Tuesday 25 September 2018

THUGGING IT TO 2019

I was so exhausted I could barely see straight as I trudged down the last of the stairs and made my way to the front of my office. My hair was a mess, my face oily, my mood sour as I contemplated the rather long journey homewards .
Lazily I flagged a cab. It slid smartly to a halt in front of me.  I gave the driver my directions but he seemed to think he was in Port Harcourt. He called an outrageous sum of money and too exhausted to argue, I quietly moved aside and turned my face away in an obvious search for another cab. He got the message and zoomed off.
As I waited to flag another cab, I saw them: a group of shabbily dressed young men with wild eyes and body odor that travelled the several feet between us to assault my nostrils. Some were smoking joints openly and it was obvious few of them had seen bathwater in days. Their shabby dressing and uncountable number gave me pause and reminded me of a quote stenciled on one of my old tee shirts: never underestimate the stupidity of boys in a group. Sounds harsh at first glance but I've come to learn that when you see groups such as these, they can only egg each other on to mischief and trouble. They stood out like sore thumbs in the metropolitan area and they had to be close to a hundred of them.
I hid my alarm beneath a facade of boredom and kept looking around for a cab.
They began to file past with  alternate chants of Sai Baba and Fee Dee Fee (pdp). It was hard to know what party they really belonged to but it was apparent that these were a bunch of thugs turned loose on the town pre-election.
A cab finally drew up and this driver was more reasonable than the last. I allowed a few more of the young men to file past and then I walked up to the cab and reached for the door. I yanked it open just as one more joint-smoking youngster drew even with the door. I winced at the crunching sound as metal slammed into flesh and bone.
He yelped and clutched his thigh even as I also screamed and hastily began to apologise, genuine sorrow coursing through me at his apparent pain.
One of his buddies said, "You don wound my brother." The words were like a signal because three of them promptly left their line and  went to lie down on the bonnet of the car.
The "wounded" guy promptly  fell sideways onto the roadside in a dead faint. I threw him a petrified look even as my mind reasoned that there was no way a grown man could be knocked out by a small blow to the thigh. The haze of concern lifted when I noticed the cigarette still dangling from his lips.
"Get up joor. You're fine, " I ordered laughing. He promptly bounced to his feet threw me a laughing look of his own and sketched me a mock bow before striding off with his amigos.
I don't mind telling you I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to watch the chanting, laughing lot disappear around the bend.
Morale of the story? No matter how different we are, we always find something to laugh about together.

Sherina (2018)

No comments:

Post a Comment

KARMA IS FEMALE

 The last time I was in Lagos was for a one day conference and I was privileged to be there as Rapporteur.  I reserved my return ticket for ...