https://penastory.com/2016/07/09/a-day-i-shall-never-forget-part-1/

December 12, 2012

It was about 2:30am in the morning, I was restless and suffering from what my learned colleagues at the department of English, University of Lagos would refer to as “insomnia”. In layman English, I couldn’t sleep. In that terrible restless state, I decided to find something engaging in order to eliminate boredom. As I began to descend the stairs of our then beautiful duplex located at the highbrow area of Magidi Isheri Estate, the power holding company of Nigeria decided to restore the power supply. To borrow local parlance, “NEPA won mu INA de”.

I became really excited that at least I could keep myself busy by watching the television but it was that day did I found out how boring Nigerian television stations can be. At that point, the pain of having a DSTV dish hanging beautifully on the wall outside with the decoder yet no subscription became poignant as it was now more or less an artifact. At this point, I know certainly that I have succeeded in getting you confused and you believe I have contradicted myself, isn’t it? *scoffs*. I get that a lot but believe me, I am not mad and I know exactly what I am saying. Let me save you from your misery by throwing light on certain issues.

Initially, I made mention of the fact that my family and I resided in the highbrow area of Magodo and then you got confused as to why people living in a duplex at Magodo won’t be able to pay for common subscription of 15,000 naira for DSTV? Well my dear that is the first lesson of life anyone who wants his/her name to be written “gidigba” in the book of life. Never get carried away by the things of life that other people own but you don’t. Because Shola cruises round town in the latest Range Rover or Emeka just bought a house in Banana Island does not mean that all is well. Dear sir/ma, uncle/aunty, brother/sister, I need you to understand that, “All that glitters is not gold”. Most of the people you desperately want to be like, simply live a life of PACKAGING. Nobody wants to be left behind or looked down on and so we all make up and live fake lives. Whether you like it or not, if you truly search your heart thoroughly, in one way or the other, you would come to the realization that you have also lived a fake life or even is currently living one.

89.75% of Nigerians live a make believe life. We tend to incorporate the habit of claiming to be what we are not, just because we want to meet up with our peers. The same thing applied to my family. But can you blame my father for wanting to give us (my mom and siblings) the very best of comfort? Can you? The truth is you can’t! It is not that we even lived an extravagant life but I guess we weren’t just fully prepared for the stormy days. Thus, we simply had to “package” when we had the big financial blow.

Not to digress too much, on that very day, I had settled for T.V.C (Television Continental) to watch “The Adventures of Kunle Thomas” because apparently that was the only thing that appealed to me. Exactly 15 minutes into it, sleep finally decided to open its warm hands and embrace me as I snored my way into the other side of life. I hadn’t slept for an hour when I woke up to the event that changed my life for good and made me become who I am today to the glory of God and to the shame of the Devil. From my sleep I heard a very loud noise; getting up I thought the sound was coming from outside so I ran out in anxiety and fear. As I stood panicking outside, I tried to figure out the cause of the noise but to my utmost surprise everywhere seemed peaceful except for the sound of my headstrong neighbours who had decided not to change over and turn off their generator set.

Source: PenAStory - www.penastory.com