Mynd_44:
Happy to help

Thank you so much for your assistance, may God reward you

Ishilove:
Thank you so much for your assistance, may God reward you

Amen

thankz ishi 4 opening my eyes dt ws formerly blind ( whre 2 touch in ordr 2 get dz unwilling damsels into signing my jerusalem travelling document dm go jst de do lyk say dm no lyk am whreby dm lyk am pass we )...haveen said all dt i'll say fire on ishi, may ur ink nevr run dry cos i de feel ur cacking lyk kpekus...

Kingso23: thankz ishi 4 opening my eyes dt ws formerly blind ( whre 2 touch in ordr 2 get dz unwilling damsels into signing my jerusalem travelling document dm go jst de do lyk say dm no lyk am whreby dm lyk am pass we )...haveen said all dt i'll say fire on ishi, may ur ink nevr run dry cos i de feel ur cacking lyk kpekus...

Err...thanks

What's going on? Suspence is killing me

Thread started February 23, now we are in September. . . What was it Esere and Brokoto were saying before?

tis better late than never...

Why is there a cease in update....ishilove nice work you have here but the update(s) always come late

Even though they asked us not to comment here. I will comment here because I want to comment here. And my comment is


Ishi.....you r tha bomb...

More ink to ur pen
More grease to ur elbow
More fuel to your car
More airtime to ur phone
More update to this stories


Salivating for iyawo nylon bag season 3

Pls wen can we av the season3? bin waitin on u all dis while. I won't mind to kip waitin sha cos its a lovely story

Ishi u spoilt a master piece of a story with too much wait and now d story has lost its allure and spark....unfollowing sharply,wud advice peeps to unfollow too,mayb wen she loses ha loyal fans,she wud re find dat lost inspiration.

Season 3 beginneth hence

The trees passed in one continuous green loop; green trees, green grass, brown dust, black earth. Wind in her face and hair, Chilo leaned out the window and took a lungful of flying air.

The driver of the vehicle was going a sedate 60km/ph on the Ibadan expressway and some of the passengers were already beginning to grumble about the driver’s speed, or lack of it. He was driving on the left lane of the expressway, and for some reason, this seemed to anger the rest of the road users using that lane because as they overtook and zoomed past, they honked their horns and threw insults at the driver who ignored them and bobbed his head to the beat of Commander Ebenezer Obey’s ‘Miliki Express’ emanating from the speakers on the dashboard.

Chilo was apprehensive about camp. She was also excited about travelling because it would be the first time she would be leaving home and she did not know what to expect. She loved traveling but she had never had the opportunity to do so. Mother had hinted that after the three weeks orientation, Andrela would contact the man who had helped her work her redeployment to Lagos. Andi was posted to Kano during her service year but had run back to Lagos after four months. Homesickness, the infernal heat and the horrible northern cuisine were her reasons for redeployment, but on the official documents, the reasons were entirely different.

Though Chilo was nervous about leaving home, she had no intention of redeploying, but she didn’t let Mother know. She would most likely throw a fit if she knew what plans Chilo had up her sleeves, so she would let her dear mater live in blissful ignorance.

Camp opened on a Tuesday but Andi advised her to wait till the following day because the rush to be registered from prospective corps members from all over the federation would be massive. It would be better to go when the crowd wouldn’t be so hectic, she advised. Thus she left home on Wednesday.

On the drive to the car park, Mother gave her stern exhortation about the waywardness that was the order of the day in orientation camps all over the country, and urged her to behave herself and not let herself be ‘foolished’ by any ‘iidiot fellow’. Chilo rolled her eyes when her mother got to that part. Mother was so naïve. How she could still be using such language in the twenty-first century, with her adult daughter beat her imagination.

At the park, Father and Oliver helped her offload her bags out of the vehicle.

“What did you pack that full the bag like this?” Oliver grumbled. He was struggling with one of the bags. The bag was packed to bursting and was quite heavy as a result. Chilo didn’t want to admit aloud that she might have gone overboard with the luggage because truth be told, Andi had advised her to pack as much as possible so that she wouldn’t have to come back home to pack more things back to her place of primary assignment, just in case the redeployment didn’t work out. Hence, she had packed all her good jean skirts and trousers, several shoes and sandals, three pairs of white sneakers, Andrela’s old white shorts and shirts as well as crested vests, jewellery {most of which was stolen from her unsuspecting sister’s jewellery box}, t-shirts and cotton shirts and a lorry load of other things, half of which she couldn’t even remember. In her handbag, her original documents, as well as several photocopies were neatly encased in an envelope. Beside the envelope, the weight of a food flask filled with jollof rice and fried meat threatened to tear the hand of the bag. Mother would never allow any of her children travel anywhere without taking along home cooked food, God forbid.

Chilo ignored him and maintained a dignified silence as her brother continued grumbling as he trudged back to the family car, a battered 1984 Mercedes Benz 230E which looked like it had never seen better days {Father had bought it second hand from the previous owner, who had in turn bought it second hand from the owner before him} to haul out the second heavily laden box.

Father haggled with the bus driver over the cost of the extra luggage, and when they finally settled on a price, she entered the vehicle and settled down to wait for the bus to fill up. Mother came round to the window to drop some words of motherly advice.

“Make sure you always pray before sleeping o, you hear?”

“Yes mummy.”

“If you have any funny dreams, wake up and cancel it immediately, then call me, you hear?” Mother saw the hands of ‘forces’, as she liked to call negative situations, everywhere.

“Yes mummy.”

“Be careful the kind of food you eat and where you eat it from. All these satanic iidiots are looking for who to initiate.”

“Yes mummy. You know I don’t even eat anyhow.” It was true. Chilo hardly ate food cooked by people outside her family. It was part of her upbringing.

Mother nodded her head in agreement.

“Don’t allow anybody sweet talk you. Men are deceivers and you must not allow iniquity dwell in your tent. You are a child of God so always be on your best behaviour. Don’t be a partaker of all those . . . evils that usually go on in camp. They will foolish you and you will only blame yourself at the end of the day.”

That word again. Chilo winced inwardly before answering “Okay mummy.”

Mother would be heartbroken if she ever found out that her quiet and seemingly innocent daughter had been shamefully feasting on the table of ‘foolishness’ and iniquity for quite some time.

After a few more nuggets of morally sound wisdom, Mother awkwardly patted her head and retreated to the car, grim faced and secretly concerned about how her youngest daughter would fare in faraway Ondo state. Chilo was so innocent and vulnerable . . .

They had just passed Ibadan when the young man beside her struck up a conversation. The dude was a diminutive, charcoal skinned fellow with large eyeballs that strangely reminded her of Big English. He introduced himself as Korede and offered to buy her akara balls and soft drinks at the next bus stop they would stop at. Or would she prefer corn? he enquired enthusiastically. Chilo, tired of swimming aimlessly in the misty pool of her own thoughts, accepted with some amusement.

Korede turned out to be very chatty, and they kept up a steady stream of conversation for the rest of the journey. He bought her agbalumo fruits when she graciously rejected the akara because she couldn’t trust the source. Who knew, roadside akara sold specially to hungry travellers could be {in Mother’s language} ‘polluted’ for all she knew.

Chilo was dozing when they got to the outskirts of Ondo town. Korede nudged her awake and pointed to a mountain in the distance.

“You see that mountain? It means we have almost gotten to Ondo.”

“O really? That’s nice” Chilo remarked, eyeing the mountain with interest. She had never seen a mountain before. Well, except in movies, and some parts of Lagos where the gigantic heaps of refuse could pass for mountains.

They entered the Ondo/Akure expressway in minutes and continued onwards. When the bus got to Akungba Akoko, a town about thirty minutes’ drive to the orientation camp, the vehicle developed a mechanical fault, very much to the passengers’ chagrin. After tinkering with ethe ngine for a few minutes, the driver threw up his hands in defeat. He was forced to transfer them to another vehicle, popularly called ‘cigarette buses’ due to their shape and size. Chilo ended up paying for an extra seat because of her mammoth luggage.

“You shouldn’t have paid nau” Korede complained when she told him. The cigarette bus was now on the move. It swayed from side to side like a tipsy chicken. He was seated beside her; or rather was seated beside her luggage. He had to crane his neck over the boxes to address her. Her luggage was that big. And he was that small.

“I would have paid for you if you had told me on time,” he insisted.

Indeed, thought Chilo, sarcastically.

Korede disembarked at the front of the market very close to the Adekunle Ajasin University. Some moments earlier, they had exchanged phone numbers. Chilo had not bothered giving him a wrong number because guys of contemporary times were just too smart. They would flash the number while you were still with them and you would be hard pressed for an explanation if on trying the number, they got the response “the number you are calling is incorrect.” Besides, he looked like he could be useful for recharge cards, if not for anything else. He had that smitten, puppy dog of someone who would be easy to dupe and dump.

“Bye dear,” he said over his shoulder as he alighted. She found herself staring at his buttocks as he struggled to squeeze himself out of the narrow bus.

What big buttocks he has, Chilo marvelled. It’s even bigger than mine!

She mumbled a reply and was relieved when he finally got ‘all’ 5ft 4inches of himself out. He looked even shorter standing. She gave a quick wave as the bus moved on and he waved back energetically.

Well, that’s that!!

Passengers alighted at almost every stop, and sooner than she expected, the bus arrived at Ikare town where the NYSC camp was located. Getting a commercial bike to camp wasn’t difficult as it was camp season. However she had to hire two bikes to transport her and her luggage to their destination. Chilo was beginning to regret taking Andrela’s advice on the whole luggage issue.

The drive to the camp was less than fifteen minutes and by five thirty pm, she found herself staring in bemusement at the gate at the entrance of the camp. The gate didn’t look as majestic as she had expected it to be. She had been expecting something more imposing, not this, this . . . this . . . ]ordinary looking gate. The only thing out of the ordinary was the “National Youth Service Corps’ welded into the gate and painted in green and white colours. A statue that vaguely resembled a village idol in full youth service attire stood rigidly at the corner at the gate, glaring unseeingly at the tarred road directly in front of the camp. Chilo stared at it for a micro-second before muttering “Ondo sculptors at work.”

Shrugging in resignation, she half carried, half dragged the boxes into the camp.

**************************
She was subjected to a rather embarrassing search at the gate. A tired looking security woman searched every nook of her luggage and it was all Chilo could do not to scream in irritation. She felt like her privacy was being invaded, which it was in a way. She was mortified that her not-so-white brassieres, granny panties and faded wrapper were being poked around by a complete stranger all in the name of searching for a weapon and sharp objects. What weapon could she possibly be carrying? Andrela’s lip liner??

“Why did you bring so much? You don’t need all these.” the woman commented, wiping the sweat off her face and flexing her shoulders. Going through Chilo’s mammoth luggage had strained her physically.

“I am coming from Jos and I won’t be going back after orientation” lied Chilo, stony faced.

After a cursory check of her handbag, her fork was confiscated before she was finally released. Chilo closed the boxes and slowly made her way to the hall where the prospective corps members where being addressed. She was just a few steps from the entrance when somebody bellowed

“Hey you, stop there!!!”

Startled, she dropped her boxes and looked around. The bellow originated from a villainous looking soldier who was screaming at the hordes of luggage carrying and bewildered prospective corps members around him. Another soldier was directing the same set of confused looking young people to a section beside the hall where they were ordered to go on their knees.

“Lee down!” the man harshly barked in accents that proclaimed his origins as from somewhere in the middle belt of the country. “I say lee down quickly!!!”

Chagrined, she joined her comrades, tucked her black skirt in- between her legs and inelegantly knelt on the sandy ground.

“Hello” she greeted a scowling young man kneeling close to where she was. He barely acknowledged her greeting. Embarrassed, she kept silent and quietly thought about her life. She remained in that position for about fifteen minutes until the meeting which was taking place in the hall ended. When it did, the granite faced soldiers watching over her and her colleagues immediately ordered them to rise and proceed to the point of registration.

Using the boxes as support, Chilo awkwardly rose, dusted her smarting knees and tried to locate where the points of registration were located.

It was no mean feat, considering her movements were hampered by her luggage. When she found the registration centre, she was forced to ‘park’ the boxes in a corner of the hall. Chilo committed them into the hands of the gods who watched over unattended luggage before joining the throng of people queuing up for clearance.

It was almost eight pm when Chilo finished clearance. It was tough and very hectic. She found her patience tried on several occasions by the various petty aggravations that she faced during the process. The officers were short tempered, the prospective corps members, unruly. Why on earth do Nigerians detest queues, she was forced to ask herself when, for the umpteenth time, she locked horns with some smart fellow who tried to jump the line. She had to queue at virtually every point in the registration process, and the queues were even found at the photocopying shops at the mammy market. It was quite exasperating.

Then also, there were the sachet water sellers who insisted on hawking their wares in the hall. The most painful aspect of it all was they were selling it at double the normal price.

“How can pure water be ten naira??” Chilo asked indignantly when she had requested for her balance and was told that there was none to be given. The scrawny boy had simply shrugged his shoulders and carried his wares to another section of the hall.

By the time she cleared the last hurdle, she was physically and emotionally exhausted. However her relief turned to dismay when she went in search of accommodation. Every hall of residence she entered was fully occupied. There was no space anywhere. It was a nightmare!

Fighting down her mounting panic she went round the halls again in case she had missed something. It was during this second round of space hunting that she met a pretty, soft spoken girl who was also space hunting.

“What do we do now?” the girl asked Chilo when they exited the last room. The search had been futile. Every room on camp was fully occupied.

Chilo shrugged tiredly and answered “I really don’t know. Maybe we will get mattresses and spread it under this tree” she joked.

They had found a big almond tree very close to the mattress store and were now perched on its roots. Not too far from where they sat, a rough pile of broken chairs and decaying tree branches lay broodingly under the moonlit sky. All around them, corps members dressed in the camp uniform of white shirt and shorts moved to and fro with a confidence that did nothing to calm the fear that lay tightly wound at the pit of her stomach.

What on earth was going to happen now, she wondered. Sighing, she opened her bag and brought out the food flask in her hand bag. She opened it sniffed the contents. Good, although the food wasn’t fresh, it hadn’t started spoiling. She might as well eat since there was nothing she could do about her situation.

Chilo held out the flask to her companion. “Come and join me,” she offered but the girl politely declined.

A few minutes had passed by when the girl excused herself. “Let me go and see whether I can beg those men at the staff quarters to allow us sleep at their corridor.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Chilo asked, her jaw grinding a biscuit bone to pulp.

The girl smiled wearily and said “At least it beats sleeping under this tree, fa.”

“What if they don’t agree?”

“If they don’t agree, we will try to think of something else.”

She was screwing the lid back on the flask when the girl came back looking very animated.

“How far?” she enquired as she placed the now empty flask on the ground. Chilo felt stuffed. She was also beginning to feel drowsy and couldn’t care less where she slept, as long as she had somewhere to lay her aching body for the night.

“They agreed!” the girl exclaimed.

“Are you serious??”

“Yes nau, and can you imagine that we aren’t the only girls there? So you see we have nothing to be afraid of!” the girl gushed excitedly.

Immensely relieved, Chilo tucked the flask back into her handbag rushed to the hall where she had ‘parked’ her luggage. The baggage lay undisturbed where she had left them. With the help of her new friend, she carried her bags to her temporary ‘hall of residence’; a sitting room at the male staff quarters.

*****************
“Chilo don’t be lazy. You’ll be missing if you stay all alone in this place”

Chilo yawned and settled as deep as the hard mattress would allow. “Joyce abeg free me, I want to sleep jor.”

Joyce bent down and tickled her. Chilo, who was very ticklish, rolled off the mattress shrieking with laughter.

It was almost a week since she made acquaintance with her pretty girlfriend but it felt like she had known her for years. During the first two days when they squatted in the sitting room at the staff quarters, they had bonded quite deeply. On the surface level Joyce was calm, matured and friendly. She mothered Chilo and treated her like her favourite doll.

They were able to move to a proper room when the management cleared out and cleaned the storehouse that was used to keep the big white plastic chairs used for various camp activities.

Once they were settled in the space, Chilo focused her energies on trying to adjust to the camp system. It wasn’t easy for her. The soldiers irritated her with their incessant barking. Why couldn’t they just address the corps members in a polite and civil manner?? They were graduates for heaven’s sakes!! She also absolutely detested morning drill. She couldn’t understand what purpose it served. How was marching up and down the field like a jobless vagrant going to help her become a better citizen in the country? It beat her imagination. And there was the early morning jogging which she dreaded because her bra wasn’t firm and it embarrassed her to no end when her breasts bounced around with reckless abandon as she ran.

The worst part of the camping experience was the food. The tea they were served in the morning was coloured water, the rice, flavoured yellow coloured grains. The okra soup that was served for dinner was the worst she had ever tasted in her young life. Added to that, Chilo had never queued up for food in her entire life, so having to queue up to be served tasteless food left a sour taste in her mouth.

She couldn’t understand why people said camp was fun. She wasn’t having any fun whatsoever and just wished the three weeks would pass in a flash.

Earlier in the day, she and several hundred corps members had been forced to sit under the baking Ondo sun for close to an hour to listen to a lecture about only God knew what. It may have been about entrepreneurship. Or maybe it was something to do with the various hills dotting the Ondo countryside… Chilo couldn’t be too sure because she had tuned out the woman’s droning voice and had immediately dozed off. If Deborah was around, she would have probably expressed in very strong terms her marvel at Chilo’s ability to fall asleep in the least conducive of environments

She had woken up just as the OBS announcer was informing the audience that a variety night would be holding later that night. Now, night had come and Joyce was trying to persuade her to go for the show. She had made her intentions clear about preferring to spend the night catching up on her sleep but her friend would have none of it.

“Don’t worry, I will make you up” Joyce said when Chilo, who had been laughing nonstop for close to two minutes regained her composure.

“Okay o, I hear you.” Chilo replied in resignation. There was no point arguing with this soft spoken girl from Kaduna state when her mind was made up about something. Joyce was a very persuasive character.

Thank God

Sighing heavily, she dragged herself off the floor and under Joyce’s watchful eyes, changed into a pair of jeans and red t-shirt that had the inscription “Bungee Jumpers Club” boldly written in black print. It was a relief to be able to wear mufti again. She didn’t like the white upon white camp uniform for the simple reason that she hated washing white clothes. Besides she found it awkward that full grown men and women were been forced to wear ridiculous white shorts. Men with very skinny legs that Mother would call “okpor” or 'ostrich legs' in English, and women with funny shaped thighs wearing shorts that rode up in between their legs when they moved. It was quite a sight.

Her friend applied some gunk which she claimed was ‘foundation’ on Chilo’s face and tried her best to make her look ‘presentable’.

Chilo wasn’t interested in looking presentable for anybody because romance was the last thing on her mind. In short, she had had enough of men to last her a lifetime. More than enough. Nonetheless, she let Joyce have her fun with the paintbrush.

By the time they got to the venue of the show, it was well past ten pm and the show was already in full swing. As she entered the hall, the heat from the packed bodies hit her with almost physical force. She was immediately turned off. Holding her breath, she stumbled out of the venue into the cool night air.

“Nasty” she mumbled under her breath in annoyance.

She wiped her forehead with her bare hands. Her palms came away greasy. Blast it! She had forgotten that she had foundation plastered all over her face.

Joyce emerged from the hall after a few minutes to find Chilo looking very distracted and bored.

“My sweetheart you don’t want to come in?” she enquired in her hausa accented tones.

“Come in to do what? That place is too hot jor.” she replied offhandedly.

“Okay let us find somewhere with fresh air to sit down”

“I’d rather be on my bed”

“Toh. That’s not going to happen so try and relax abeg”

Sighing, she let Joyce drag her to the front of the mammy market where some benches were propped against the fence. They took their seats and silently watched the activities around them. Everyone had changed into mufti and the potpourri of colours and designs were more pleasant to the eyes than the monotonous white of earlier times.

Chilo leaned back and rested her head on the fence behind her. She slowly tuned out everything around her and focused on her thoughts, jumping from one memory to the other with a ease borne out of practice.

She didn’t know how long she was in that state when Joyce’s voice cut into her consciousness. She sat up and quickly adjusted herself.

“What?”

“Chi I said meet my friend” Joyce repeated motioning to the man beside her. For the first time she noticed two guys standing beside Joyce. The man who Joyce referred to as her ‘friend’ was a broad shouldered, attractive fellow of medium proportions. The second guy was slim, tall and with rugged features.

“Hello” she greeted them, feeling suddenly shy.

After a few minutes of polite chitchat, Joyce excused herself and left the group with her friend whom she had introduced as Edwin

The slim, silent one who was Edwin's friend waited behind. They stood in awkward silence for some moments. Chilo fidgeted a bit before blurting:

“What’s your name? I didn't catch it.”

“Joshua” he replied immediately.

“That’s a, err… nice name.”

“Thank you.”

They relapsed into pregnant silence. It was all Chilo could do not to burst into hysterical laughter. She didn’t know why, but that was the urge she felt very strongly. Her mind was also strangely blank. She felt like a blinking iidiot.

Joshua spoke up again. “Do you mind if we go for a stroll?”

Glad to have something to distract her, she immediately agreed.

They left the front of the mammy market and began a journey that was to have very profound consequences on the both them…

temhab: Thank God

Sorry for the delay

Do you have comments, criticisms and observations, or do you just want to discuss the story? Please do so on this thread https://www.nairaland.com/1272634/iyawo-nylon-bag-gist-thread/7

Ishi-mummy is back with a bang



*front seat things*

On point

Welcome back Ishilove. We missed U!

Welcome back mummy chilo. Dusted my seat and now relaxed. Hope cobweb wont grow on me dis session again. Lets go dia

Amem!

Ushers pls dust the VVip seat for me and invite that lady over dir to come sit beside me.

at last I don reach here update oh!

Thank God we got an update @last. Buh Ishi dear, wia ar u again?

Since october 12. . . Dis one no good o.. Cobwebs don dey breed spiders for here o

**

For christ sake, put Chilo out of her misery by completing this story

Aunty Ishi, come n finish ya story na

Why is Ishi called "aunty", "mommy" and all - is she THAT old?

Enjoying the story.