the larger percentage of the male demographics on our street figured out the best way to make the most of this situation.

So, at every sunrise, the egbons, the unemployed bums, and the depraved old men on our street clad either in an Ankara wound around their necks in the Pakaja style. Or in the age-stained yellow singlets they have slept in overnight with their pricks half-tenting in their knickerbockers, all come out to feast their hungry eyes on these exotic scenes.

Standing in verandas or in front of their houses which literally served as ringside seats, and pretending to do anything from brushing their teeth with Paako—the local toothbrush which is gotten from the barks of trees—to listening to the AM sports news on their transistor radios, these men engaged in the real-time viewing of a most-premium primetime show. From these vantage points, they watched as braless women with breasts of all kinds trooped past on our streets like an army of ants with buckets and pails of water gingerly balanced on their Osuka-ed heads.

It's from engaging in these acts which only in hindsight seemed deplorable that I had the experience of what could be likened to the lesser version of what psychologists termed my primal scene. It's also from there that I learned certain words describing some parts of the woman's anatomy. This is made possible because these uncles or egbons as we like to call them have different names which they called the different types of breasts they glimpsed from their favorite spots.

For instance, one such name is the slippers. I think it's in your good interest to know that slippers in this context don't necessarily mean your regular bathroom slippers. Instead, it serves as a term used to describe fallen, droopy breasts. Others like it are Oronbo—lime—which is used to describe an especially small breast; Watermelons which usually refers to breasts, so big that they're barely curtailed by whatever outfits their owner was wearing.

Space rented, seat placed, popcorn bought, all in readiness for this piece 😎😌.



#Xavier

Xavier5:
Space rented, seat placed, popcorn bought, all in readiness for this piece 😎😌.



#Xavier

Alrighty. Good to have you here by the way, boss.

Strap up! 'Cause we're heading straight for the satellite.

Growing up in the manner that I did ensure I was exposed to a lot of things as a child. Although I wasn't a partaker in most of these things, being just an audience watching from afar was enough to make them a part of my experience as much as those who actually lived them. For example, I wasn't allowed to play or run around in the rain like most of the kids in our house do. All because my father wouldn't permit it. He was wont to say, "Because we live in this house, or this ghetto doesn't mean you get to behave like hood rats. You're different from those other kids. You're my children, born to me. And you must learn to act like it."

But the fact that I didn't get the chance to play football or Suwe—a game played by throwing seeds and hopping on one foot through a square of either eight or ten tiles depending on the preference of lines drawn in the sand—alongside other kids in the rain doesn't stop me from sharing in the profoundness of the joy from these games. I often watched with a smile from our window as the kids kicked balls around in the slanting sheets of rain, sloshed through giant puddles filled to the brim with muddy rainwater, splashed and played in the same water, or took turns as they pushed each other across a concrete pavement while seated on a slab of wood which moved on boris wheels.

Similarly, I couldn't dare to join with the other kids who rolled tires up and down our street daily, clad only in panties. These plaything—which happens to be their first-ever automobiles—come in various kinds: mostly as regular motorcycle and car tires; or as the most-favored type, the wrought iron or copper molded into a perfect circle, and driven with a stick, on whose head is attached a used milk tin beaten and flattened, such that it resembles a golf club.

What's more, myself and my siblings don't get to bathe outside like other kids in our yard. As with most things, my dad forbids us from doing that, too. Stressing the need for us to be model children and how boorish a thing it was to do. So, instead of going the orthodox way like everyone else, my mom usually bathed us in the bathroom we shared with two other families in our wing.

In the house that I grew up in, like almost every house on our street as I believed at the time, it's a common rite every morning for kids to bathe out in the open. The only exception is sometimes on unforgivingly cold Harmattan mornings. But since there's scarcely any sign of the bone-seeping chill brought on by the harmattan season and experienced across the country at every dawn in Lagos, it's better to assume there's never a time this happened. Save for the fog in the sky, it's really hard to tell most mornings if Harmattan is still blowing or not.

The spots for these baths vary from home to home. For the vulgar and borderline flippant on our street, it's usually done in front of their house. For those that have little decency in them on the other hand, their affairs are sorted out in their backyard.

This particular experience remains one of my fondest childhood memories even though I never for once did partake in it. Watching those kids who happened to be around my age at the time lined up in their birthday suits while their younger ones are being attended to either by their moms or older siblings—sisters mostly in this case—is one thing I can never bring myself to forget even if I want to.
The mothers whose nudity is covered only by various one-piece mismatched Ankara Iros tied high above their busts would sit on Apoti—stool—while they scooped water from an aluminum basin and rubbed their bodies with the local sponge. It's from these seated positions that they usually bark out curt commands; demanding the kids hold onto a bucket or pail and raise their feet while they scrub almost to the point that the sole of each foot is showing faint blushes of red.

The clangorous chorus of cries that accompanied this ritual from children either spanked hard on their buttocks or slapped across their faces by their mothers; the spatter of water hitting the concreted floor as each bowl of water is emptied on the kids' heads, along with the vigorous Tchw-tchw Tchw-tchw of toothbrushes gliding over teeth will forever be my favorite sounds.

On the other hand, the sight of water raining down from the bowls and snaking down the kids' bodies in ribbony rivulets: the slather of blood and thick white foam as it dribbled down a corner of the kids' mouths as their mothers brushed their teeth remained my best visuals. I guess even mothers aren't exempted from the African passive-aggressive ways of doing things; driving the brush over the rows of teeth in both horizontal and vertical motion, until the gums are bleeding or a crown or two is shaking.

However, there's one thing in particular that my dad loathes above all else: that is, the notion that bathing every day would make one's skin blanch and paper-thin as it was believed by most people at the time. He never once entertained these 'unfounded theories' as he aptly called them; and was never a believer or subscriber to the concept, either.

"Why should you go a day without bathing when even a hen takes a sand bath every other day?" He would often direct at no one in particular in that stern voice of his. "Not only is it a sick thing to do, but it's also only befitting of the Cavemen because only the Caveman goes without bathing and eats fleas picked from their hair. And I'm quite certain we modern men are none of that anymore."

This means instead of skipping our baths on Wednesdays and Saturdays as everyone does, we bathe every day of the week. Of course, this along with other things we did then drew derision and mockery from our neighbors who were given to gossip and name-calling. Statements like "Awon alakowe yi ati iwa won yi sa?" meaning "These learned people and their strange ways," or, "Won a de mase bi eni ti ko ki ya gbe," which translates as "They're always acting as if they don't take a shit," are never far from their mouths.

But no matter how hard my dad tried to shield us from sharing in these experiences. One thing he didn't know is we couldn't unsee the things we've seen; nor could we unlearn what we've learned, even if we could, and that whether or not he likes it they've become a part of us, too.

Oh, that brought to mind. Did I ever mention to you that my mom, just like my dad was a Polytechnic graduate? Not that there's something special about this information, but I thought it would be better if you knew that my mom is educated. Only she didn't bag beyond an ND—National Diploma. She had to put paid to her plans of bagging a Higher National Diploma because my all-too-manly Dad couldn't stand his wife having the same degree as him. Even at that, for all her ND certificates, he still wouldn't let her work full-time. So, to help ease the burden on his shoulders, so to speak, the best she could do was double both as a full-housewive and a Jeleosinmi teacher.

They had met—my mom and dad—while still studying in Laspotech. My dad was well into his third year of school at the time; my mom, on the other hand, was still in her fresher year. One thing led to another, and they were joined together as husband and wife six years later in a Nikkah ceremony presided over by some renowned Jalabi Alfas, and attended by friends, families, relatives, and of course, those uninvited.

"I paid your mother's dowry in full without owing her kolanut-eating dad a dime," my dad would often boast to us in one of their good moments together.

To which my mom would often come back with a most-fitting repartee, "You know my dad was a kolanut-eater. Yet, you wouldn't stop coming after his daughter. Do you remember how many chicks you stepped on just by coming to our house back then?"

Beaten, my dad would look morosely for some time as if searching for the right words to say. I still don't know if this was genuine or just for dramatics. He would then pop off with a response out of nowhere. "Is it my fault that you're irresistible then, Sophiat?" making sure to lay more emphasis on the then and Sophiat—mom’s maiden name—which he often likes to swirl around his mouth like it was honey whenever they play.

"Then?" Mom would ask, fixing him a cold stare. "Why not now?"

"Yes, then." Dad would say smugly. "It's only that young, lithe lady in that previous life that was irresistible, not this woman with the paunch and all those stretch marks."

"Whose fault is it then that I become this person? Mine or yours, who wouldn't sleep and let a child lie?"

There, that remark always put an end to their japery. Thereupon, Dad would continue with whatever it was that he was doing before. While mom waltzed over to the nearest chair, glowing in the aftermath of her small victory.

Ours was not a rich home in the financial sense, but it was one rich with happiness and contentment. Cut short only by my father's sudden demise when I turned seven. Our home is not filled with laughter every day as most people would have you believe. Neither is it fraught with fights or bickerings. Our parents seldom fight, and sometimes when they do, it only ends in silent treatment imposed by my dad, which withers away within a few days.

This silent treatment, as it were, stops only at ignoring each other and not responding to each other's greetings, and does not extend to other areas like sharing the same bed and feeding. The reason for the former, I only wish I knew. The latter, however, I believe, was because my dad is someone who doesn't play with his stomach. Even at that, the longest any of these silent treatments had lasted was five days. And that was when my mother had attended a relative's wedding against my father's wishes.