“Please have you sent the money?”

I type out the message as my roommate looks over my shoulder and asks, “how can you talk to your father like that? No “sir”, no form of respect at all”.

I treat his question as rhetorical, no amount of explanation can make them understand that my family is a close knit one where we treat ourselves as equals, without needing to resort to the formality of “yes sir” and “yes ma”. I don’t blame them, I’m Yoruba, a tribe with an almost enforced formal greeting for every situation known to man, you bump into a Yoruba man twenty times in twenty minutes, and he’s going to expect ten different forms of formal greetings.

My father’s text interrupts my thoughts and I break into a smile as I read his lone word reply

“Done”

It’s almost 3pm, that gives me barely one hour to get to the bank before they close their doors, I don’t have the luxury of taking a shower and all that nonsense, I take a N100 loan from my roommate who is suddenly the nicest guy in the world now that he knows I’ve got some money.

I’m at the bus stop in less than five minutes and although it’s crowded as usual, I hustle and practically fight my way into a cab as the driver announces “challenge, post office”, as is the norm; four of us are in the backseat trying not to squeeze ourselves to death in the small car.

The driver turns up Kwam1 and he’s belting out his now popular “eyin mama e sempe” tune and I bop my head along, as much as I hate fuji music, it’s one hell of a catchy tune, a collection of other catchy fuji tunes makes my journey seem short and almost pleasant.

I’m at challenge bus stop by 3:45 and my bank is a short walk from here, I walk into the imposing white structure marked “Oceanic bank”, there’s already a queue of people outside trying to get in, their stupid security doors aren’t exactly helping matters.

I might as well just wait my turn, in no time I’m in the banking hall and the queue makes me groan, sometimes I think that every student in Unilorin banks with Oceanic and the bank takes great pains to ensure social networking by making us all meet at the banking hall like this every week.

There are two queues and both look equally long, and the progress on either queue looks slow, in moments like this, it takes the wisdom of Solomon to decide which queue to join, after doing some “gauging”, I join the first queue and go through the motion of asking the person at the rear “Please are you the last person here? I’m after you”. My place thus reserved, the next task is to somehow get a seat while I wait.

One hour and N5,000 later, I leave the bank exhausted, and my trusty Nokia starts yelling in my pockets, it’s Tunde, my closest friend; I’m thinking about the marked “co-incidence” of how Tunde seems to be concerned about my welfare everytime I make a trip to the bank, the first words I hear as I pick up the phone;

“How far? You don go sleep for bank?”

“I just comot now now” I tell him

“Shei you sha see money collect” He asks again

The phone call ends as I respond in the affirmative; calls are so expensive especially because he uses MTN and I use Glo. Getting a cab back to school is the easy part, what we call Unilorin’s “magic school bus” appears, a long yellow “molue” looking thing that’s cheaper than a regular cab.

It’s dark by the time I get back to school, and I walk the short distance from the car park to hostel in silence and deep thought as to how I’d manage this 5k for the whole month, I make a mental note to send my father a “thank you” text.

I enter my room of four to a noisy welcome, any observer would have been forgiven for thinking I went to the bank to obtain a chieftaincy title as cries of “Chiefo” rent the air, the best way to deal with these hailing was just to bone face and give everyone vague assurances that they’d get a bite of your allowance.

After all the noise dies down, Tunde moves in;

“Guy, how far you now? Make we enter buka 11 go chop”

Buka 11 is one of our favourite “bukas” in school, but buka 11 wasn’t exactly known for their cheap prices.

“Make we manage buka 5 now, I no get money for 11 o” I tell him as I try to dissuade him.

After a series of negotiations, we settle on buka 5, I take a quick shower on the veranda, a trip to the bathroom would surely have meant mistakenly stepping on someone’s carefully placed mound of shit. Some people haven’t yet learnt the difference between “bathroom” and “toilet”.

I don a fresh t-shirt too, any evening outing in Campus is a social event, even if it’s just to go to the entrance of the hostel to buy recharge card, you know can tell when your prospective better half can decide to take a walk.

As we step out of the hostel, we take a minute to survey “Lagos hostel”, the female hostel facing ours, notorious for being as dirty as the dudes here, if your mentality is “fine girls no dey shit” all the convincing you’ll ever need is the countless black nylons lying directly behind the Lagos hostel.

These girls weren’t practising for Olympic shot put event, just unceremoniously disposing their shit and thus even the finest girls in Lagos hostel were looked at with some sort of suspicion. Who knows, she might even be the owner of the black nylon at the top of the dungpile.

We’re still playing our game of watching when my phone rings, it’s Yemi, I manage a wry smile as I pick the phone call, after light banter, I inform her that I’m going to grab lunch with Tunde, she says something about tagging along.

The implication of her statement kicks in only after the call ends and Tunde’s consoling me about how I just might get lucky if I spend a little money on her.

Needless to say, our plans had changed from buka 5 to buka 11

Followin....also a unilorin stdnt