afroxyz: Chilo is like the average Nigerian chic trying to escape poverty but not working for it. If she is really intelligent as the author would want us to believe, why use guys as a meal ticket rather than learning a skill? I'm beginning to hate her.

Na your money she been dey chop? Abeg make you waka take bike go ''ashi'' joint if the uncompleted scenes dey battle your hormones...

Thank you all for your patience. I shall update this evening at the close of work .

.

Eze Promoe: Yeh
Person wey see 16 pages go think say tori don finish, but e no go know say na 2 uploads after 200 chit-chats
You promise us thursday and now this is friday

You be guy or babe?

Ishilove: Thank you all for your patience. I shall update this evening at the close of work .

Amen o!

Eze Promoe: Yeh
Person wey see 16 pages go think say tori don finish, but e no go know say na 2 uploads after 200 chit-chats
You promise us thursday and now this is friday

are you a learner?

We dey here dey wait for you, you come dey post us come today, come tomorrow!

I tire for these nairaland writers self

Eze Promoe:
What saith my moniker

Dude

Na wah oo..

Eze Promoe:

google esere826 and ask him when ishi will finish this tory.

Ishilove: Thank you all for your patience. I shall update this evening at the close of work .

Evening never nack for your dormot na I knew i was in for another Wasimi, i no know who send me message sef.

Thanks for your patience. Our author is currently working on another update, which will be posted tonight.

Thank you.

naptu2: Thanks for your patience. Our author is currently working on another update, which will be posted tonight.

Thank you.

thank you oga for standing by ishi but ya reputation is on the line here o. Your tonight and that of ishi are 3 days apart.

#just saying Ooº°˚˚˚°º‎​oO

naptu2: Thanks for your patience. Our author is currently working on another update, which will be posted tonight.

Thank you.

that una tonight don pass o, and aunty ishi neva post o.

the wait continues

Chilo had escorted her friend and course mate, Mary, to her lecturer’s office when she met Paul Omoide. When Mary had tentatively knocked on the door, the sing song “COME IN!” that boomed from inside the office had startled them both. Their lecturer was a dour, unsmiling man who believed that the world revolved around Wole Soyinka, and even sported a full Afro to emphasise his beliefs. He didn’t quite successfully pull it off, because unlike Soyinka, the man’s hair was thinning left, right and centre, so it looked closer to that of the American boxing promoter, Don King than of that literary arts colossus. The lecturer believed in carrying himself with rigid dignity, so such emotions as laughter and good cheer were never to be exhibited in public. No, the gods forbid! Thus, the cheerful voice that invited them into the rather depressing and colourless office was totally out of keeping with their man’s sombre aspect.

Nervously, they made their way in like naughty children about to be chastised, and were somewhat surprised to see a big, grizzly bear of a not-so young man sitting behind Dr Ajose’s desk.

The man fixed sharp, enquiring eyes on them and enquired after their business. The girls shifted uneasily and asked to see their lecturer. They almost had to shout to make themselves heard because the rich voice of Cece Winans reverberated throughout the entire office from the laptop the man was working on.

To their chagrin, they were informed that the one whom they sought after had left that morning on sabbatical leave and wouldn’t be back for the rest of the year.

“Then why, for God’s sake did he ask us to do this assignment if he knew he was not going to be around to mark it?” Chilo cried in extreme annoyance, waving the stapled sheets of paper over her head. She and Mary had come on a begging mission, as they had missed the deadline for submission by about six hours. Dr Ajasco, as the stern lecturer was called behind his back, was notorious for being a stickler for time. He had often sounded it in their ears that the problem with the African man was his insufferably laidback attitude, and that the fellow who coined the phrase ‘African time’ deserved to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

The man behind the desk only chuckled mildly and shrugged. He informed them that he would be handling the doctor’s course until the he returned from sabbatical. He was in the office only to tidy a few things, and then the office would be put under lock and key.

The girls felt a mixture of irritation and relief, relief that they weren’t going to have to beg their difficult lecturer, irritation that the man had tricked them. As they turned to leave after thanking the man behind the desk, he stopped them with:

“Aren’t you going to tell me your names?”

They did, after which he introduced himself as Paul Omoide, {M.A}. He seemed particularly fond of the title ‘M.A, Ph.D. in sight.’

Mary and Chilo became regular callers at his office, especially Mary, who seemed to have developed a crush on him. However, he had eyes only for Chilo.

He soon made his intentions known to her, in a very dramatically old fashioned way. He offered to take her round on a drive round campus one night after lectures and she accepted. So, after classes, she went to his office to wait for him to finish up. He did shortly, after which they headed for his car, a battered Nissan Primera, got in and drove off.

They had quite a jolly time driving round school, and when the journey terminated in front of the staff quarters around her old hostel, Queen Amina Hall, she was grinning like Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat. Paul was a lively person, and while they drove, he had kept her entertained with a mix of campus gossip and global news. He was still talking about Mahmoud Abass’ latest shenanigans in the Middle East when he stopped before a row of staff residences. The environment was very serene and quiet.

When they both got down, she quickly hitched her skirt up and scrambled up the car to the roof.

“It’s my party and I can cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to!!” she sang at the top of her voice.

Chilo loved Lesley Gore’s classic, and she had felt the irresistible urge to sing at that very moment. Amused, Paul stared up at her and ordered her to come down immediately.

"Chilo, come down at once. You are disturbing the peace!"

She ignored him and kept on singing.

“You would cry too
If it happened to you!!!” she continued.

“What is it with you and climbing sef?” Paul asked in exasperation.

Whenever Chilo came to his office, she would immediately begin climbing the chairs and leaping over boxes. Sometimes she would head for the burglary proof and climb. Paul had gotten tired of warning her so he just simply ignored her tomfooleries. When she got tired of jumping up and down like a monkey, she would flop on a seat, panting like a happy puppy. Chilo couldn’t quite know why, but he brought out the very playful side in her. Maybe it was because he was sixteen years older than her, and he acted it. It was for this reason that she teased him endlessly and he was forever shooing her away.

“Chilo, stop singing!” he ordered severely. “Do you want UNILAG security to arrest us??”

She looked down from her steel pedestal and grinned mischievously.

“You are as cold as ice
You’re willing to sacrifice our love”

she cheekily sang.

To her surprise, he replied with:

“You never take advice,
Someday you’ll pay the price.”

“So you know the song?” she quizzed, genuinely pleased.

He snorted. “Why shouldn’t I? Foreigner, 1975. What do you take me for, by the way? A caveman?”

Smiling impishly, she said “Dunno o. You always act like you are in my father’s generation. The only songs I have ever heard you listen to are gospel songs.”

“Then obviously don’t know me very well”

Laughing, she launched herself off the roof and flew straight at him.

“Wha. . .??” he exclaimed as she landed gracelessly on him.

Caught unawares, he struggled to stay on his feet with his giggling burden, but that was impossible. They crashed to the tarmac like two toddlers in a wrestling bout.

“Ah, you this girl! Are you sure you are twenty one and not twelve?” he wheezed, thoroughly winded.

Chilo, lying in an awkward heap beside him on the warm earth, hooted in laughter.

Suddenly, he turned to her and asked,

“Chichi, will you be my special friend?”

“What do you mean by ‘special’?” she asked, leering.

“Not what you are thinking, you naughty girl.”

“I just love the way you say ‘naughty girl’. Say it again.”

“Chilo, you’re not serious o. You need Jesus!”

They laughed again, and without thinking twice about it, she agreed to be his ‘friend’.

The honking of the horn of a fast approaching car brought them hastily to their feet, and tittering like two old women, they stumbled into the vehicle, where they shared their first kiss.

*in dbanj's voice*
its about to go down

Their ‘friendship’ was just a few weeks old when Chilo felt the old boredom she often felt with men start creeping in. They had gone on a few dates to Finicky and White House in Sabo, but that was as far as it ever went. She had already intimated Mother on the developments. Chilo kept few secrets from Mother, except of course for her ‘evil acts’ {as Mother liked to call such things} with the cosmetic bottles in the house, the household pestle and the duo of Fola and Joe. Telling her fiercely Christian mother was out of the question. No, it just wouldn’t do. That aspect of her life was locked away in the moist, dark recesses of her heart where secrets are stored.

Mother had turned up her nose when she learnt of the age gap.

“Chi isn’t he too old?” she asked sceptically, when Chilo had come home for the weekend.

Chilo shrugged noncommittally. Mother was a firm believer in good old fashioned courtship, but she wasn’t exactly eager to embrace Paul. Nevertheless, she encouraged Chilo not to dismiss Paul, but to watch and wait. Mother also reminded her to be a ‘good and God fearing child.’ In other words, no hanky panky.

Chilo smiled inwardly. Dear Mother, she thought, too late! Hanky panky had already taken place a couple of times in his office and car. In fact, last night in his office had been very steamy, at least according to Paul. She had watched with scorn and amusement as he hopped around looking for a rag to wipe his trousers after he had erupted. Men are so silly, she mused. Such a big, strong man, reduced to this. He looked ridiculous as he held his unzipped trousers with one hand and battled the flow with the other. She had indulged in the necking session with him, partly out of boredom, partly out of desire, and partly out of curiosity. She had wanted to know if what he carried down there was commensurate with the rest of him. She had been a trifle disappointed by what she felt with her seeking hand, but decided to humour Paul, trying on him some of the tricks Fola had taught her. The next thing she knew, her hand was covered in thick, warm liquid. It was quite disgusting, to say the least.

She discreetly turned away to give him some privacy to complete the clean-up. With her back turned to him, he didn’t see the contempt on her face as she pretended to study the black and white photos of Ulli Beier and Ben Enwonwu pinned to the wall.

Thankfully, he wasn’t as kinky as Fola, so they never went beyond the heavy necking and petting. The only similarity Fola and Paul shared was their level of involvement in church. They were both church workers. Paul was a devout born again Christian. He had a burning passion for kingdom things, and 95% of the songs in his laptop were gospel songs. However he seemed to forget his morals once Chilo touched him. She marvelled at the power of the base human nature that made humans do what they, under normal circumstances, would never do.

“I wish we could just get married this very instant” he said one night as they sat in his car. Mary had drily commented that all Paul and Chilo’s ‘runs’ were ‘car paroles’. “Two old school people practicing dry love” she had said, sniggering.

“Why is that?” Chilo asked, even though she knew the answer.

“Do you think I am happy having to keep away from you? I can hardly wait to know you” he gushed earnestly.

She rolled her eyes. He was so modest with his language. And for crying out loud, was marriage all about se.x? What happened to love, friendship, companionship and all those other things that people said were needed to make a marriage work? She didn’t know much about marriage, but if access to regular se.x was the only reason people were getting married, then it was small wonder marriages everywhere were hitting the rocks.

She was fond of Paul, but she definitely wasn’t in love with him. She couldn’t imagine marrying a person she didn’t love, and even Mother was not enthusiastic about their ‘friendship’.

“I am so happy you kept your body chaste,” he added, looking at her with fondness.

Urrr, right. . . ‘If there is such a thing as ‘experienced virgin’, thought Chilo, cringing inwardly, ‘then I definitely qualify’.

“Let him go and meet his age mate”, Mother said on more than one occasion, her face hardening so that the lines stood out.

Whenever Mother made that statement, Chilo experienced feelings of déjà vu. A similar statement been made concerning a begoggled, muscular lecher of a man, a lifetime ago.

“He is too stingy. What are his prospects sef? Who knows, he might be the type that measures foodstuff for his wife and locks up the rest in his room”, Mother once remarked drolly.

“Mummy!” Chilo had shrieked disbelievingly, and then burst into laughter.

Mother, who in addition to being a believer of courtship the old fashioned way, believed in generosity. A man must be generous to a woman he is courting, she often reiterated. The way a man treated a woman during courtship usually showed how he would treat her once she became his wife. Paul didn’t give her daughter gifts and it riled her to no end.

If Mother had been a fan of hip-hop, she would have loved Fergie’s recent hit single ‘Glamorous’. The song began with the line “if you ain’t got no money, take yo’ broke asss home”.

Chilo agreed wholeheartedly.

*******************************************

The ‘friendship’ trundled on, and by the end of the semester, Chilo had completely lost interest in the whole affair. Paul on the other hand was too busy to notice her lack of enthusiasm. Initially they had been giddy with ‘love’, so much so that they never failed to steal kisses from each other whenever the opportunity presented itself. The opportunity usually presented itself mostly in his office during the hours after evening classes. They were very discreet about their ‘friendship’, and very few people knew about them. The last thing Chilo needed was filthy minded people thinking that she was warming the lecturer’s bed for marks. It would damage her reputation of a sedate, disciplined born again sister in the Lord. As the saying goes, ‘looks are deceiving’, but she refused to be a point of reference emphasising the truthfulness of that fact.

The frequency of their kisses reduced after a certain day, when Paul played a CD someone had lent him. The message was from a popular preacher, and the title was ‘Dancing at the gate of Death’. The message discussed the evils of fornication and all forms of se.xual immorality, drawing from true life experiences. It was a very powerful message that subdued its listeners.

The shocking thing was when the message ended, and they were on their way out of the office, she expected him to give her a passionate kiss goodnight as was the routine. However, when he didn’t do that, but merely drove her back to her hostel and dropped her, she came back to her senses. Why on earth was she even thinking of such things when she had just listened to a very powerful message barely two hours ago??

For the umpteenth time, Chilo wondered if she was possessed.

After the semester exams, she packed her bags and baggage and went home. It would be a relief being away from the atmosphere of academic work, vanity and more vanity that she found herself forced to endure. She wasn’t a very flashy person by nature. She wasn’t like the showy, weave-on fixing, makeup wearing girls that abounded every nook of campus; the kind that were currently hounding Dominic, the latest winner of the Gulder Ultimate Search season four. The boy went around campus with his fiery painted SUV and every evening, she saw the vehicle parked in front of the complex that housed different restaurants, a bakery and a supermarket in New Hall.

“Dominic had better watch it, otherwise na for that restaurant Unilag girls go chop hin five million finish” Voke, Chilo’s course mate remarked one evening as the girls were walking back to their hostel after class.

They chortled and walked past the parked SUV glinting in the fading sunlight.

Chilo wondered what being a girlfriend to a millionaire would be like. 'Money, money, money!' sang Abba.

Perhaps it was a recognition of what she was capable of that made Chilo hold the campus girls in disdain. A snarling, spitting part of her that could not be named cried to be unleashed, but she bridled it. It however occasionally escaped, manifesting itself in the appalling behaviour she exhibited with men. She didn’t understand herself one single bit. She just didn’t.

Home was a private sanctuary for Chilo, and only a select few were welcome there. Oliver invited most of his ragamuffin friends over when their parents were not around, but Chilo and Andrela never brought guests home. Andrela was even more reserved than Chilo, so she had very few friends, while Chilo, on the other hand preferred visiting people than bringing them home. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt more comfortable that way.

A few days after she came home from school, Kodi, or Kirk O’Dig, as he liked to be called these days, also came home on break from his place of work. He was assistant manager in an oil company: a palm oil processing and distribution company. He had served there and he was retained after his youth service.

Chilo badgered him into helping her configure her brand new phone for browsing. The phone was a gift from Paul. She had all but dragged him to Ikeja Computer Village to get it for her because her Nokia 3310 phone was giving her battery problems. What was his use if he couldn’t replace her phone, she had reasoned. So she had summoned up courage to demand for a new one, and was pleasantly surprised when he had agreed.

Kodi, fed up of his sister’s nagging finally configured her phone, a Nokia 5300. He also helped her register on an online forum, Prodigits, so that she would be distracted and not bother him with her endless questions about his service year and current place of work.

She chose the moniker 'Eustacia Vye' after the tragic heroine in Thomas Hardy’s classic, ‘The Return of the Native’.

She thought the moniker very apt because she felt a bit like Eustacia, a girl who was stuck in circumstances she hated and was yearning for things which seemed so near, yet impossibly far off.

The profile picture Kodi used on her profile was of her wearing a hairnet, her eyes half open {or half closed, depending on which angle you choose to look at it} and her face shiny and sweaty. She had just emerged from the kitchen when Kodi had suddenly sprung from the shadows, phone in hand and yelled “Say cheese!” The camera flash popped, catching her unawares.

The picture that emerged was what people saw when they clicked on Eustacia Vye’s profile. Kodi thought it would put off all the lechers and maniacs that lurked the internet.

He was wrong. Very wrong . . .

brokoto: thank you oga for standing by ishi but ya reputation is on the line here o. Your tonight and that of ishi are 3 days apart.

#just saying Ooº°˚˚˚°º‎​oO

See them, bad belle pipo

naijababe:

Evening never nack for your dormot na I knew i was in for another Wasimi, i no know who send me message sef.

That's why I love ya! Mwaaaaaah!!

Foxy, nu-well, Damex, Eze, Encored, lakeside4love, brokoto, naijababe, naptu and all, thanks for your patience.

And we wait anoda 3 wks for more updates..Anyway nice story..U̶̲̥̅̊ can take all d time i̶̲̥̅̊n̶̲̥̅̊ world..its ur story..so do wat pleases U̶̲̥̅̊..

lakeside4love: And we wait anoda 3 wks for more updates..Anyway nice story..U̶̲̥̅̊ can take all d time i̶̲̥̅̊n̶̲̥̅̊ world..its ur story..so do wat pleases U̶̲̥̅̊..

Thanks.

Three weeks is an exaggeration on your part, good sir, and believe me, the interval between updates isn't 'pleasing' to me. It takes me time to update because of work. I work, so I do not have the luxury of time, neither do I live on NL.

*smiles*
dem go see something wen their eye never see b4

esere826: *smiles*
dem go see something wen their eye never see b4

oga o. No be small. Anyway, we have already tasted the forbidden fruit and are already hooked. *sad face*

Ishilove:
See them, bad belle pipo

I look like fally pupa for ya eyes?

Anyway, about the story...

Chilo seems to represent a vast majority of the girls in out present society: relatively poor, they see men as super horn'y meal tickets and measure their relationships by how much material benefit they can accrue from it.

From her perspective in this story, I find it quite difficult to hate her. I just feel a profound sadness and I can only smh for the chilos of our society.

#good job ishi. See you next week.