₦airaland Forum

Natudu:
A work of fiction but a good one nonetheless. I am loving it.

That's right, Even if it is fiction, any story or movie that can capture imagination and have the possibility of being real is good enough, That's why Nollywood still have a long way to go, you are 2 minutes into all these moronic Nigerian movies and you can predict the end and the unrealistic nature of Nollywood products can be disgusting.

vislabraye:
Sounds like a good fiction. I like it.

I dont know why a well paid Nigerian would struggle to go to US as an illegit. Its a shame

Well it seems you have not been reading the diary,otherwise you will see the answer to your question in her story.

P.oj:
Its fiction,though I find an interesting read.
one wonders how a lady as educated and 'integellent' as to have risen to the level of Asst. Branch Manager in Nigerian
bank still find herself in the dilema of being forced to marry an old politcian

Strange things happen in Naija my brother , And not only in Naija, all over the world, You see all these Pakistanis, Indians and some arab folks killing intelligent and well educated women in the name of honor killing,

Life is one long tough journey, eventually it is what you make of it. Millions of normal looking people have all sort of dirt in their private lives. She made hers public but please let's be real and stop acting like it couldn't be worse or that many NLanders don't know people in similar situations if not in their own personal lives

OWOLAYEMO:
Plssssssssssss where is the conclusion of the story? Make una no vex oooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need to be educated.

Cont.
The Day Before America

I have come to America for my Tunde. He is the love of my life, the ordained father of my children, the man I would spend the rest of my life with.

I met Tunde Oluyomi six years ago. I was 21 and he was 27. I was an advertising executive. He was a journalist. I was from the Ishan tribe. He was from the Yoruba tribe. I lived in Oshodi on the Lagos mainland. He lived in Sango Ota, on the outskirts of Lagos.

We had very little in common.

“Why you dey always show me your break light?” he asked me one day in Pidgin English after I’d dropped off an advert copy for his newspaper.

“What do you mean,” I replied in my polished English. I’d just graduated from the University of Lagos with a Second class upper degree in Economics and I wasn’t going to waste my tongue speaking Pidgin English. That language was for illiterates.

“Every time I say hello, you just whisper hello back and scram,” he complained.

“Okay, hello, “ I answered and proceeded to theatrically count from one to three.

“See, I’m not running away. I just have to go,” I told him after I counted to three.

He laughed, showing a perfect set of white teeth that contrasted beautifully with his chocolate skin.

“Can I take you to lunch some time? I really want to know you,” he asked boldly, as if he was rolling the dice.

“I’m a busy girl. I don’t do lunch,” I answered.

We both knew it was a lie. But, we both knew he wouldn’t call me out on it. That would be the ultimate romance deal breaker.

“Breakfast, lunch, dinner, weekday, weekend – name it. I’m there,” Tunde offered.

“I’ll see you around, Bros,” I replied as I walked away.

“Bros” was a romantic death sentence. It means “big brother”. It’s worse than the friend zone. It’s the “never ever” zone. Tunde knew it as soon as I said it. But, he never relented.

He sent me a romantic e-card every day. He sent me bouquet after bouquet of flowers. He bought me chocolates and sweets. And, he never showed his face to pressurize it. He always sent a driver from his office.

Most boys in Lagos don’t pamper girls. The older men do. But, that’s why they’re called sugar daddies. The girls are toys – mistresses who balance the drudgery of married life. The sugar daddies buy their mistresses cars, rent them posh flats and fatten their bank accounts. But, it’s never a permanent thing. One day, a younger girl always takes the place of the mistress.

Lagos boys are not romantic. They are bottom line guys. Dinner, movie, club then your back on the mattress. Tunde was different. He romanced me as if he was consulting a romance magazine. I am a good Catholic girl who had promised God and my mother that I would keep my legs closed until my wedding night.

But, Tunde grew on me. Two days before Valentine’s Day, I called him.

“Will you be my Valentine?” I asked boldly.

I was breaking another little dating rule for girls in Lagos. Never ask a guy out. It diminishes you. But, I felt really good about Tunde. I didn’t think about it. I just dialed the phone and said the first thing that came to my mind.

I will always remember Tunde’s joyous laughter on the phone. It was a delight. I wish I had saved it on my voicemail. It would have been the perfect ring tone.

My parents didn’t approve of him. He was a “Yanmiri”, a Yoruba boy that should not be trusted. I don’t even know what the word means. But, I know it’s a bad word.

His parents didn’t approve of me for the same reason. I was an “ajeokuta ma mumi” which meant “he who eats stone without drinking water”. It was originally meant to describe people of the Ibo tribe. I wasn’t Ibo. But, to a Yoruba in the Nigerian tribal politics, if you’re neither Hausa or Yoruba, you were Ibo. It came from suspicion built during the civil war.

The funny thing is, although I am Ishan, I was born in Lagos and I have lived there all my life. I have only made two trips to the village. The first time was for an ill-fated Christmas vacation that was cut short because my grandmother claimed one of my grandfather’s other wives was a witch and had promised my head at a big witches’ meeting. The other trip was for my grandmother’s funeral. But, in Nigeria, you’re from where your forefathers were from.

Tunde’s mother told him I am an “Ogbanje” because I was fair-skinned. An “Ogbanje” is a child that made a pact with the spirit world to die young. They come to this world to torture their parents. They always die at very important periods in their life cycle. Since I already had a university degree, Tunde’s mother was convinced that I had made a pact with the spirit world to die on my wedding day.

“You’re just postponing sadness, Tunde. You will remember what I’m telling you on your wedding night when she drops dead,” she counseled Tunde.

But, nothing could come between Tunde and I. We had two great years together in Lagos. We were inseparable. He was one of the rising stars in political correspondence in Nigeria. Politicians called him every hour of the day.

With Tunde’s encouragement and active support, I went back to school part-time, got a masters degree in Banking and Finance and got a job in one of the new banks in Nigeria.

Tunde was very ambitious. He set goals he had to meet at certain ages. He wanted to be an editor by 30. He wanted us to be married when he was 31. We would have our first child when he was 32. All I had to do was say Amen. I loved my man and I thanked God everyday for him.

Then, Tunde decided to write a weekly column about the plight of the people in the oil-rich but devastated Niger Delta. In Nigeria at that time, it was the easiest way to die. During the brutal Abacha regime, journalists were jailed. In the new political dispensation, journalists simply disappeared.

Tunde was offered bribes and political appointments if he’d simply report the speeches and press releases of the politicians and let the Niger Deltans continue their decades of suffering. But, my man had a conscience as big as the ocean. He stayed on the side of the people.

After a couple of attempts on his life, Tunde and I decided it was time he fled the country. He would go abroad, study for a master’s degree and return when the situation was better. We even had dreams of owning our own newspaper. He would run the publishing side and I would run the business side.

While he was gone, I also embraced my new life as an emergency nun. Men offered me the world if I would go out with them. I always said no. I was going to wait for my Tunde.

“The way you’re going, this useless boy you’re waiting for will need a drill to get inside that vagina when he gets back,” one exasperated colleague told me after six months of trying to get me to go out on a date with him.

My father also had plans of his own. He wanted a man that would take care of me, not a boy who ran away from his country. He promised me to a politician from my state who was a few years older than my father, had three wives and had a breath that stank like rotten cheese.

“If it’s abroad you want to go to, I can re-locate you to New York after we marry. I have a house there. You’ll be my American wife,” the politician told me the first time I met him at my father’s house.

It all came to a head one, weird day two months ago. My father had called me that morning and said I should make sure I come over to his house after work. I was worried all day. I thought something was wrong. I thought for the briefest of moments that someone in our family had died or had a terminal illness.

When I got to my father’s house, the politician was waiting. There was a used car outside the house too. It was a gift for my father. My father was over the moon. He had worked for the government for thirty years and he couldn’t afford a bicycle. Now the politician had given him a car. My fate was sealed. I would marry the old man. I had no say in this matter. My father’s word was law.

“He can’t do that. My family brought him wine before I left. We are traditionally married,“ Tunde cried on the phone when I told him later that night.

“I think the politician’s money has made him crazy. He now has selective amnesia. You have to save me, Tunde,” I cried back.

“What are we going to do?” he wailed on the phone.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! If I can get a visa, I would come over there,” I replied between sobs.

“Don’t even try those embassy people. It’s just another heartache,” he advised.

“You have to come up with a plan, Tunde. My father man is planning to marry me off before Christmas,” I pleaded.

“I’ll work something out. I promise. No one can take you away from me,” Tunde professed.

But, Tunde could not come up with a good plan. For our sake and our future, I had to take matters into my own hands.

One morning in September, I rounded up my brother and two sisters. We went to the American embassy and applied for a visa.

We had to go to the embassy before September runs out because the politician decided he wanted to do the traditional wedding during Independence Day in October. He was running for office and he wanted to use the wedding as a rally for his supporters.

The embassy rejected my application. But, they gave my youngest sister a visa. There was no logical reason why she, a jobless graduate, got a visa while I, a gainfully employed banker, did not.

But, it all worked according to my grand plan. The reason we all applied for a visa was a shot in the dark that one of us would be lucky to get a visa. My siblings and I look alike. If my brother had gotten the visa, all I had to do was cut my hair.

Three days before my traditional wedding to the chief, I jumped on a British Airways flight bound for America.

During the stopover in London, I made two calls.

The first was to my father. I thought he would blow a lung or rupture his kidney in anger. But, all he did was curse me. I didn’t mind the curse. In Nigeria, we all know curses are local – they don’t travel across the ocean.

Then, I called Tunde. He was so stunned I was on my way to him that he couldn’t quite express his happiness.

I was happy. I was free. I was going to meet my man. In America.