₦airaland Forum

#38
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Now that I have a passport, there was no going back. I told John that within the next few weeks I intended to travel to the Bahamas to visit my family. He told me that it was okay with him as long as I could give him a week’s advance notice. The next morning, I used the money I had reserved for my September rent, plus everything else I had, and bought a ticket to the Bahamas. That left me completely broke. So far, I hadn’t told my flatmates that I was leaving. According to my flight itinerary, I was to depart Barcelona on September 10. I had no idea how I was going to pay my rent for September.
I had visited Maria Joana a few more times since our first encounter and she had taken a special liking to me. I had spent a few weekends at her apartment, and thought perhaps she would allow me to stay at her apartment for the next two weeks until my departure date. One day after work, I decided to talk to her about it. That night when I arrived at her place, I put on a sad face. She asked what the problem was and I acted coy, telling her there was nothing wrong. As I had hoped, she didn’t believe me and continued begging me to tell her. I hesitated, knowing I had to play it very carefully since I didn’t want to make her think that I was with her because of what I could get from her. I told her it was nothing that I couldn’t resolve on my own. As we went to bed that night, she pleaded with me to tell her what was bothering me. Eventually she started crying, telling me she loved me and whatever affected me also affected her.
As she cried, her dog, Quis, a two-year old Chinese chowchow, started barking. I had never been a dog lover—as a child, I’d had a traumatic experience with my grandmother’s dog—and was surprised that I could date Maria Joana in spite of her dog. Quis’s barking irritated me. I always wondered why she allowed her dog to sleep with us in the bedroom, but I tried not to complain since I knew how much she loved it.
To make her stop crying—which would hopefully get the dog to stop barking—I decided to tell her what the problem was. I explained that I couldn’t afford to pay my rent for September because I had used all my money to buy my ticket to the Bahamas, and also had no money left for my trip. Immediately, she stopped crying and smiled, but she said nothing. The dog stopped barking and we went to sleep soon afterward. By the time I woke the next morning, she had already left for work. She left me a beautiful note in which she begged me to move in with her until I traveled, along with an envelope containing 70,000 pesetas. I was dumbfounded. I suspected she would do something like this, but I had never anticipated it would be so soon.
I went to work that morning rejuvenated. I sang as I rode the subway, counting my blessings. When I got to work, I immediately informed John that I would be traveling to the Bahamas on September 10. He said my job would be waiting for me when I returned. After work, I went straight to Maria Joana’s house. She had prepared a lovely dinner for us. Before she could say anything, I hugged her tightly, kissed her all over, and thanked her profoundly for her kindness. The next evening, she drove me to my place, and I packed all my stuff and moved into her apartment.
Life with Maria Joana was beautiful. Apparently, the apartment belonged to her. She seemed to be living very comfortably, with a well-paying job as a cashier and her own car. She also seemed genuinely in love with me. For the next few days, my life involved going to work, returning in the evenings, and taking walks with Maria Joana and Quis. It was quite a different experience for me—I partied less and kept away from my friends, devoting all of my attention to the lady who had been so kind to me.
The only problem I had was Blanca. She acted neglected, not unrelated to the fact that since I had started seeing Maria Joana, their relationship—or lesbian experiment, as I liked to think of it—had ended. When I had found out about their relationship, I confronted Maria Joana. After a few minutes of my probing, she had finally blurted out that they had been having a relationship before we met. She said she had never been in a lesbian relationship before Blanca. Blanca was her schoolmate, and when she needed a place to stay, Maria Joana had decided to rent her a room in her apartment. They went out together often. One night, they went out partying, got drunk, and one thing led to another and they ended up having sex. They had sex a few more times, and Blanca automatically assumed that they had become lovers. Maria Joana never tried to discourage Blanca’s assumption. When Maria Joana and I started seeing each other, it was a blow to Blanca, an ultimate rejection. In spite of Blanca’s antagonistic and hostile behavior toward me, I was undeterred. I told Maria Joana not to worry about the past, as long as she was true to me.
As for Blanca, there was no love lost between us. I wanted her gone as fast as possible since I saw her as a threat, my competition. It didn’t matter too much to me, though, granted that I was going to the Bahamas in the next few days anyway and might never return to Spain. My intention was to stay in the Bahamas and hustle my way into Miami, USA.

Chapter Seventeen

Two days before my departure, I arrived at work to find that John and a few of my clients had thrown a little surprise party for me. The biggest surprise wasn’t so much the party itself; it was seeing my Arab colleague animated and doing everything possible to make the occasion a joyous one. I thought back and realized that he had been very nice to me during the past few weeks, and I wondered why the sudden change of heart. John must have told him I wasn’t gay—or maybe he came to the conclusion on his own—and therefore realized I wouldn’t interfere with his delusional, imaginary relationship with John. I had always maintained a purely working relationship with both of them, and never hung out with either of them after work, except for the few times John and I received courtside tickets from American basketball players to watch their tournaments. John’s shop was very popular in Barcelona and many U.S. basketball players got their hair cut there. On numerous occasions they would leave courtside tickets for us so we could watch them play.
We all ate and drank, and some of the customers thanked me for my professionalism, work etiquette, and especially my effort and ingenuity in creating fantastic hairstyles that later became trends. They all said I would surely be missed, but they understood that I had to go and see my family—and besides, I wasn’t leaving for good. At the end of the party, I thanked everyone. Somehow I felt sad inside; these people thought I was only going to visit my family for a month, but in reality, this was goodbye. I knew I would never see them again.
Before leaving the shop that evening, I spent a long time in the back office with my special hair clipper. I wasn’t usually attached to inanimate objects, but I had a special connection with this clipper, which John had given me when I began working at the shop. I had a job thanks to the way the clipper felt in my hand. When I first started working there, I was terrified due to my disastrous experience at the Ghanaian guy’s shop. But here at John’s shop, my first haircut with this particular clipper was a great success. I held the clipper in my hand for a few seconds, then put it down and left the shop, never looking back.
After my party that Friday, I was able to relax the next day with Maria Joana. She was very emotional about my leaving. I had to console her, telling her that I would only be gone for a few weeks and I would be back in no time. That night we went to a nearby Italian restaurant, and afterward we went to see a movie. By the time we returned, she was a little more relaxed. The next morning she made us breakfast and after we ate, we lay down and listened to music. There was really nothing much to pack because I had been living a nomadic life, with all my belongings in one backpack that I took with me wherever I went.
We later drove to the airport, and as we approached the terminal, I told her to drop me off and not wait for me to check in. I got out of the car with my bag while she remained in the car. I walked around to the driver’s side window and gave her a kiss as tears rolled down her face. Quis barked from the backseat. I reassured her, telling her not to worry and that I would be back in a few weeks. But inside I was really saying, Thank you for everything. I may not see you again, so may you have a good life.
As she drove off, I went inside the terminal to check in. For some reason, I was very confident about this trip. I completely forgot that the diplomatic passport I was traveling with was bogus. I walked straight to the Iberian Airways check-in counter and presented my passport and ticket. The attendant checked me in without batting an eye. I collected my boarding pass, grabbed my backpack, and proceeded to the departure hall. By 9:30 p.m. we were on our way to London. We landed at Heathrow Airport two to three hours later for a layover.
After another two hours, I boarded my connecting flight to Miami, full of anxiety and expectation. I had a few bottles of wine, watched movies, and tried as much as possible to pretend that everything would be okay. In Miami, I got off the plane and went in search of my connecting flight. To get to the terminal where my connecting flight was, I had to pass through U.S. immigration.
I presented my passport to the immigration officer. He inspected it closely, his face showing his doubt. He questioned me about the authenticity of the passport. He wanted to know where I was going, and I told him that I was visiting the Bahamas. He explained that they had received information that during the war in Liberia, a lot of Liberian diplomatic and official passports were stolen and people had been caught traveling with them. They had seen an increasing number of cases of people who were not Liberians or diplomats traveling with such passports. He told me that mine looked real, but that he had his doubts. He said he had a young boy like me at home, and assumed I’d had a rough life and he didn’t want to make things more difficult for me than they had already been. He advised me that Bahamian immigrations wouldn’t allow me to enter with that passport, and asked me if I knew anyone in the U.S. I said no, and he told me that the best thing was to return to wherever I had come from, because even if he allowed me to continue, I would run into problems getting into the Bahamas. Once that happened, the Bahamians would most certainly deport me back to the U.S., and the U.S. would send me back to whatever country I had entered the U.S. from. He stressed that this would give me a bad record with the U.S., which would jeopardize my possibility of getting into the country later. He was the kindest immigration officer I had ever met, and I found his advice priceless. He concluded by telling me that the choice was mine.
It was practically impossible to overlook the consequences of my decisions. I decided it would be best for me to return to Spain. I thanked the officer and told him my plan. He handed me my passport, and I hurried over to the British Airways transfer counter. I explained to the attendants that I had to go back on the same flight that had brought me because I had some urgent matters that required me to return immediately to Spain. I doubted that they bought my explanation, but it didn’t matter. All I wanted at that point was to be out of the U.S. as fast as possible. America was my ultimate destination, and I couldn’t afford to ruin my chances of ever getting in.
Fortunately, they were able to get me on the flight. Since I had my backpack that contained all of my personal belongings, there was no issue of retrieving or checking in my luggage.
I was convinced that my sudden change of plan would never go unnoticed by British Airways. I felt dejected on the return flight. I thought I would be in the Bahamas by then. I never considered that I would be returning to Spain less than forty-eight hours after I left.
Luckily, I was not completely without a plan. Before leaving Spain, I had carefully hidden my asylum card under the insole of my shoe, so that if I encountered a situation that would require my deportation to a country, it would be Spain. Still, I felt completely hopeless and could barely tolerate the thought of returning to Spain when I had already told everyone I knew that I was going to the Bahamas to visit my family. I couldn’t go back to John’s shop since I didn’t know how to explain why I was back in Barcelona. The embarrassment was more than I could take. Worst of all, I would have to start all over again and I had no place to stay. As these thoughts kept playing over and over in my mind, I decided to make another bold move: I would stop in London.
A few hours later we landed in London and I proceeded to immigration, where I presented my passport to the officer. He asked where I was coming from, and I told him I was returning from the U.S. He flipped through the pages of my passport, looking for a U.S. stamp that wasn’t there. He asked me again where I was coming from, and I replied that I lived in Barcelona. I explained that I had left there to visit the Bahamas a couple of days ago, but upon arrival in Miami, I had changed my mind and decided to visit London instead. It was such a flimsy explanation that even I didn’t buy it. He called the attention of another security officer, and they asked me to follow them.
I was taken into a holding room at the airport. The two men began throwing rapid-fire questions at me and I gave them random answers. They weren’t satisfied with my explanations and had reason to believe that I was traveling with a forged passport; as a result, they wouldn’t allow me to enter London. They told me to stay in the room and that someone would come and speak to me later. I waited for what seemed like ages. Eventually, two menacing, heavyset white guys who looked like intelligence officers came into the room. They sat down across from me and started interrogating me. They wanted to know who I was, what I did for a living, where I was going, where I was coming from, and what I intended to do in London. Once again, I gave my story: my father was from the Bahamas, my mother was a Liberian who happened to be a diplomat, and I was just going back to the Bahamas to visit my folks. Obviously, they didn’t accept my explanation, but I decided not to change my story.
They kept probing and trying to get me to confess—something I almost began to enjoy as the drama continued to unfold. Seeing my nonchalant attitude, the two men started threatening me with jail time, and one of them got so furious that he grabbed me by the neck, shaking me and trying to knock the life out of me. But I wouldn’t budge; I looked him straight in the eye and asked him to go on and do his worst. The officers calmed down and tried to come at me from another angle. They told me that they knew I was Nigerian and they were pretty familiar with how Nigerians operated. Suddenly, I realized their intention. If I was proven a Liberian, they wouldn’t be able to deport me to Liberia because of the war there. But if they could establish that I was from another country—Nigeria, for instance—where there was no ongoing conflict, then it would be easy for them to deport me on the next available flight.
Armed with this knowledge, I decided to play their mind games. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about; I didn’t even know of any country called Nigeria. I locked eyes with them and stated that I was Bahamian. They threatened me a few more times, but the more aggressive they got with me, the more stubborn I became. After several hours of abusive, inhumane interrogation, the two officers decided to give up. They described a horrible detention center somewhere in London where there were a lot of hardened criminals, and said they would be.....

and the humble warrior returned, feeling a bit tipsy from a pleasant encounter with caborne savignon..now feeling very sleeping and marvelously contented with stomach filled up of crusted tilapia and sweet potato couscous... however, could not go to sleep without responding to his loyal readers/follows...rudeness is no longer in his nature..will post in a minute.

#37
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Chapter Sixteen

The Olympics were winding down, but the festivities continued in Barcelona. Since I had no job, I kept playing unofficial tour guide when I got the chance, and I spent my nights going from one club to another. I loved to dance. I would go to Studio 54 and from there to Jamboree. When all the clubs closed, I would go to the after-hours clubs, which stayed open until eight in the morning. There was a popular place called Oveja Negra (“Black Sheep”), a traditional Catalunyan bar that had several pool tables and made the best sangria in Barcelona. It always attracted tourists. I spent many evenings there waiting for the clubs to open.
One day as I was strolling through Las Ramblas, I had a chance encounter with an attractive girl about my age. Karen came from Ireland and worked in Costa Brava. She had decided to visit Barcelona on her day off. We spent the entire day together. She told me how frustrated she was with the Spanish family she was living with, and that if she had the choice, she would leave them. Misery loves company, I thought to myself. I told her that whenever she decided to leave the family, she would always have a place at my apartment. We exchanged numbers and she went back to Costa Brava.
A week later, I was having dinner with Michael and my roommates when I received a phone call. It was Karen; she had left the family that she had been living with and was now taking me up on my offer. She was waiting for me at the station. I immediately left the others and went to fetch her. I introduced her as my girlfriend, and she did not object. Everyone welcomed her, and Debra was the most excited because they were both Irish, and from the same region. I showed Karen to my room, and she made herself comfortable. She immediately joined the others drinking. Since I had only met her once, I had no idea she was a heavy drinker. During the course of the evening, she got completely drunk. I didn’t like what I saw, but it was too late by then. That night, unfortunately, she and I were intimate and that kind of validated the relationship.
For the next few weeks, since Karen neither had a job nor money, I became responsible for her. She looked for work, but was unable to find anything. She was very outgoing, like me, and in the evenings we would hit the bars and clubs. Sometimes Debra and Michael would go with us. By this time, Michael had developed a soft spot for Debra, and I welcomed it. I reasoned that if they started dating, he would spend a lot more time at our apartment and wouldn’t be a third wheel every time we went out.
I enjoyed my relationship with Karen, but I started to get weary of her drinking habit; for one, it was expensive. In my opinion, she was an alcoholic, and was literally drinking me dry. I had no job and my savings were drying up fast. Because of her drinking, we were always fighting. A few weeks after the Olympics, Karen had rendered me broke and my relationship with her had become strained. Every day I hoped and prayed that God would make her go away. I started pounding the streets in search of a job. This was an embarrassing period in my life. I was so destitute that I had no shame.
Coming from Nigeria, a completely different culture, there were certain European tradition that baffled me. One of them was throwing coins into fountains. One day, at the height of my desperation, I noticed a fountain that was a tourist attraction. It had always been there, but I suddenly saw it with new eyes. As I looked into the fountain, I noticed that the bottom was littered with coins, mostly of high denominations. I immediately jumped in to help myself. To my greatest surprise, there were many more coins in the water. I couldn’t understand how this miracle happened, but who was I to question God for providing for me through a fountain? It was much later that I came to understand that people threw money in the fountains to make wishes. Nonetheless, there was no harm done. The people may or may not have gotten their wish, but I sure did benefit from them.
After a few days of job hunting, I found a Ghanaian-owned barbershop. It was a decent shop, and since I used to cut my own hair and my friend’s hair in Africa, I felt that qualified me as a barber. I went in and told the owner of the shop that I was a barber and I needed a job. It would have been easier for me to tell him that I was from Nigeria, but I continued with the lie that I was from the Bahamas. He told me that he would give me a trial period of two days to show my skills, and I gladly accepted.
On the first day we didn’t have many customers, and the ones who showed up were old clients who were already used to having the owner cut their hair. The next day my opportunity came: there were a few new customers and the shop owner asked me to take care of one of them. By the time I finished with his hair, everyone’s faces were frozen in horror. I had completely brutalized his hair to the extent that even when the shop owner came to the rescue, it was too late to make the man’s hair look any better. It wasn’t surprising that when I showed up the next day, the shop owner told me that he couldn’t keep me. He said his former employee had come back to the job and he couldn’t afford to have both of us. Of course, I knew he was lying. He was too polite to tell me that I had performed horribly the day before. He was nice enough to refer me to another barbershop where the owner, John, was looking for a helper. He said that John was from the United States and would be more than pleased to have me since I was from the Bahamas. I went home depressed that day instead of going immediately to John. It was three days before I regained the confidence to claim that I was a barber.
When I got to the barbershop, there was a tall black guy, about six feet two inches, who spoke American English, and another guy who looked like an Arab. I told them I was looking for John, and the tall black guy identified himself as such. I told him I was from the Bahamas and was looking for a job. He said he knew of me; apparently, the Ghanaian shop owner had told him I was a good person and that I was looking for work. John was very welcoming and immediately offered a job. Because of his kindness, I felt I owed it to him to be truthful. I confessed that I wasn’t a professional barber, but that I knew how to cut African hair. He told me not to worry, and asked me to take a few days and watch him cut hair. He explained that eventually he would start me off with little kids, and as I got better, I would move to adults. He also explained that he didn’t pay salaries; I would get fifty percent of whatever I made and he would take the other fifty. That was fine with me.
I noticed the Arab man glaring at me. He wasn’t friendly at all, and I couldn’t understand why. I would find out what his grievances were much later. For the next couple of days, all I did was observe how John worked. He was a very skillful barber, the best I had ever seen. I later found out that he had studied cosmetology at the University of North Carolina. Each day there were more customers than we could fit in; the schedule was always fully booked in advance. Everyone who came into the shop wanted no one but John to do their hair. The Arab guy didn’t seem to do much but answer phones, make appointments, wash the ladies’ hair, and put them under the drier. I couldn’t understand how he could be doing so little while John did all the work. I was also struck by how self-absorbed he seemed, looking in the mirror every minute.
I really liked John’s shop. It was a beehive of activity every day. At any given time, we would have more than five clients, and there was always a lot of gossip. By the end of first week, my skills had improved tremendously, and by the second week I was on the road. I soon became so popular that word got to the Ghanaian man’s shop and he started looking for me. He begged me to come back to work for him, but I had to turn him down. I liked John and couldn’t leave his shop. I was dedicated to my job, and I wanted to save money so I could go to the United States and study.
In the matter of Karen, God finally answered my prayer. By this time practically no one in my apartment liked Karen anymore; she had made enemies. She got drunk one day and slept with Gomez, who was then in a relationship with Debra. The next morning, Debra confronted Karen, and she attempted to defend her actions, which made things worse. That same day, I told her that she had betrayed everyone in the house and my trust in her was completely gone. I said that she had to move, and she did. But as fate would have it, she didn’t move far. One of our flatmates left, and she moved into that room. By this time she had gotten a job and could afford to pay for her own room. I had long suspected that Karen had been sleeping around, and that was one more reason to end our relationship. I suspected that she was cheating on me because of the way she would always flirt with guys, and a couple of times I caught her kissing guys at the club. Alcohol had taken over her life completely, and I didn’t want to be any part of that. I had no choice but to break up with her. The good thing was that, with no one else to take care of, I could afford to pay for my room and save a little money from what I was making.
I knew that it would be virtually impossible for me to get into the United States without a passport. So I thought that since I was still claiming to be Bahamian and my asylum card validated the claim, maybe I should try to obtain a Bahamian passport to get into the U.S. I still needed a passport to go from Spain to the Bahamas, but coincidently, one of my clients, Kofi, specialized in faking documents. He told me that he had all kinds—British, American, and so on—but he recommended that I use a diplomatic passport to go to the Bahamas. Kofi had a box full of Liberian diplomatic passports. Apparently, during the war in Liberia, boxes of official and diplomatic passports were stolen after the offices of immigration and naturalization were destroyed. Therefore, there were thousands of both Liberian official and diplomatic passports circulating around the world. I told him I was interested and would let him know when I was ready to travel. In the meantime, I continued working at John’s shop.
After one month, John really came to trust me and started opening up to me. I had always wondered why he had no girlfriend. He was always polite with the girls, and clients flirted with him often, but he never responded the way I would have expected of a man. John was gay, but I never could have guessed by looking at him. He probably thought I was gay and may have hired me for that reason. John told me that his Arab employee was also gay, and was jealous of me—that’s why he was always mean to me. He was very possessive of John, even though they weren’t in a relationship, and feared that John would fall in love with me and not pay attention to him anymore. He was threatened by my presence, and his envy and hatred grew worse when I become a skillful hairstylist and clients began asking for me by name. After he realized how popular I had become at the shop, he told John that he, too, would like to start cutting hair. When John told me all of this, I begged him to let the Arab know that I was heterosexual and he had nothing to worry about from me. John didn’t seem to understand, and I think he still believed I was gay.
Everyone had a tale. Before I met John, I was very homophobic. Still traumatized by my encounter with the gay pedophile who violated me in secondary school, I disliked and wished ill toward homosexuals. But with John, it was entirely different. He didn’t flaunt his homosexuality. I found out that John had a successful business in North Carolina, where he had fallen in love with a bisexual man, Lester, who was married. He must have thought Lester was also in love with him. John went into a joint venture with Lester. Lester then moved to Barcelona with his family, and convinced John to also move there and open a barbershop with him. John, foolishly in love, followed Lester to Barcelona. They opened the shop and were very successful, but John was the only one running the shop and working for all the money, while Lester focused on his other businesses and his family. He paid little or no attention to John, except when he went to collect his share of the profit. The situation was eating John up inside and he had been miserable for the three years he had been in Spain. I felt sorry for him, but couldn’t help him. I had my own problems to worry about. I continued working at the shop and saving for my trip to the Bahamas, and on weekends I was able to squeeze in some partying time.
One Saturday, as usual, I started the evening at Plaza Real, had a few drinks at a bar, and later moved on to Oveja Negra, where I drank sangria and shot pool until midnight. Then I headed to the most famous club at this time, San Francisco. All my club friends were already there, and as soon as I stepped in, everybody hailed and welcomed me. At that moment, there was a dance-off going on in the center of the dance floor. Everyone knew I never passed on a dance competition, and I immediately swung into action. From the applause coming my way at the end, it was obvious that I had won.
Everyone took to the floor again, and because of my excellent display during the dance-off, most of the girls came to dance with me. As usual, I picked a beautiful girl, danced with her, and moved on to the next one. Suddenly, as I was dancing, I felt a hand groping my buttocks. I tried to see who it was, but the club was too crowded. I continued dancing, and the hand grabbed my buttocks again, squeezing tightly. I whirled around and there she was: a girl about five feet four inches tall, with a white round face, deep brown eyes, and short brown hair. She looked like she was in her late twenties. She stood there looking longingly at me. Before I could say a word, she untangled my hands from the girl I was dancing with, dragged me close to her, and whispered in my ears, begging me to dance with her. So I left my current partner and started dancing with this girl. She wouldn’t let go of me the whole night. We talked while we danced, then continued the conversation outside, where it was quiet. I told her my name and gave her my usual story, changing the narrative a little bit this time. I told her I was from the Bahamas, but was living in my mother’s country, Liberia. When the war started there, I had to escape, and had ended up in Spain. I also told her that I was currently working as a hairstylist.
Her name was Maria Joana, and she was from Manacor, Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands. She lived in Barcelona and worked at a bank. She had seen me a few times in the club and liked me very much, though I never seemed to pay attention to her. On a few occasions she had wanted to come over and speak to me, but she had been too shy.
As we were speaking, a friend of hers appeared whom she introduced as Blanca; they lived in the same apartment. I noticed that they were chain smokers. Maria Joana had smoked more than ten cigarettes since we started our conversation. Normally, that would be a turnoff for me, but I was intrigued by Maria Joana’s boldness. By 4 a.m. the club was still rocking and both Maria Joana and Blanca were more than tipsy. I was getting a little tired because my conversation with Maria Joana had broken my club routine, which was to dance all night with as many girls as possible. I thanked Maria Joana and Blanca, and said it was a pleasure hanging out with them, but it was time for me to head home. They also said they were tired and were about to leave anyway. I went back into the club and said farewell to my friends, and then I walked back into the street with Maria Joana and Blanca. I headed off to catch a bus and the girls headed for their car.
A few minutes later, as I was walking toward the bus stop, a car pulled up behind me: it was Maria Joana. She insisted on giving me a ride home. I noticed Blanca wasn’t with her and asked where she was. She said that Blanca had decided to stay at the club. Without much argument I got into the car and told her where to drop me. She sped off, and minutes later I realized that she had completely bypassed my route. I asked her where she was going, and she said she wanted to show me her place before dropping me off. I let it go because I was too tired to argue. We got to her apartment complex, which was on Pasaje Escudellers, a street right behind my favorite plaza, Plaza Real. She lived on the fourth floor, second apartment. She invited me in and brought out some wine. We had a few glasses, and by the time we were done, I was too exhausted to go back to my apartment. She asked me to sleep over, and we ended up having sex. The next morning, by the time I got up, she had already made breakfast for me. She pampered me and treated me like a king. I spent the entire Sunday at her place.
Later in the day, Blanca returned to the apartment. She wasn’t too pleased to see me there, for reasons I didn’t find out until months later: Blanca was a lesbian and was in a relationship with Maria Joana. By the end of that evening, I was completely taken with Maria Joana’s kindness and her complete devotion to me. Before I left, she made me promise to visit her as often as possible.
Back in my apartment, things were not as they used to be. The friendly atmosphere that had existed before Karen moved in had completely vanished. Karen had a way of sowing hate and discontent. She pretty much wanted to sleep with every guy she met and kept bringing strange men into the apartment. After her fight with Debra over Gomez, the two had remained estranged. She tried to turn our forty-year-old flatmate against me, but it didn’t work; the lady always told me everything Karen said about me. Eventually, Giles moved out of the apartment, and it became increasingly intolerable for me. Though I didn’t spend a lot of time there, I preferred to have a friendly environment like we used to have. From time to time Michael visited the apartment. He and Debra still got along well, and since Debra had dumped Gomez after the affair with Karen, she was now available. I was happy for both of them. I believed that they were suitable for each another. They were both mild and kindhearted people, and they seemed to enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes, when Michael visited, he would cook for Debra.
As the days went by, I realized that if I had to move to the Bahamas, I couldn’t keep living in the apartment. I could barely afford to pay for my room, much less buy a plane ticket or the fake passport that I needed. I became worried and increasingly doubtful that I would be able to make the trip. It was almost the end of August 1992 and I was determined to travel before October. I thought hard about what to do, but couldn’t come up with a viable solution.
A few days later, Kofi came to the salon and said he had a fake diplomatic passport for me. He showed it to me, and it looked very professionally done. I was satisfied and paid him three thousand pesetas, which at the time was equivalent to two hundred US dollars.

***will not be updating today..worked related engagement this evening***
so will instead update right now before heading out

#36
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Hotel Villa Olimpica was a brand-new, twenty-five-story hotel being built in the Olympic Village. My group of English friends said that lots of tourists were being hired at the construction site, and most of the construction companies were from England and America. Therefore, they would prefer to hire English speakers—so I wouldn’t have much of a problem getting a job there. I was motivated by their encouragement and immediately headed to the construction site.
By the time I got there, the construction workers were returning from their lunch break. There must have been more than three thousand people working there, and in order to get to the site, one had to show a badge. Since I didn’t have one, I mingled with a group of workers and was able to sneak through. As soon as I got in, I asked some of the workers to show me who the supervisors were. Someone pointed to a gentleman from Ireland called Dave. I walked right up to him and asked for a job. Dave happened to be one of the supervisors in charge of the day-shift cleaning crew. Without much said, he asked for my name, which I gave him, and he immediately welcomed me aboard, asking me to start immediately. I thanked him, and he asked someone to take me to the office, process my badge, and take care of other requirements. I was to be a part of the day-shift crew, working twelve hours a day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
I was assigned to be part of a six-man team. There was Michael from Germany, Steve from the United States, Pedro from Mexico, and two other guys. Our job consisted of cleaning up debris on the floor. Even though we were working twelve-hour shifts, we really didn’t do much for the ten dollars per hour that we were being paid. All the guys on my team were tourists, and just like the other two thousand people who worked at the construction site, none of them had a good work ethic. It was no wonder that these facilities were behind schedule. People basically pretended to be working and got paid for it. But who was I to complain? As they say, when in Rome, act like the Romans, and as long as I was getting paid, it was all right with me.
In my work team we were pretty close. I became good friends with Michael. Steve was the default leader of my team. Since he was an American, everybody kind of looked up to him. I was sad to learn that he was HIV-positive. I later found out that Pedro was gay, and unless you were told, you would never know it. He came across as abrasive and hostile, but he was a very nice person when you got to know him better. I also learned that he was in love with Steve. Homosexual relationships were a bit too much for me, coming from my background, but since I was now living in a society that accepted it as a norm, I had no option but to keep my opinions and feelings to myself.
After a week working at the site, I received my first pay. It was a lot of money and I decided it was time to find my own place. I would have loved to keep staying with my African friend, but my relationship with him and his flatmates had become a little strained. He had become jealous of me because I had gotten a well-paying job just a few days after I arrived in Barcelona, whereas he had been living there for two years and could barely make ends meet. I tried to chip in for meals as well as rent. When it came to food, I never held back. I always bought the best food, irrespective of the price. My lavish taste didn’t quite sit well with my flatmates, and their resentment led to subtle attempts to get me out of their apartment. By this time I had started hanging out regularly with Michael, my teammate; we had become the best of friends. Sometimes he would invite me to sleep over at his apartment, which he shared with a guy from Argentina, and we would go to clubs and bars.
One of those nights, I met Jenny, a beautiful professional dancer who worked in the clubs. She was adopted from Equatorial Guinea when she was a baby, had grown up in Spain, and spoke fluent Spanish and English. She had never known her biological parents. She and her adopted family had lived in Madrid, and after her eighteenth birthday, she started searching for her biological family. She was able to trace them back in Equatorial Guinea. She now lived in Barcelona because her Aunty Petosa, from her biological mother’s side, had just migrated to Spain and was living in Barcelona. Jenny had come down to spend some time getting to know her.
When I met Jenny at the club that night, I danced with her for a long time, after which we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet the next day. After work, I hung out with her and we had a great time. We made each other laugh. It seemed like I had known her all my life. I had never met anyone like her—someone I could relate to on all levels. She was astonishingly beautiful and a very good dancer. That night I stayed at Jenny’s apartment with her Aunty Petosa. We spent most of the night talking, and I watched her practice her dance moves. Aunty Petosa also liked me and invited me to hang out with them anytime. That night Jenny and I slept in the same bed, but nothing happened. We were like brother and sister. I think what had drawn us together were our traumatic life experiences.
For the next few weeks I slept either at Jenny’s or Michael’s apartment. My life revolved around Jenny. I loved her so much, I couldn’t think clearly anymore. We kissed a lot, but we never had sex. Jenny was a virgin, in spite of her active social life. She refused to have sex with me, but that was okay by me. My feelings for her went deeper than that. She had become my confidant, and I wasn’t willing to jeopardize that for momentary sexual satisfaction.
Michael was from Germany, but did not consider himself German. He told me he was a proud Swabian—from southwestern Germany. His hometown was about fifteen miles from Stuttgart. He was visiting Barcelona for the summer when he landed the job at Hotel Villa Olimpica. He traveled a lot and had been to America. He told me he spent the last summer living on an Indian reservation. He was fascinated with Indian culture and tradition, and we ended up arguing about what he perceived as the United States government’s neglect of Native Americans. He also tried to perpetuate a debunked conspiracy theory that the U.S. government was deliberately trying to eliminate the Native Americans through the introduction of alcohol into their closely guarded society. Even though I had never been to America, I refused to accept his argument. Though Michael and I argued from time to time, our friendship remained solid. Our difference in race had never mattered to us. We were together most times, but sometimes he worried that I spent too much time with Jenny instead of hanging out with him.
After a few weeks, Jenny left Barcelona and went back to Madrid. I was devastated. We had grown very fond of each other and were practically inseparable. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that I would eventually see her again; she had given me her address in Madrid, which happened to be in my old barrio (neighborhood).
Two weeks before the Olympics, our work ended at Hotel Villa Olimpica. Though construction was not completed, some temporary measures were put in place to make the hotel usable for the Olympics, after which work would resume on the hotel. By this time, I had saved about ten thousand dollars. After staying idle for a few days, Michael and I decided to go to Saragossa, an hour and a half train ride from Barcelona, to work on the farms, picking apples and grapes. We arrived at a small farming village, but couldn’t find jobs or accommodation, so we ended up sleeping on a farm. That night we stole some pears from the trees and ate them for dinner. In the morning we walked around the village and bought fresh milk for breakfast. We roamed around the entire day looking for a job, but no one was interested in hiring us. We spent another night in the fields. The next morning we gave up and returned to Barcelona.
Since I had money saved, I decided to enjoy myself doing what I did best: traveling and adventure-seeking. I opted to travel to Spain’s Balearic Islands by ship. I went back to my African friend and got my belongings, which were contained in one small bag. I went down to the port and bought a ticket for the trans-Mediterranean cruise ship that went from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca, departing that evening.
It was my first experience on a passenger ship. As I went from floor to floor admiring the ship, I met a couple from Sweden. They were around my age. His name was Haas and hers was Viola. They both had very long hair and typical Scandinavian looks, with blue eyes and a weird sense of humor. Back in Sweden, they were part of a rock band; Haas was the drummer and Viola was the lead singer. They were going on vacation in Palma. I hung out with them the entire trip and we had a lot of fun together. Before we arrived in Palma, we exchanged addresses and phone numbers, and they said that they would come and spend the next summer in Barcelona with me. We got off the ship at Palma and said our goodbyes. I decided not to stay in Palma, but to go to a holiday resort instead, preferably a camping ground. I got on the bus to Ca’n Picafort. There, I met a few young people going in the same direction: two beautiful German girls, and one French girl, a real tomboy. By the time we got to our destination, we had all become good friends, and since I had no idea where I was going, I decided to join them at their campground.
I had tried my best to look like a tourist before going on the journey, and I brought all the stuff a typical tourist would need. I had bought a backpack and a sleeping bag, and I had my Walkman, which I brought with me from Africa, but I forgot to get a tent. At the camp, one could bring one’s own tent and just pay for the space to pitch it, or rent a tent, which was expensive. Luckily for me, the French girl invited me to stay in her tent. It was a small two-person tent, but a beggar had no choice. I accepted her offer, and all four of us pitched our tents close to each other. For the next few days, all we did was spend time at the beach, eat, and sleep. I was being careful with my money, though. Things were very expensive at Ca’n Picafort.
Ca’n Picafort was predominantly German. It was like a German city in the middle of Spain. Most of the businesses—including the resorts, restaurants, and hotels—were owned by Germans. Half of the tourists in the area were Germans as well. Our little foursome rented bikes and rode around town. Everything was lovely until the fifth day. I went to the beach and, after reading for a while, did my normal three-mile run along the beach, after which I jumped into the water for a swim. As I was swimming, my leg cramped and I felt myself going under. I stretched my hand to hang on to the person near me, but as I grabbed his shoulder, he pushed me off and I went under again. I thought to myself, Is this how I will die? My life flashed before my eyes and I started to shout, “The Blood of Jesus!” And somehow, I got to shallow waters where I could sit without drowning. I was relieved and furious at the same time—furious that all the people around me had just watched me struggle, but did not attempt to come to my rescue.
Before this incident I was never conscious of my color. All of a sudden, I was rudely awakened to the fact that I was the only black person at the beach and everyone else probably saw me as a nuisance that deserved to drown. As soon as I had fully recovered, I gathered my things and went back to the camp. The next morning I left Ca’n Picafort for Palma. I checked into a hotel there, and that night I went to a club and had a wonderful time. I mingled with other tourists from all over the world. Some of them talked about two other islands they had visited: Minorca and Ibiza. Minorca was predominantly English, and Ibiza was more like a party island, a “must visit” for young people. When I returned to my hotel, I thought hard about which island to visit first. The following morning, I went off to Minorca. It was a beautiful island, very laid-back. I was a bit disappointed, as I had expected it to be more lively and bustling with activities. There were not as many bars as in Ca’n Picafort and Palma, just a few English pubs. It felt like a retirement island, a place for those over fifty. I returned to Palma the next day. Since I was running low on cash and getting a bit tired of traveling, I decided to postpone my trip to Ibiza and head back to Barcelona.
Once in Barcelona, I went straight to Michael and asked if I could spend a couple of days at his apartment until I could find my own place. The next day, I went to the University of Barcelona to look at the announcements on their notice boards, hoping I would find students looking for roommates. I found a couple of numbers and made phone calls. Luckily, there was a room available in a six-bedroom apartment near Plaza Catalunya, so I went over there. It happened that all the residents were exchange students from different countries. There was Debra from Ireland, Giles from South Africa, Gomez from Colombia, and two British ladies. They accepted me and I paid for my room. I picked up my stuff from Michael and moved into the apartment. The next morning I roamed Barcelona searching for work, but couldn’t find anything. I gave up trying, since I still had a little money left.
I decided to enjoy the festivities in the city—the Olympics had just started. The city was packed and the mood was lively. I had never seen anything like it. I met people from all over the world. All the young people were bragging about different athletes they had met or seen. I had never been starstruck, but since everybody seemed happy with these star encounters, I decided to join the bandwagon. I went to all of the events to try to meet VIPs. I ran into Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Magic Johnson. I couldn’t be bothered to get their autographs, though; I was satisfied with just seeing them. I also met Bill Cosby’s sitcom wife, Phylicia Rashad, which pleased me since I was a fan of The Cosby Show.
As I roamed the streets of Barcelona, I noticed that some of the tourists would stop me to ask for directions. It occurred to me that I could become an unofficial tour guide. So for the next few weeks I took people around Barcelona without asking for any money, showing them where all the Olympic activities were going on. Personally, I had no strong desire to see the Olympic events; I couldn’t afford to anyway. But sometimes, when I had the urge to see an event, I would go to the stadium and climb up a nearby street lamp or peep through the cracks in one of the stadium’s entrances. I couldn’t see much this way, but it was good enough for me. Also, I found the activities inside the stadium were not as exciting as those outside. There were so many festivities and unofficial Olympic events, and I captured most of them with my camera.
One day, as I was playing tour guide, I went into McDonald’s to eat and met two beautiful African American girls. I spent the whole day with them, and we talked about all the celebrities we had met. Later that night I took them to a club and we had a fantastic night. The next day we all hung out again and talked about our live. When they learned about my situation and my desire to continue my education, they suggested I go to the United States. They told me that in America, there was a two-year college system, a community college system that made it easier for low-income earners to obtain a higher education. They suggested that I could easily get a job in a fast-food restaurant like McDonald’s or Burger King, and with the money I made, I could easily sustain myself and put myself through school.
I was immediately sold on the idea, even though I didn’t know anyone in America. My ambitions changed from that day on, thanks to these girls. I would be forever grateful to them. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers, since they were returning to the United States the next day, and we promised to stay in touch. After my encounter with those girls, my plan became to find a way to get to the United States.
Meanwhile, life in my new apartment was very interesting. Apart from my brief encounter with the couple from Exeter, I had never lived with Westerners before, so I took my time to learn their behaviors and way of life. Except for one of the English ladies, who was over forty, the rest of us were under twenty-two. Every night we would have parties in the house and there was usually plenty of drinking. Gomez was a great cook and would whip up terrific Columbian dishes. And Debra, the Irish girl, would provide some Irish drinks. Everyone else would bring wine and beer, and we would all party. Usually, their other female friends would join us. There were always more women than men. We did the same thing every day, and sometimes I would try hard to excuse myself.
My first movie experience was with the girls. One evening, after we finished partying, the girls wanted to go to a movie. Basic Instinct, featuring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, had just come out and the girls desperately wanted to see it. Giles and Gomez were tired and didn’t want to go, so six girls and I ended up going. I couldn’t tell them that I had never been to a movie theater before. I marveled at the larger-than-life images on the screen. The girls were a bit of a handful, though. Some of them were drunk, and would pinch and touch me while we were watching the movie. I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it, though. The girls were wasted, and I could have slept with any one of them if I had wanted to. However, I considered myself highly principled when it came to girls and sex. I simply couldn’t engage sexually with any girl who was under the influence. So, despite all the advances made by some of the girls that night, I behaved, in my opinion, like a gentleman.
I continued to provide unpaid services as a tour guide, and I made friends with many street performers. Las Ramblas, the famous promenade of Barcelona, was a beehive of activity, from street dancers to clowns. Lined with shops and bars, and ending at the waterfront, it was a major tourist destination. There was a popular myth that anyone who drank from the fountain of Las Ramblas would eventually return to Barcelona. There were many other attractions in the city, including the Barcelona Zoo, which had the world’s only albino gorilla. Sometimes I would take my tourists to the newly completed Barcelona port, where they could see a drawbridge and the famous Christopher Columbus statue nearby. From there, I would take them to the cable car station, where we would ride the cable car across the port of Barcelona to the beautiful Montserrat mountain. Then we would go to the famous uncompleted church, La Sagrada Família, and from there, we would visit some architectural marvels. My route also included Park Güell, where there was a fantastic array of avant-garde art. I would also bring them to the Picasso Museum, located at Barrio Gòtic, and at the end of my tour, to Plaza Real, one of the famous squares in Barcelona. There was a fountain in the center of the square, surrounded by bars and restaurants. There were also two discos; one of them was called Jamboree, and I spent most of my nights there.
Life was far from perfect, but as long as I was dancing, I could forget my troubles for a while.
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oyestephen: Its better imagined than experienced......

thx bros but I humbly disagree..desperate times calls for desperate measures..sometimes life deals a hand and you have to take the plunge even if danger locks within..

repogirl: ...Still following...BTW, will PM you concerning the book cover.

will standby me lady. bon jour

Ishilove: Nwoke, please don't be pissed o. I have been very busy of late, my dear. I haven't even been able update my blog and Iyawo story because of time factor. Work tinz and all that. I will continue from where I stopped asap.

I wasn't aware I had a spat with benjames o . That was no spat, that was just us expressing varying opinions. My dear, if I have a spat with somebody, the thread will catch fire

no worries my sis..however, you need to try by all means to update IYAWO..readers have started rioting cuz of lack of update.

benjames: update..update..update!!

my brother, i'm still waiting for inspiration and motivation I'm not sure people have the stomach for this kind of writing ..we'll see what other readers think...if there is a popular demand, absolutely positively, i will continue otherwise....

thx

Jakemond

#35

Chapter Fifteen

The next morning I woke up as usual and went to work. Returning to Torrejón in the evening, I noticed lots of cars around the apartment complex. As I got closer, I observed more than a hundred police officers and twenty to thirty police cars. I slowed down and ducked into a side street so I could observe from a distance. It became obvious that they were raiding the apartment I was living in. This was confirmed just two minutes later when I overheard a conversation about the police and drugs. I didn’t need to speak Spanish to put two and two together. My junkie drug-dealer host had been busted.
I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed outside, hungry and tired. I waited for several hours. At about midnight, the coast was clear. The police were gone and apparently they had taken my host as well as a few of his friends who were with him at the time. Obviously they didn’t think anyone else was living there.
When I got into the apartment, it was a complete mess; everything was ransacked. In the room where I was staying, my belongings were all over the place. The police must have thoroughly combed the apartment. I immediately put my stuff together, afraid that the police would come back to get me. I didn’t even shower or eat; as soon as I was done packing, I ran outside with my bag. I slept outside in the cold that night. It was better than to be caught dead in a drug dealer’s house.
As soon as day broke, I found Nigel’s house. I arrived there at about 7 a.m. and knocked on the door. Nigel opened, not seeming a bit surprised to see me, and invited me in. I narrated my ordeal to him and his wife, and they both said I was welcome to stay with them. They showed me the spare room and told me to make myself comfortable, which I did. I was a little late for work, so I jumped into the shower, and by the time I was done, Martha had breakfast waiting for me. I ate and rushed to work.
I got to know Nigel and Martha better after living with them for a few days. The sweet, loving couple that I thought they were was a lie. They had put up that facade just to lure me into their lives. It became obvious that the couple had an agenda for inviting me to stay with them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. They were always arguing and fighting, and often Nigel would beat Martha up and she would lock herself in the room and cry. Nigel grew to trust me a bit and felt he could say or do anything in front of me, so he would call Martha names and slap her in my presence. Apparently, he wasn’t happy moving to Spain. According to Nigel, it had been Martha’s idea to sell all their property, including their house in Exeter, and move to Spain. They had hoped to find jobs when they got to Spain and live a decent life, but after two years of unemployment, they had exhausted all their money. They owed a lot of people and hadn’t paid their rent for the past six months.
This was a peculiar situation for me. Here I was again, running out of the frying pan and into the fire. According to them, they still had a few more months to stay in Spain before heading back to England, and as long as they were still in Madrid, I would have a place to stay. I chose not to worry about anything. I would not let their dysfunctional marriage affect me. I was friendly with both of them and became a confidant to each. They would come to me saying ugly things about each other, and that upon their return to England, they would get divorced. In a way, I enjoyed my position of power in their house.
As the days went by, their relationship kept deteriorating. They couldn’t afford food anymore and, by default, I became the breadwinner. Every day, on my way back from work, I would buy food for us. Later, they started selling their possessions, including their television. That should have been a sign to me that something was up, given that Nigel loved television so much. I just thought they were ashamed of relying on me for food and wanted to sell their things to help pay for meals.
One fateful day, I went to work as usual. I worked long hours and hadn’t eaten anything all day. The night before, I had prepared a delicious stew and rice, and I was really looking forward to going back to the apartment so I could eat. When I returned that evening, I put the keys Nigel had given me into the lock and tried to open the door, but it didn’t work. I checked the key again and checked the number on the apartment, just to make sure I hadn’t missed the apartment. It was the right apartment and the right door. As I was fiddling with the lock, somebody opened the door from the inside: a middle-aged Spanish man. He was aggressive and threatening, yelling something at me that I couldn’t understand. I spoke to him in English, asking where Nigel and Martha were. He didn’t understand and kept yelling at me to leave. From all indications, he was the landlord and had changed the locks of the apartment.
Apparently, when I went to work that morning, Nigel and Martha had used the money they had made from selling their stuff to flee back to England, abandoning me. So now, the landlord, who hadn’t been paid in six months, was furious, and also had to deal with an African squatter. All I wanted was to go into the apartment, quickly have something to eat, take my belongings, and leave his apartment. But the more I pleaded with him, the more aggressive he got. He started to yell for the police, and I thought maybe that was a good idea. The police would be able to resolve the situation and allow me in to get my belongings. So I started yelling with him for the police. He got out of the apartment, locked the door, and we both walked to the nearest police station.
When we got to the station, he narrated in Spanish what had happened. I had no idea what he told the police, but I tried to explain my side of the story: all I wanted was to get my belongings from the apartment and leave. But the entire police station—more than thirty officers present—wouldn’t listen to or even look at me. When they did, it was with disgust. A few of them called me “negro de mierda” (“fucking nigger”). I continued to plead with them, but they decided to escalate the situation. They started yelling at me and laughing, and motioned me to go away. When I wouldn’t budge, about ten of them approached me menacingly. They slapped me, punched me, and spat on me. In my confusion, I didn’t know what came over me. I knelt and started praying to God in a loud voice, telling Him to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. They carried me outside their station and threw me on the ground. Luckily, I landed on my buttocks. I got up and positioned myself to fight back because I thought they were going to beat me up, but they left me alone. I dusted myself off and wandered around the streets that night, cold, hungry, and confused. The only thing I could think of was my family and how wonderful my home was, even though I didn’t want to go back.
The next morning I went to work and narrated the incident to my friends, and they urged me to move into the asylum camp with them. Since I had no other option, I swallowed my pride and moved into the camp that evening. Living in the camp brought back memories of my secondary school days, when I used to live in the dormitory. The only difference with the camp was that there was no leadership structure, no guaranteed meals, and everyone was of a different nationality. The people at the camp were miserable and hopeless, with no inclination of what the future held for them. After spending one night there, I was more than ever determined to make my next move.
Through my association with the refugees and asylum seekers, I had learned that it was a lot easier for migrants to succeed in Germany than any other country in Europe. It was said that asylum seekers in Germany got more than one thousand dollars per month from the German government while they were waiting for adjudication of their cases. It was also said that the German government had a better housing scheme for refugees and asylum seekers. Individual apartments were provided, depending on the size of the family involved.
I remembered that in 1991, a relative of mine, Benjamin, had traveled to Germany. Before his plane landed, he went into the bathroom and destroyed his Nigerian passport, and upon arrival, applied for political asylum. Within a year of his arrival in Germany, he was sending a lot of money and cars to Nigeria. We later found out that Nigerians in Germany had devised a perfect way of scheming the German asylum system. They would apply for asylum under different names in a number of German states. They also had a way of manipulating their fingerprints so that when the states crosschecked their names against their fingerprints, there would never be a match. In Germany, the different states were responsible for paying allowances to the refugees and asylum seekers living in and registered in their states. Benjamin and his group would travel around the states every month, collecting allowances in their different names.
I had no intention of joining this unholy scheme. Rather, Germany simply seemed to be more asylum-friendly than Spain. If I could get there, I would probably live better and be able to save money to take care of my family, as well as pursue my education. So I asked the guys who had been in the camp for a long time how I could best get to Germany. In no time, I found out that it was nothing new—people from the camp had been going there and many other places on a regular basis. Apparently, Spain was merely considered a stepping stone. The final destination for most of these guys was Germany or the United States.
Through my inquiries, I found a whole new world that existed within the walls of the asylum camp: an underground operation in fake documentation and traveling papers. If one had the money, one could get whatever traveling documents one needed. With this knowledge I was determined to work harder and save money for fake documents. After one week, I saved enough to buy a laissez passé. My Nigerian friends tried to dissuade me from traveling to Germany. They warned me that there was no guarantee it would work, and that some of them had tried in the past, but were caught at the point of entry and repatriated to Spain. But by this time, I could not be discouraged.
On May 1, 1992, I left Madrid by train, heading to Dusseldorf, Germany, with my fake laissez passé. I was anxious to leave Spain. It was a very long journey. We traveled from Madrid to Barcelona, passed Costa Brava, and then on through to France without incident. The border agents came on board the train, conducted their routine checks, and never batted an eye at me. We continued our journey all the way to Strasbourg and on toward Stuttgart. At the French-German border, the train stopped for the border inspection on the German side. One of the immigration officers requested to see my documents, and I immediately handed them over to him. He asked me to follow him. I got off the train and went into their office with him, where they told me I had a fake document and could not be allowed to enter Germany. They spoke very good English and were quite firm but polite. They explained that I would be sent back to my point of departure. Meanwhile, they would detain me until the arrival of the next available train to Spain. I was completely devastated.
After what seemed like half a day, a train heading to Madrid arrived and the German border agents escorted me on board. Within minutes, I was on my way. The thought of going back to Madrid to face the miserable life there was unthinkable, but I had no other option. I had no money left on me, and during the several hours of detention in Germany I was offered neither water nor food. As the train churned along toward Spain, I kept thinking of what my next move would be. A few hours later, we arrived in Barcelona to pick up passengers; we were to depart in one hour. All of a sudden, I decided to get off the train in Barcelona, even though I had no idea what the city was like.
I walked out of the train station and into the street. By this time it was already late at night, but the streets were filled with people. I wandered around from Plaza Cataluña through Las Ramblas. There were so many people, and it seemed like there were parties going on everywhere.
Then I remembered that the 1992 Summer Olympics was scheduled to take place in Barcelona and would kick off in the next two months. There would be all kinds of people, including tourists from all over the world.
I don’t know what I expected to happen next. I knew no one in Barcelona. After roaming around for several hours, I finally decided to find a place to lay my head down. I ended up outside of a Catholic church, tired and hungry. I woke up the next morning, feeling lost and confused. Life had never been this miserable to me. I was still starved and thirsty, and I couldn’t beg anyone for food; I had too much pride for that. I started wandering the streets again.
Then I remembered why I had decided to get off in Barcelona: I had a strong passion for the ocean, and Barcelona was located along the Mediterranean Sea. I decided to go down and take a walk along the beach. I had always had a sense of calm whenever I was by the sea. As I walked along the beach, thinking about what the future might hold for me, I ran into a beautiful girl who started a conversation with me. She told me she was visiting Barcelona from Germany, and I told her that I was stranded in Barcelona. We hit it off and ended up spending the day together.
There was something about her that didn’t seem right. Though she was kindhearted and had the physical features of a girl, she behaved oddly like a guy. I liked her as a person, but I had my suspicions that she might be a transvestite. At this time I still wasn’t very knowledgeable about those kinds of things, given that I had just left Africa, where such things were not the norm. My intuition told me that something wasn’t completely right about this person. Nevertheless, I was reluctant to give up the one friend I had in town because of a mere suspicion. So I continued to hang out with her, telling myself that as long as there was nothing sexual to our relationship, everything would be okay.
As we were hanging out that day, we ran into an African guy who was originally from Mali. He lived in Barcelona and was apparently unemployed. He spent the afternoon with my newfound friend and me. At the end of the day, my German friend departed and agreed to meet up with us the next day. When my African friend learned about my situation, he was kind enough to invite me to spend a couple of nights at his apartment, which I gratefully accepted. His house was a four-bedroom apartment, which he shared with four other people. Three of his flatmates were from India, and he was a little concerned as to how they would feel about my presence. However, when we got to his apartment that night, everyone was very welcoming.
Contrary to my initial assumption, my African friend actually had a part-time job: He was employed illegally in a bakery/grocery store. For the next few days he provided me a place to sleep and also fed me; after work, he would bring home some food from the store. I wasn’t sure if the food was given to him by the store proprietor or if he just helped himself; either way, I couldn’t care less and I never bothered to ask. Every morning I would get up early and wander around Barcelona, looking for any kind of job, and in the afternoon I would go down to the beach and hang out with my German friend. On the third day of my stay, I went down to the beach, but my German friend wasn’t there. However, I ran into a group of female tourists from England. I hung out with them at the beach the whole afternoon. We all exchanged personal stories and had a wonderful time together. Later, one of the women suggested that I try to get a job at the Hotel Villa Olimpica, and everybody in the group agreed.
By this time, there was a lot of construction going on in Barcelona in preparation for the Olympics, especially at the Olympic Village. For these construction works, it was a race against time. The Olympics would start in six weeks, and some of the infrastructures and amenities still weren’t ready, so construction was going on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in order to meet the deadline..

repogirl: Okay, its about time again , waiting for your update.

Me lady, I just walked in the door a minute ago..I will be all over it in a minute

repogirl: Ehya, poor you, watching people eat, while your own tummy was growling from hunger. *sniffs*, u've suffered no be small!

me lady..it was terrible at the time..I use to think that those were the worst times in my life..but boy oh boy! how wrong I was, not even close as we are yet to find out in book#3 or better yet in this book as we go along..off to training me lady and you have a wandapru day

#34,
****************
I didn’t know how long I could play this game with Nick and the other drug dealers who were expecting my goods to arrive. Time was passing by fast and I had already made several fake calls to my contacts in Africa to reassure Nick that my guys were coming with the goods and there was just a little delay. It became obvious that I had to make my next move fast, so I convinced Nick that I had to establish or legalize my stay in Spain so I could operate freely when my consignment arrived. We decided that I would go to Madrid and claim political asylum. Typically, when Africans claimed political asylum, it took two to four years for each case to be adjudicated. While the process was in motion, the asylum seeker was given an identification card that allowed him to stay in the country until his case was completed.
About two weeks after my group went back to Africa, Nick helped me buy a one-way ticket to Madrid. The day before my departure, I called my cousin Ike, telling him that I would mail my passport to him and that he should keep it for me. I also told him that it seemed like I would not be returning to Nigeria, since I was not repatriated upon entry and I had been living in Las Palmas for almost three weeks. I asked him to return all the money I had given him to my mother, so she could use it to sustain the family while I struggled to establish myself in Europe. Ike agreed and I mailed my passport to him later that day.
The next day, I packed my few belongings and tried to dress in hip-hop style, with sagging pants and earphones on my head. Apparently, the mainland immigration always observed passengers coming from the Canary Islands and could easily repatriate any illegal migrants. Even though it was a national flight and there were no immigration checks, I tried as much as possible to dress in a manner that wouldn’t raise suspicion.
A few days before my departure, Nick had called a friend of his in Madrid, asking him if I could stay at his place for a few days. As usual, he told the guy that I was a big-time dealer and that my consignment was on the way, and he would be rewarded if he agreed to house me. Nick’s friend had once been one of the big dealers in Madrid. He was pleased to know that I was a dealer and immediately agreed to accommodate me. He gave me his address and phone number, and told Nick that he couldn’t come pick me up at the airport because he was under surveillance.
When I arrived in Madrid that night, I had no problem at the airport. As soon as I got off the plane, I walked through the arrivals. The immigration officers were keeping a keen eye on the passengers, but I didn’t pay them any attention. I pretended to be listening to my music and walked right past them. I got into a taxi and gave the driver the address of Nick’s friend’s. We were there in less than forty minutes.
Nick’s friend welcomed me. He was married to a beautiful lady and they had a six-month-old child. They showed me to my room, and I immediately went to sleep and didn’t wake up until the next morning. The lady was gone—I think she had a job somewhere—and the child was wailing. Nick’s friend was locked up in another room. I was horrified to see a child crying like that, with no one to take care of him. Apparently, Nick’s friend was a junkie, unbeknownst to Nick. He spent all day and night doing cocaine and crack. He had degenerated from an important drug dealer to a junkie who was constantly under surveillance by the Spanish police, and he owed a lot people who now wanted him dead. Because he had a reputation as a big dealer, some other dealers who were unaware of his situation would give him drugs to distribute, and he would consume most of it and not return any money to the dealers.
The day after I arrived, I found out where the asylum office was, and was told that I had to spend a night queuing by the office if I wanted assistance. I couldn’t see why I had to spend a night outside in the cold, so I decided to simply wake up early the next morning and head over there. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There were hundreds of asylum seekers from different parts of the world: Africa, Asia, and South America, and I learned that some of them had been camping out there for two days. Obviously, from where I was on the queue, there was no way I would be attended to anytime soon. I made a few friends and decided to camp out with them. They were kind enough to allow me to move up to their position in line, which guaranteed that I would be attended to the next day. We stayed there the whole day, and through the cold night. If not for the bonfire, I would have frozen to death because I wasn’t wearing enough layers of clothing to stay warm.
The next day, I got into the asylum office. I told them my name was Jake Freeman and that I was originally from the Bahamas—the last thing I wanted was for them to repatriate me to Africa should they refuse to grant me asylum. Since I had no documentation that verified my true place of origin, the Spaniards would be in a dilemma and might be compelled to leave me in Spain. I told them that my mother was Liberian and I had been living with her in Liberia when the war broke out. I said I had no idea where my family was, and that I had traveled by road through Mali, Mauritania, and Morocco, and eventually to Cueta, where I took a ferry across to the mainland. The officer was touched by my story and did not interrogate me as much as was required. Immediately, my paperwork was processed and my picture taken, and I was given a card that identified me as an asylum seeker and a Bahamian, and that I was authorized to stay in Spain until my case was adjudicated.
However, the card had very specific instructions. I wasn’t allowed to work and I was assigned to one of the asylum refugee hostels. I wasn’t interested staying in the asylum camps. My goal was just to obtain a document that would allow me to move about in Spain. I exchanged contact information with the other Nigerian asylum seekers I had met, and even went to visit the hostel we were assigned. After that, I returned to Nick’s friend’s apartment.
For the next couple of days I went out every day to hang out with my new friends from the asylum camp. Even though they were not supposed to have jobs, some of them did. Some businesses preferred to hire them because they provided cheap labor and were paid under the table. Since the asylum seekers weren’t authorized to work in the first place, they dared not report the exploitation and inhumane practices of their employers.
After spending a few days at Nick’s friend’s place, I was exhausted. The situation was a nightmare. He was constantly fighting with his wife, who kept threatening to leave him and take their son with her if he didn’t seek help. She eventually left him a week after I got there. I was glad. My heart couldn’t bear the dangerous environment that their child was constantly being exposed to.
I would leave the apartment in the mornings most days. There was no sense staying home with my junkie host, who was getting tired of my presence anyway. To him, I hadn’t lived up to the hype. There was no consignment of drugs arriving; I had no money and I was living off of him. It was imperative that I come up with a plan fast. I didn’t have any money at all to buy food or use the bus or metro.
Each morning when I left Torrejón—a neighborhood in Madrid—I’d jump on the train, hoping the conductors wouldn’t catch me. I would roam around Madrid looking for work with my jobless, asylum-seeking new friends. We usually hung out at parks or plazas, where all kinds of people passed through, many of whom were tourists. Sometimes we would beg the tourists for money. In the evenings we would jump on the train again and go back to our various places of accommodation.
A few times I followed my friends to the asylum camp before going home, because each evening, when everyone was back, those who had jobs would cook a big meal and invite everyone to eat. In the camp, everyone was pretty much equal; there was no discrimination. Indians, Africans, South Americans—they all coexisted. A couple of times I was locked inside the camp and couldn’t go back to my apartment. The camp rule was that everyone had to be inside by 8 p.m., after which no one could come in or go out, and everyone had to leave the camp by 6 a.m. No one could stay there during the day. Given my precarious situation with my host, I considered moving into the camp with my friends. But the one thing that kept me from moving was that Torrejón had a United States Air Force base that was pretty close to Nick’s friend’s apartment. I always listened to the United States Air Force radio station. I enjoyed the sound of their jets taking off and landing. Each morning, before catching the metro, I would walk by and look through the fence of the base, marveling at the huge equipment and structures inside the base. I always wondered how great the United States itself would be if a base in Spain could be that beautiful. I would spend a few more minutes dreaming of going to America and becoming a part of that great country. It felt difficult to abandon Torrejón and move into the asylum camp—but my luck was about to change.
After two weeks in Madrid, I found a job with my fellow refugees in a sand-bagging factory. The job consisted of filling up five-kilogram bags with sand, which would be sold to construction companies. We got paid five cents per bag and we worked eight hours a day. One’s ability to make money depended on how fast one could fill up a bag. Some people could fill three hundred to five hundred bags a day. Working at the factory wasn’t easy. The Spanish factory owner took great delight in pitting us against each other. He instigated fights almost on a daily basis and would watch us beat each other up just for his amusement. Despite this brutality and the inhumane environment, I was grateful to have a job that could pay for my meals.
I had never been hungry before like I was in Madrid. To make matters worse, on each corner there were restaurants with outdoor tables. A few times I was so starved that I thought about grabbing the food out of people’s hands and running away. Other times I just stood and watched them eat, hoping they might offer me some food. Usually, when that didn’t happen, I would venture closer and ask them if they could give me their leftovers. The response was always “Fuera de aqui nigro, ijo de mierda.” (“Get lost, you negro son of bitch.”) Of course, I didn’t understand the language at that time. I would simply apologize, swallow my shame, and retrace my steps.
Now that I had a job, I could afford to buy my own little meal as well as pay the metro and bus fares. After being on the job for five days, I got worried one evening while returning to Torrejón. The previous night, Nick’s friend had given me an ultimatum to leave his apartment. He had woken me in the middle of the night and told me, in no uncertain terms, to leave his apartment. This was Europe, not Africa, he said, and nobody sponged or leeched in Europe; it was every man for himself. Lost in my thoughts, I bumped into a couple and was brought back to reality. I apologized and we started a conversation. I introduced myself and told the man that I lived with a friend nearby. He introduced himself as Nigel. The lady was his wife, Martha. They were both from Exeter, England, which explained their accent. Nigel was about six feet four inches while Martha was about five foot two—an odd-looking couple. They had sold their property back in England and moved to Spain two years ago. They loved living in Spain.
Nigel and Martha seemed like a lovely couple and were very nice to me. Before we said goodbye, they gave me their number and address, and told me that they had a spare room if I ever wanted to move in with them. I didn’t show my enthusiasm, though; I told them that they were very kind and I would surely get back to them if I needed a place to stay.
I was delighted by the offer. It seemed God had answered my prayers.
************
keep sending your critics cause they're very useful..will post more upon return this evening..

Ishsoph: Jake the only challenge am having with ur story remain dates, seasons and years. These strengthens the vividness and persuasiveness in connecting dots left unattainded. For example u make it sound like u left Africa same year the rebels invaded Liberia but many months later. Now my question is how com Nick had been in Las Palmas for some two years before ur arrival(considering that he already had two kids or are u talking about his family in future terms)? Again u mention albeit passively that ur father happens to be late. Because this story is about ur major xperiences in life I think that such a seemingly controvercial man who stood as a centre-peice between his family and the church could hav been carried along until his demise in ur story. Instead u seem to dwell more on ur two wonderful grannies and mother. Is it because ur father died so early or what?

Ishsoph: noted, I truly value your authenticity and bravery.. unlike someone who shall not be named...she gave up on me because of a little spat with benjames--not talking about ishilove-- I will endeavor to flush out the discrepancies;though, some have already been made in the actual manuscript..

As for my father, I believe I dedicated enough paragraph on his sickness and subsequent death..keep in mind, I was not living with them when his sickness started and had just came back home months before he passed. Also, we cut off a lot of the story from the beginning in order to get the focus on me not my family..what was cut off was enough for another book.

as for nike, I thought it was clear that he has been living in las palmas for many years, number which I did not know..we met the first time when he came to earnest brown shop in salo.. and i did not have much interaction with him then( he looked down on me as i was not in their circle/level then)..next time was in palmas and that's when i eventually got to learn about him and his family..

Ishilove: in case you read this..have nothing but great respect for your intellect..just pissed on your silence

thx

Jakemond

ebamma: Jake im enjoying your story

eba: would like to personally welcome you to the fold..I'm pleased that you're enjoying the story..hang tight and buckle your seat cause it gets better.

chinedumo: Look people, what jake is trying to say that he wants his book to be a major hit. So he is using us on nairaland to review his book. He wants it to be perfect.
Guys he is speaking from memory. There are bound to be discrepancies. Point them out for him.

I am expecting more from Repogirl.

Bingo!! nedu, if I have to give you a dollar everytime you read my mind, I'd be broke by now..you're absolutely right..everybody's input would help since I want all readers to have a clear picture and not miss anything or be distracted.

Jakemond

repogirl: I dnt have much to add here, Chinedum, it all seems well written already and captivating. Like isosoph and ishi said earlier though, dating of the events would really help. His early childhood till secondary school was a bit jumbled up, but I guess at the moment Jakemond is 20 years, cos the last date I saw was 1991.

I've never been good at critiqing anyway, I either like a story or don't and I do 'love' this one, especially as its a personal experience.

I do wonder though, how you could've kept such bad company and it didnt rub Off especially seeing as how they had money to splurge or you were not even tempted to join in.

Keep up the good work Jake and the postings. Your no 1 fan is waiting for todays update.

great minds think alike!! outstanding perception me lady..indeed, from way back in Liberia, I was presented with two options..be the proverbial Ibo man that likes money and join the drug trade or keep steadfast in my belief, morals and faith. morals inculcated by my parents and faith by hearing the word of God as was tought by "faith Tabernacle congregation..needless to say that you know what part I chose, but not to say I was never tempted nor found wanting from time to time..

thx me lady..just woke and will post before heading off..

oyestephen: @jake this is a very wonderful story.....enjoying it all the way

thank you my brother, your vote of confidence really means a lot to me

#33,

"when all is said and done, all is said than done"
**************************
Chapter Fourteen

The flight that would take me from Sierra Leone to Las Palmas was a Ghana Airways DC 10 aircraft, and it would travel from Freetown to Banjul, and then to our final destination, Las Palmas. I was nervous at the airport—I didn’t want anything to go wrong this time. It was impossible to relax. Fortunately, I became friends with two other men who were traveling on the same package. One was a Lebanese businessman based in Freetown who was going to the fair to explore a potential business opportunity, and the other was named Danny, a young hustler like me who was once repatriated from Las Palmas. Hearing his story helped boost my confidence. He saw the same opportunity that I had seen on this package trip and couldn’t believe how easy it had been so far. The three of us stuck together until our first flight took off, and then again during our short layover in Banjul. To ensure that everything went smoothly for me, I had brought some expensive traditional clothes that I had procured from Nigeria especially for the trip. I also bought a costly briefcase, all in an attempt to have a semblance of a legitimate businessman. As soon as we got off the plane in Las Palmas, Tony gathered our entire group and had everyone turn their passports over to him, which he took to immigration for group processing.
It took all my effort to calm down and avoid drawing attention. I pretended to be cheerful and engaged the other guys in conversation. Those were the most excruciating moments of my entire life up to date, waiting to fulfill a lifelong dream. After what seemed like a decade, Tony walked out of the immigration office, announcing that we should gather our luggage and proceed to the buses waiting to transport us to our hotel. I couldn’t believe my ears. At long last, I had made it to Europe without being repatriated! This experience was nothing short of amazing; everyone at the airport was cordial and treated me with respect.
We collected our bags, and our group boarded two luxurious buses. Everything smelled nice and fresh, and the bus was the most beautiful and cleanest one I had ever been in. As we headed to the hotel, I looked out the window. In my nervousness during landing, I was too occupied with my thoughts to look out and enjoy the view of the city. Now I couldn’t help but admire the magnificent scene. There were a lot of shiny cars. The streets were filled with mostly white people. I wondered if this town also experienced frequent power failures like most parts of Africa. I asked myself why there was so much light everywhere; there was hardly an unlit spot.
We drove past beautiful beaches with boats and yachts. I had only seen such scenes on television and postcards, and was overwhelmed to finally experience it live. For a minute, I was completely lost in my own world until someone tapped me and told me we had reached the hotel. As we disembarked from the buses, Tony handed us our passports. I flipped through mine and there it was: a one-month Spanish visiting visa.
At the hotel reception hall, Tony gave us an orientation lecture and a schedule for the next three days, as well as pamphlets, maps and city guidebooks. We received our room keys and I departed with my two new friends. The three of us happened to be on the same floor. We agreed to meet later.
Walking into my room was another eye-opening experience. I had never stayed in such a beautiful room. Everything smelled nice. The linens were clean and ironed. The towels were in several shapes and sizes. There were so many towels I wondered how one person could use them all. I turned on the television—so many channels. I didn’t understand Spanish, but the reception was so much clearer and brighter than in Nigeria and other African countries that I had been to. It took me a half hour to learn how to turn on the heater. I had never used one. However, on this trip, I was much better prepared and remembered to bring some winter jackets. Minutes later, I took a long, hot bath, afterward using some lotion that I figured a previous guest had left behind—I only later found out that the hotel supplied soap and lotion for their guests. Relaxed and happy, I climbed into bed and drifted off into the best sleep I had ever had.
The next morning I woke up very early with a jolt. I was confused by the beautiful environment, but after a minute, I remembered: I am now in Europe. I quickly did some pushups and jumped in the shower, then got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. My two new friends were already waiting when I arrived. The restaurant had prepared a breakfast buffet for our group like nothing I had ever experienced before. Never in my life had I seen so much food. When I had seen images like that on television, I always thought they were just props. But now, right in front of me, were all kinds of food for me to choose from: continental breakfast, Spanish breakfast, Canary Island typical breakfast. My friends and I indulged ourselves. I ate like I had never eaten before. Tony noticed how I was gorging myself and reminded me that there would be more for lunch and dinner. At eight o’clock, we all got into the buses and went to the trade fair.
The fairground was huge, a magnificent display of the latest and greatest technology and products. There was a wide array of stands and kiosks—so much to see. Our group members wandered off in different directions, having been advised that the buses would return to the hotel at 1 p.m. and again at 6 p.m. In the meantime, the idea was that we go around and check out the stands, and possibly make business connections. Danny and I stuck with our businessman friend, Faruk, going from one stand to another. Faruk was excited because he saw many items that interested him and had marketable potential in Sierra Leone.
After roaming around for three hours, we got some lunch at the food stand. Again, I was amazed—this time to see people buying and eating whole grilled chickens. Where I came from, nobody ate a whole chicken. You were considered lucky if you got two pieces of meat in your soup or rice. Faruk treated each of us to a whole chicken with some delicious grilled potatoes. I attacked mine with gusto, but as soon as I started eating, my appetite shrunk. I was not yet acquainted with the kinds of spices used on the chicken. Apparently, one had to acquire a taste for Western food before one could fully appreciate it. I did justice to the potatoes and tried to eat most of the chicken; somebody else had paid for it, and the least I could do was show appreciation by eating it.
In the evening we went to the hotel bar and had a few drinks. We were there until almost midnight. I was low on cash, and in a few days I would have to leave the hotel. Our package was just for four nights, after which we were supposed to fly back to Africa. I had three more days to make my move. I heard back in Africa that European women were generous. It was said that European women loved African men and would often provide accommodation for them in order to have a relationship with them. I was also told that one could easily meet women at the clubs, so it was important that I get there sooner rather than later. Maybe I would be lucky and meet someone who would like me enough to provide housing. Danny hoped he would luck out with a Spanish girl, too. Faruk seemed intrigued by our situation and wanted to go with us wherever we went, including the clubs, so he could see how we would make our move.
In my room that night, I knelt down and thanked the Almighty for what He had done for me so far, allowing me opportunity to enter Europe without a hitch. I prayed for guidance and protection, and that He would not permit a situation whereby I would be repatriated to Africa.
I woke up the next morning very conscious of my environment. After breakfast we were bused back to the fairground. Being at the trade fair this time was no longer exciting, not because I had seen all there was to see, but because I couldn’t continue pretending to be a businessman. My hustler friend and I were just passing time at the fair, waiting for the right opportunity to split from the group. Danny and I couldn’t leave the group just then, because that would raise suspicion. We had to play along until the last day, when we would simply not show up for the flight back to Africa. Meanwhile, our biggest priority was where to stay once we moved from the hotel.
That afternoon, after having lunch at the hotel, we walked around Las Palmas window-shopping. In the evening, we went to an address where a cousin of Danny’s lived. Danny’s cousin was happy to see him and told Danny that he could stay at his place—which still left me without accommodation plans. After dinner, Danny’s cousin decided to take us to another hotel to pick up a friend, and then we’d drive to a town on the outskirts called Playa del Ingles. Danny and I waited in the hotel bar while the cousin went to call his friend. In a few minutes, he returned with a guy who—to my shock and surprise—was none other than Nick. He recognized me immediately and we embraced. By the strangest coincidence, he was staying at that hotel. He was impatient to hear what my story was because he knew who my friends were back in Sierra Leone. Nick had assumed a lot of things about me, and vice versa. He didn’t believe my story about coming to Las Palmas for a trade fair and that I might be staying permanently; he thought I came to sell drugs.
Nick pulled me aside and we went into his room, where he told me to be straight with him—he would find me a place to stay, but I needed to level with him. He insisted that I would have nothing to worry about, as he was willing to show me the ropes. If I was going to survive in Las Palmas, I knew I would have to play smart. Since he opened that door, I walked right through it and never looked back.
From that moment I started living a lie. I told Nick that he was right and that my story about the trade fair was just a front. I told him that back in Sierra Leone we had just received a large consignment of Columbian white (cocaine), and my partners had sent me down to Las Palmas to make contacts and establish buyers. In order not to mess things up, it was decided that I shouldn’t carry any drugs on me when I came. But within three weeks, I was expecting three “suicide carriers” (individual drug traffickers who carried the drugs in their stomachs, and when they arrived at their destinations, would purge themselves and retrieve the drugs from their stool) who would carry more than one kilogram in samples. When we had established credible buyers, large consignments would follow.
Nick bought my lies and was so excited that he urged me to move into his hotel room, and he would pay. I didn’t want to seem too anxious; I needed to start playing my role perfectly. I told him that I didn’t want to share his room for now because I had two more days that I had already paid for at my hotel. He told me not to worry about anything, and that within the next forty-eight hours he would find me a place to stay. Nick had been living in Las Palmas for a long time now. He was married to a Spanish lady, whom he divorced, and they had two beautiful kids together. He also had Spanish citizenship. After his divorce, he had moved into a hotel, which was convenient for his drug business.
We went back down and joined the others, who were surprised at my sudden change of status. Within a few minutes I went from being a nobody, just tagging along, to being the most important person in the group. Nick was telling everyone about my friends and how I was a very important businessman in Sierra Leone. He flattered me so much, but I couldn’t tell him to stop. I no longer had to spend my money—Nick took care of my bills. I wasn’t surprised, though, because our mutual friends were very rich and money was no problem for them. They spent their drug money like it was water, so Nick assumed I was worth it. He also assumed that at the end of the day, my arrangement would bring more than ten kilograms of cocaine to Las Palmas, and I guessed he was thinking of how much money he would make off me. I let him dream on and continued to exploit his ignorance.
After a few more drinks at the bar, we headed out in two cars—me and Nick, and Danny and his cousin—for the hour-long drive to Playa del Ingles, a beach area with a large concentration of resorts. Right in the center of the town were several nightclubs, bars, and strip clubs. It was like nothing I had ever seen. We went from bar to bar and club to club. In the clubs, I put on my best moves and danced like I never danced before. There were so many beautiful girls, all dressed to kill. I had never seen so much exposed flesh in my life. I guessed Europe was a haven of liberalism. That night, I had my first opportunity to dance with a white girl—a beautiful blonde with blue eyes. She was tall and soft-spoken, and I ended up dancing with her for a long time. After a while, we decided to go out for fresh air. She was nineteen, two years younger than me, and on vacation with her friends from Sweden. I told her that I was just visiting from Africa. I knew I couldn’t do much with her because she wasn’t a native of Spain and couldn’t help me in any way, so we talked, danced some more, and then parted.
Later that night, we ended up in up in a strip club. The strippers were some of the most beautiful girls I had seen so far, but I was disgusted by what they did. I couldn’t see the pleasure in watching naked ladies dancing around poles, showing erotic moves and displaying their bodies for all to see, with men occasionally throwing money at them. As if that weren’t enough, we had arrived in time for the climax of the show: the lights were dimmed, and a naked guy and girl took center stage and had sex in front of everybody. That was more than my fragile African heart could take. I immediately told my group that we had to move on; I’d had enough. We left the strip club and went to another bar. By this time I was tipsy from too much gin and tonic, and my friends were drunk. It was also 5 a.m. and we were exhausted. Nick drove me back to my hotel in Las Palmas, where I hit the shower and went to bed.
Fortunately, the evening before, Tony had told everyone in our group that since we had been to the trade fair two days in a row, some of us might have completed whatever we came to do and shouldn’t feel obligated to go again if we didn’t want to. So I slept until 3 p.m., when the receptionist called my room and connected me to Nick. He wanted us to meet that evening for dinner and said he had some good news for me. I said okay, and went back to sleep. By this time, Nick and I had determined that there was no need for me to hang out with my hustler friend and Faruk, so I didn’t bother checking in with them.
Nick took me to dinner at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town, right by the Las Palmas Harbor. As we ate, I reassured him that my plans had remained solid and I was recently contacted by my guys in Sierra Leone; everything was going as planned. Our suicide carriers would arrive in less than twenty-one days. He was pleased and told me that he had made contact with another Nigerian who was a big distributor of drugs in Las Palmas. Nick had told him about me, and the guy wanted me to live in his apartment. I feigned hesitation in order not to seem too eager. He pleaded with me and said it was the best arrangement. I allowed him to convince me, but insisted that I had to spend my remaining day in my hotel. They could pick me up at 3 a.m., since we were supposed to be departing from the hotel for the airport at 7 a.m. for a 9 a.m. return flight to Sierra Leone. After dinner, Nick and I went back to my hotel, and I gave him my bag to keep for me, in order not to raise suspicion when I left the hotel the next morning.
At 2 a.m. the receptionist woke me with a phone call. Nick was waiting for me. I showered, said a short prayer, and bid goodbye to my hotel room. I joined Nick and we drove off. We went back to his hotel, collected my bag, and proceeded to the apartment where I was supposed to be staying. When we got there, Nick’s friend welcomed us and showed me the room he had prepared for me. It was a nice three-bedroom apartment. Nick’s friend was married, but his wife and child were away visiting Nigeria. We all sat down and had breakfast. I told him that I wanted to get some sleep, but the truth was that I wanted to be indoors until my return flight to Africa had departed—without me. Even then, I didn’t plan to be outside until I was sure that the flight had touched down in Sierra Leone. We agreed to go out later that evening, and Nick and his friend left. I went back into my room, lay down, and let my thoughts wander. I eventually drifted off to sleep. By the time I woke up, it was 7 p.m., and my return flight had probably landed in Sierra Leone. I felt happier than ever. To me, that was the day my journey to Europe really began.
The next few weeks in Las Palmas were incredibly exciting. I hung out with Nick a lot, and he took me around and introduced me to all of his friends. He introduced me as a very important player in the drug world, telling everyone that I was waiting for my consignment, and once it arrived, everybody would be pleased because I would have the best product in town. I met a lot of Nigerian drug dealers through him. There was a particular lady with a unique situation. She was Igbo and used to be a prostitute who also did drugs in Italy, and from there she moved her operations to Las Palmas. She lived in Las Palmas, but supplied her drugs in Tenerife and Lanzarote. She was also married to a younger Nigerian guy who visited every weekend. I wondered why he didn’t live with her. I later found out, to my utmost astonishment, that he was a prisoner, and the Spanish system allowed certain prisoners to go home every weekend.
At one point she must have suspected that my whole story about bringing in a consignment was a lie. But she was very nice and usually invited me to eat Nigerian dishes at her house. Every time I went, she tried to persuade me to become one of her carriers for Tenerife City. She argued that while I was waiting for my supposed consignment, I could make some money selling for her. I would politely decline her offer, insisting that I was too big a dealer to be a carrier for someone else.
Through Nick and his associate, I was privy to the activities of the underworld in the Canary Islands. Drugs came on ships, on fishing boats, and by air. This was not the kind of life I wanted. I didn’t want to have anything to do with drugs. I wouldn’t do it in Africa and wouldn’t do it here in Europe, but I had to play this game in order to survive. The danger was that most of these guys were well-known drug dealers. The authorities knew most of these guys and had dedicated agents following most of them. If they were busted while I was with them, I would definitely be charged as an accomplice. Therefore, it was imperative that I devise other means to survive. I had to get to the Spanish mainland so I could continue my journey.
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I don't know why people are shying away from criticizing me??what's really going on my people..please stop feeling sorry for me, I'm actually OK..I promise, you would not brake my heart..I'm really transformed from the person you're reading about.. I'm seating pretty tight if you know what I mean, so yab me please...it's a two way road, i post, you analyze and critic.

Ishsoph: @Jake sup, am stil waiting for further upload. For ur cover page I'd PM u already.

no worries bros, I'm all over it not, just got in a minute ago.

meanwhile,will stand by for you email.

repogirl: ...On Standby....awaiting....

sorry for keeping you waiting me lady..just got back from work related dinner..will post in 10 mikes.

Ishsoph: @JAKE: your odessey is quite touchy to say the least! When I saw this on front page yesterday while at work and decided to read a few page i was hooked.I bookedmarked it and got busy with it all through the nite. With your story I cannot help but give a standing ovation to mostly "umuaka igbo" whom i choose to call our "unsung heroes" who has defied all natural laws so to say in other to bring a smile to their families and self. I may not have had your kind of experience cos I had things relatively moving well for me while I grew, but I can relate and identify with the story every step of the way. I must also salute your super memory which makes the story come alive with every single details no matter how insignificant.

However, I find some disrcepancies in your story. Like where you claimed you knew every detail of you birth but how come you didn't know your first word when learning to speak? Instead it was your mother who told you that your first word was "onye ocha". This revelation cast aspersion on your earlier claim. Again you said you were born in 1971, how come you were "barely seventeen" when you travelled to Liberia in 1989. If I know figures very well you could have been barely nineteen instead. Moreover, like someone already pointed out dates and stages of your age in life would have done a lot of justice to your story as am struggling to match these as I read. Especially with your various escapades with girls its difficult to match all those with a teenager mostly after you declared you were barely seveteen during your first travel which I summize took place after a year to 2 years of secondary school.

Observation: I observed that you had refuse to let go of your uncles perceived illtreatment. To be frank, you have every reason to. But I'd like to look at things from both sides if I were you. If you had become someone successful today(as i guess u were) no one will claim to be instrumental to it. Secondly, If things were in abundance for you, the survival instinct you ganered over the years (which i see as a valuable asset) would have ellude you today. Try to compare yourself with your uncles children now and tell me who is doing beter and who is likely to endure hardship if things takes a sudden twist(we dont pray for that though). And to be further honest with you, your uncle hadnt entierly treated you badly. Do you know how much he spent securing your release from police net after you stabbed Chritain Chukwu(hope its the Christain I know. lol) and even paid off his parents to avoid taking legal action against you which I suspect its his major reason for seeing you as a failure too early though? If you hadnt been denied the visa to Scotland by the British embassy I guess he would have sponsored your trip even after giving you a five hundred dollar bill as at then. I also tagged with him for refusing to allow you travel to Trinidad and Tobago for the reasons he offered. He even offered your cameroonian friend some money to continue his journey following your refferal. Please let go of all the seemingly bottled ill-feelings toward your uncle and other perceived wrongdoers so that nothing will end up limiting your joy.

Finally, am humbled by your sincerity. Even when the episode doesnt favour you, you seem to stict to facts and avoided colorations to your story. Let me stop here before am accused of writing more than the writer. However, Bro i must say you rock! Keep them coming.

Ishsoph: I really enjoyed your indept analysis of events so far..indeed, you're very perceptive. if I didn't have a fellow on book, I would have been compelled to explain to you more about my uncle; unfortunately, at this juncture my hands are tied and i could not divulge details of my next book..but you're right, as you will find out in later chapters, almost all my misfortunes ended up in some ways as a blessing. One door closes and another opens, hence, my resilient spirit.

As for my selective memory, I challenge you to read the narrative again, and I guarantee you will come up with a different conclusion.
In terms of my promiscuity at a tender age..what can I say..it happened and as you yourself noted in your analysis, I do tell it like it is...

Thanks bro and don't pull any punches..so keep it coming.

Jakemond

#32

All, enjoy and have a great day!! our noble warrior prepares for the training..
will post update upon return in the evening.

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This didn’t help matters. We didn’t have electricity, and my hallucinations got worse in the dark. Later, I started sleeping in my grandmother’s bed with her. She comforted me and told me that nothing would happen to me. I could see the sadness in her eyes and could tell that she didn’t want to lose any more of her children. She had seen so much death in her lifetime. I was sure she would have given her life to save mine.
By the first week of July, I began to feel a little better. I had devised a means to stop the headache by tying something around my head. The whole time, I was maintaining faith with the Faith Tabernacle doctrine and did not seek medical attention, even though I was tempted to many times. I could barely wait to start my business again, but I wasn’t quite ready yet. It occurred to me that Ricky could run it for me until I was well enough to continue. He was still doing the Dymo tape business that I had introduced him to before I left for Liberia.
I told Ricky that I wanted him to team up with me in the business. I would provide the funding and make the purchases; he would take the shoes and bags to Sierra Leone and supply them to my clients. Ricky was delighted—mostly for the opportunity of traveling to another country. Like me, he had always harbored an ambition to travel overseas, so Sierra Leone seemed like a good start for him. For the next few days, I taught him the ins and outs of my business. Eventually, I ordered enough shoes and bags and bought a one-way ticket in his name, since the plan didn’t require him to come back to Nigeria anytime soon. He would remain in Sierra Leone and learn the ropes. All Ricky had to do was sell the shoes and bags and send the money to me through the guys who were going back and forth from Sierra Leone to Nigeria. Then I would buy more goods and ship them to Ricky. We would continue this way until I was able to return to business full-time. I also educated him about which of my friends he could trust, including Chukwuka. I advised him to do whatever Chukwuka wanted in order to gain his trust; should Chukwuka take a liking to Ricky, he might help him in the future.
As soon as Ricky left, I decided to pop in and surprise Jacinta’s mother, whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time. I stopped in the market on the way and bought some food and beverages. As soon as Jacinta’s mother saw me, she jumped up and yelled my name, tears rolling down her face. She recounted a vision that was revealed to her in a dream that some people were trying to kill me. Her pastor also had a similar vision, and they had been praying for me for the last few weeks. She wanted me to go with her to church so we could pray together, but I politely declined; mixing with dubious spiritualism was far from what I needed. She belonged to one of these churches that dealt with prophecies, visions, and dreams. Sometime the members and their pastor acted like crazy people and they scared the hell out of me.
After many pleasantries, she told me that her daughter was doing well at her husband’s house. She also complained that she had been ill for a while and nobody came to help her. Jacinta barely visited, and all her other children were dead. She was basically waiting to die. After spending an hour with her, I was eager to leave. I had my own demons, and her story and situation were adding to my already bad condition. The voices in my head were starting again and I couldn’t bear to be around her anymore. I gave her some money and bade her farewell. That was the last time I saw her.
As I left her house, I began to wonder whether my situation had anything to do with my late father. For many years I thought I was free from the oath that he had with the secret society; their attempts to kill me when I was younger were unsuccessful. Were they coming after me again now, after all these years?
Several weeks passed, and things did not go as I had planned. I hadn’t heard from Ricky since he left, and when I finally received news from him, it wasn’t good. I was told that my goods never made it to Sierra Leone, but Ricky did. As a result, he had become stranded there and was staying at Ernest’s shop as I had arranged. Since there were no goods to sell, he had no other way of making money to feed himself. He followed my instructions and stayed close to Chukwuka. Luckily, Chukwuka had just opened a shop in Sierra Leone and needed someone to run it, so Ricky was eventually chosen to run the shop. On hearing what had happened to my goods, and about Ricky’s situation, I became frustrated and suspicious at the same time. I couldn’t honestly believe that my goods had been lost. I suspected that Ricky had played me. But there was no point in crying over spilt milk. It was the cost of doing business. After all, I had played people like that in the past. The incident reinforced my determination to travel abroad.
Fortunately, I had a little money left and was finally feeling well again. I told my grandmother and mother that I was going to restart my business. They gave me their blessings and I took off toward the end of August. I traveled to Aba, bought my goods, and headed back to Sierra Leone. As soon as I got there, I confronted Ricky; he maintained that my goods never made the flight with him. He insisted that was why he couldn’t send me any money and that he wouldn’t have survived, had it not been for Chukwuka. I looked into his eyes. Ricky was my childhood friend. I chose not to let the situation derail our friendship. After all, he had gone to jail for me. I encouraged him to continue staying with Chukwuka, figuring that if Ricky served him well, Chukwuka would eventually give him enough capital to start his own business.
As usual, I supplied goods to my customers. During the three-week waiting period to collect my money, I changed my routine a little bit. I stopped reading entirely, afraid of triggering my sickness, and focused my time on other activities. I exercised regularly and tried as much as possible to avoid being alone. After I collected my money, I returned to Nigeria. By now my business was picking up, but I still wasn’t getting rich. Nonetheless, I made enough to help support my family.
Finally, my prayer was answered and I started to see some light at the end of the tunnel. One day I chose to do some window-shopping in downtown Freetown before I met a customer to collect my money. As I looked through the shops, I stumbled across a travel agency. I walked up to the windows to admire the wonderful display of worldwide travel and vacation spots, and right there in front of me was the advertisement that would change my life. It was about a trade fair in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, in Spain. The advertisement had an all-inclusive package of four days to Las Palmas, which included return airfare, hotel accommodation, and transportation back and forth for three days from the hotel to the fairgrounds. What captured my attention was that the agency would arrange for the visas in Las Palmas, which meant that there was no requirement to have a visa prior to departure. I almost hurt myself jumping for joy.
I went inside the agency to confirm that I had read the advertisement correctly and wasn’t imagining it. It was also important to confirm that nationalities other than Sierra Leonean could participate. The salespeople answered all of my inquiries in the affirmative. I was curious as to how it worked, so I asked them to explain further. They told me that the owner of the travel agency, Tony, was Lebanese as well a Spanish citizen. He was the Spanish representative in Sierra Leone. He would be traveling with the group and would be responsible for getting our entry visas upon arrival in Las Palmas. I immediately felt at ease and that the venture was guaranteed to be a success. I told the travel agency that I would return in no time to purchase the package, and as soon as I received all of my money from my customers, I did. I was hesitant to tell others about my plans because in the past, everyone had laughed at me and never believed that I could make it out of Africa.
There was one very important thing I had to do before I traveled. I always had a feeling that the reason why I had been unsuccessful in going abroad was because my mother and grandmother really didn’t want me to, and until they allowed my travel and released me in their subconscious mind and prayers, I would not succeed. So when I returned to Nigeria, I went to my mother, who was at my grandmother’s place in Orji Uratta at the time. I told them everything I had been through up to that point. I explained that it was revealed to me the reason I hadn’t been successful in my quest to go abroad, and I urged them to let me go. Those in Western countries were similar to those in Nigeria or anywhere else in Africa, I told them, and if I humbled myself and did what was right in the eyes of God, no harm would come to me. Furthermore, I explained that if I were not allowed to go, I might never get married. They knew that I wanted to marry a white girl, and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I were stuck in Africa. When I finished speaking, they were overwhelmed with emotion. Tears started rolling down their faces, and they confirmed that I was right: they had never wanted me to go.
My mother and grandmother were deeply religious and believed in the power of the mind. They had always taught me that I could do anything with my mind and my faith—and yet they had inhibited me with their minds so that I could not travel overseas. After listening to my entire plea that day, they told me they would free their minds. My mother acknowledged that her fear was based on the fact that if I traveled overseas, she had no doubt I would end up marrying a white girl, and she didn’t want that to happen. When I expressed that my whole life depended on this journey, she could no longer hold me back. She and my grandmother gave me their blessing to travel anywhere in the world and marry whomever I wanted, irrespective of race, with one exception: the girl had to be of the same faith. She had to be from the Faith Tabernacle Congregation. I was overjoyed.
I didn’t want to return to Sierra Leone empty-handed just because I was about to travel to Spain, so I returned to Aba and purchased a small quantity of goods. At the back of my mind, I worried about who would take care of my family while I was gone. The fear of potential repatriation also occupied my thoughts. I needed to put some money aside in case I had to start all over again when I returned.
I thought it wise to let my cousin Ike keep some of my money for me. I went to his shop to exchange the foreign currency per my normal practice. But rather than exchanging all the pounds and dollars into naira, I told him to give me just enough naira to buy the goods that I needed to return to Sierra Leone. I explained my plans and said he could use the remainder of money for his business in the meantime, but that if I got repatriated, he would have to return it, in dollars and pounds just as I had given it to him. If I succeeded and was not repatriated, I would call to tell him when to return my money or, better yet, my mother would collect the money from him whenever she was in need. All this was written in his book and we both signed, but in my excitement, I forgot to make a copy of the agreement.
I spent Christmas and New Year’s in Nigeria. A week into the New Year, 1992, I went to tell my grandmother --Nwanyi Burunnu-- about my plans. She gave me her blessing and held me close. I had a weird feeling, like I would never see her again. She prayed for me and told me in an unusually calm voice that I should go forth and nothing would happen to me. She told me that wherever I went, she would be with me. I didn’t understand her words, but I accepted them, and the next day I bade her farewell—which turned out to be our last farewell.
I went to Aba and collected my goods. Before I left, my Aunt Comfort’s neighbors begged me to take their son, Okechukwu, with me to Sierra Leone and show him my business. Okechukwu was one of the notorious gang members in Aba. He was always in and out of jail, and it was rumored that he had killed some people during a robbery operation. His parents wanted him far away from Nigeria, hoping that maybe he would change and become a useful member of society. I accepted and they gave me money for his airfare. He and I left for Lagos together and flew to Sierra Leone, where I put him in Ernest’s shop and used the next few weeks to teach him how we did business. Since his parents didn’t have money to start him off on his own, he had to stay permanently in Sierra Leone and help other Nigerians there to sell their goods until he could raise enough money to be independent.
By February 1, I had sold all of my goods and collected my money. I had little choice but to tell a few friends that I would be going to Las Palmas. As I expected, some laughed and made fun of me and wondered why I couldn’t just settle there and continue my business. Some even joked about who would take care of my kids—two little monkeys I had rescued six months earlier. Both were heavily injured when I got them, having been abused by their prior owners, and I kept them with me at Ernest’s shop and nursed them back to health. Fortunately, a few days before I left for Spain, a female friend agreed to take one of the monkeys, and Abigail and her family adopted the second with a promise to take care of him like I did.
It wasn’t only the monkeys who needed care while I was away. I called a meeting with Ricky and Okechukwu, after which I committed Okechukwu to Ricky’s care, admonishing him to look after him like a brother. I advised Okechukwu to be on his best behavior if he wanted to succeed.
The next morning I left for Sierra Leone’s Lungi Airport. My adventure in Spain awaited me.
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I need motivation my people..so show me some love through some criticism, even if its one sentence...remember no body is that good!so I seek improvement which can only come through your criticisms...so yab my people yab!

#31

and our humble warrior wakes up with random thoughts.....
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not be verified. It was out of the question to them that I was a Nigerian.
As I planned my next moves, Helen continued to cry. I tried to ignore her and concentrate on my situation, but it was becoming impossible. I felt so bad for her. I walked over and asked why she was crying. She replied that she was from Ghana and her family had invested a lot of money in her trip. They had used all their life savings to get her a fake British passport so she could go to America. The worst part was that she could not return to Ghana—not only because of shame, but because Ghanaian immigration wouldn’t let her into the country without a passport. The Ghanaian authorities would certainly arrest and detain her. I felt so sorry and deeply touched.
I told her not to worry, and then explained my own situation. I informed her that I was going to seek asylum in Rome and urged her to do likewise, but she was so frightened by the whole ordeal that all she wanted was to go home. When she could not be persuaded, I resolved to help anyway. For some unfathomable reason, in spite of my well-thought-out plan, I immediately changed my course of action just so I could rescue this fragile, helpless “African Queen.” I instructed her to tell the Italian authorities that she was a Nigerian, and I would do the same; that way, we’d both be repatriated to Nigeria, and from there, I could get her home. I didn’t foresee any problems getting her through Nigerian immigration, given their corrupt nature. With the right amount of persuasion—money—everything is possible.
So, after spending less than twenty-four hours in Italy, I was en route back to Nigeria. Strangely enough, I neither sad nor did I consider my trip a failure. I had a beautiful lady whom I was helping, and that was all that mattered at the moment. On the plane, Helen’s whole demeanor changed. She opened up and started talking about herself and smiling. She revealed to me that she had a few hundred pounds with her. I rejoiced in my mind, thinking that I would be back in business with her money. Almost immediately I came up with a plan: I would to ask her to give me all her money so that I could continue my business, and would return her money later with interest after a few trips.
Upon landing in Lagos and arriving at immigration, I told them that Helen was my sister and we had both been repatriated from Italy. After negotiating a price with immigration, I ended up bribing them with $100 because they figured out that she wasn’t a Nigerian.
By this time it was already morning in Lagos, but I couldn’t think of where to take Helen. I couldn’t bring her to any of my relatives’ houses in Lagos or Aba, or to my family in Orji Uratta. How could I explain who she was? Finally, I thought of my cousin Ngozi, the eldest daughter of my mother’s older sister, even though we were not the best of friends. When we were younger, living together in my uncle’s house, he had hated her just as much as he hated me, but instead of teaming up with me, she would vent her frustrations on me and wouldn’t feed me. I remembered that she had a two-bedroom apartment in Amaoka, and I decided to take a chance and bring Helen there.
My cousin was surprised to see me—and especially Helen—but she welcomed us. While Helen sat in the living room, Ngozi and I went into the backyard, and I explained the situation. She sympathized with our plight and said that Helen could stay at her apartment until she was able to return to Ghana. Helen was still without travel documents, since the only passport she had was the fake British one that was confiscated in Italy. That meant she had to be patient until I was able to get her a traveling document to return to Ghana.
January 1991 was a memorable month. It started with a bang as the Allied Forces unleashed a counteroffensive against Iraq and launched the largest international cohesion campaign in recent history: Operation Desert Storm, headed by the United States. As a result of the war, security had been tightened in every country, and I suspected this played a significant role in the number of illegal migrants being detained and repatriated from Italy. I would have to be careful about my international travel plans.
After a few days at Ngozi’s place, Helen was more relaxed; her only concern was that she hadn’t spoken to her family and they had no idea where she was. However, Amaoka didn’t have a telephone system, so she couldn’t call them.
By this time, Helen and I had become romantically involved. I cannot remember how or when it happened, but we enjoyed each other’s company and had a lot of fun together. By the end of our first week in Amaoka, I had convinced her to let me borrow all of her money so I could start my business again in Sierra Leone. I promised her that after one trip I would return her money.
I immediately traveled to Aba with the money and bought ladies’ shoes and handbags. As soon as my orders were completed, I traveled to Lagos, and from there, flew with my goods to Sierra Leone. As usual, I had to borrow money to clear my goods since I didn’t have anything left over after my purchases. Naturally, I went back to stay at Ernest’s shop.
My colleagues were very cold to me. They knew that I had ripped Chukwuka off, but the story had been reported differently from how it had really happened. It was said that Chukwuka had given me money to buy goods for him, and I had taken all of it and fled to Italy. They all seemed pleased that I had been repatriated; some even ventured to say that karma had caught up with me. I told them what had really happened: that I did buy the goods for Chukwuka, and the only thing I did wrong was to inflate the price, which I shouldn’t have done. Some of the guys accepted my explanation and said that was the cost of doing business, but others still hated me, including Chukwuka. I pleaded with him many times, asking for his forgiveness. He finally accepted my apology, but refused to have anything to do with me anymore.
I supplied all my goods to my usual customers, and then waited to collect my money so I could return to Nigeria. I got back into my old routine. I ran every day in the morning, read more than three hundred pages of a book every day, and occasionally studied my map to see where the journey would take me next. Although I had told Helen I would return in two weeks, unfortunately this particular trip took longer than I anticipated. Three weeks had passed before I was able to collect all of my money.
When I returned to Nigeria, things were no longer the same with Helen. There was a drastic change in her behavior. I guessed she was frustrated because I didn’t maintain communication with her and she wasn’t sure if I was coming back. Even though my cousin looked after her and took proper care of her, she was still very angry with me. I noticed that she had a burn on her leg and had become friendly with a male neighbor. I also learned that she had been spending an unusual amount of time at his place. When I asked her about it, she explained that they were just friends and he had been teaching her how to ride a motorcycle, resulting in the burn on her leg. This man had also helped her find a place in Amaoka where she was able to make a phone call to her family in Ghana.
I did my best to appease her and make her understand that I didn’t intentionally abandon her, but she had made up her mind about me. A few days later I was able to obtain a laissez-passer (travel document) for her. I returned her money and took her to Lagos, where she boarded a bus back to her country. Before she left, she gave me her aunt’s address in Ghana and said I could visit her there whenever I wanted. I wasn’t satisfied with the way things had ended between us, so I promised myself that I would go to Ghana in the next few months and make amends. I returned to Aba and continued my business. Fortunately, I was able to make sufficient profit with Helen’s money, so I bought enough goods and returned to Sierra Leone.
A few months later, I decided to visit Helen. I took the bus to save money, and after seven hours, we arrived in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. I took a taxi to her aunt’s address. Helen wasn’t home, but her aunt warmly welcomed me into their three-bedroom apartment and thanked me for everything I did for Helen. She told me that their entire family was grateful. Later that evening, Helen returned and didn’t seem too pleased to see me. I tried to ask her what was wrong, and if she was unhappy that I came to visit. She said she was glad to see me, but her attitude was less than friendly. The next two days she showed me around Accra and informed me that she was about to leave for Canada. Her family had made the arrangements—with another fake passport, of course.
After three days I realized that I couldn’t make amends for whatever might have been transpired between us in Nigeria. I decided to cut my losses and move on with my life. Helen was more than eager to see me go, but her family, who had grown fond of me, was a little sad that I was leaving so soon.
I continued shuttling between Nigeria and Sierra Leone with my goods. Though I was making a profit, it was still too little because of the huge expenses involved in traveling. Some of my friends started making fun of me, nicknaming me the “Carry-On Businessman” because I would always try to carry half of my goods on board as carry-on luggage since I couldn’t afford to pay freight for them. But I didn’t care. The most important thing was that I was independent and able to sustain my family.
There were a few remarkable things happening in Sierra Leone at the time. There was the influx of goods and property, apparently stolen from war-torn Liberia. Everybody was involved in this illicit business, even the ECOMOG troops who were sent there to keep the peace. Also, different factions in Liberia were profiting from the conflict—particularly Prince Y. Johnson, who was controlling Bushrod Island, Monrovia, and was shipping vehicles and other items from Monrovia to Sierra Leone to sell in order sustain his group. I was surprised to learn he was doing this with the help of a Nigerian, my old friend Ngozi, who had taken money from investors. She and Johnson were lovers; she cooked for him and his rebel group. Indeed, Ngozi was a smart businesswoman and had been helping him with all his illicit business activities, including blood diamonds that were shuttled between Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Gradually the war in Liberia started to spill into Sierra Leone. There was a lot of cross-border incursion by rebel groups. The border between the two countries was richly endowed with diamonds and gold; therefore, the rebels in Liberia had kept a vigilant eye on these mining communities in Sierra Leone, realizing what occupying these strategic communities could mean in terms of funding to sustain their activities. As time went on, Liberian fighters moved into Sierra Leone and occupied the mining communities. But they didn’t stop there. They also started training Sierra Leonean fighters, who eventually aided the rebel fighters with the fighting in Liberia—and then these same Sierra Leoneans were later sent home to start their own rebel group, with the intention of destabilizing their own country. The mining area of Kenema and its surroundings became a battleground in Sierra Leone. The brutality and atrocities that were perpetrated in these mining communities were absolutely despicable. Tension and uncertainty grew day by day in my country of sanctuary. It seemed like the war kept following me everywhere I went. I wanted to get away from Africa as fast as I could, and by any means necessary.
One day while at Ernest’s shop, as I waited to collect the money for supplying my goods, a cold chill ran through my body and down to my feet. It paralyzed me. I became confused and started hallucinating. My heart was racing, images were flashing through my mind, and I was hearing voices. I had no idea what was happening. I got scared and had the urge to run, but I didn’t know where to go. There was nobody in the shop, so I rushed over to my friend Abigail’s house. Fortunately, her mother was home. Crying, I told her what was going on with me. I kept thinking, I’m too young to die. I’m only twenty years old and I cannot go crazy, especially not here in Africa when I still have some traveling to do.
Abigail’s mother took me to their pastor so they could pray for me. She belonged to a religious sect that had a weird way of worshipping. They used candles, invocations, and chanting, and walked around the church barefoot, wearing long white dresses. As soon as I saw the pastor, I was petrified. He had long dreadlocks and deep, piercing red eyes. The room was filled with candles and incenses. I was absolutely convinced that if the pastor prayed for me, I would go crazy, if I wasn’t already. I turned around and told Abigail’s mother that I was okay, and there was no need to go on with the prayers. She didn’t insist, and we walked back to the shop.
The next few days were the most difficult time in my life. I couldn’t tell any of my friends what was going on with me; I didn’t want them to think I was going crazy. I became more delusional and stopped reading, thinking that my problem might have emanated from reading too much. My brain was constantly on fire and my head seemed like it was about to explode. I kept hearing voices, and gradually life began to appear meaningless. All I could think was that I was going to die. If I had a gun, I would have blown my head off just to make the voices stop. As the days went by, I became more determined to self-diagnose whatever was happening to me. I even began to wonder if somebody might be manipulating me through voodoo. Maybe people that I had wronged somewhere along the line had decided to get back at me.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to try and make amends with every single person I had ever wronged in my life. I started with Chukwuka. I apologized to him once again, and he accepted and affirmed that he had forgiven me. I returned to Nigeria and went straight to Orji Uratta. When my mother and grandmother saw me, they knew that something was wrong. I told them what was happening to me, and my mother started yelling, “The Blood of Jesus!” She said that the devil was fighting a battle against me, but he would not succeed. My mother and grandmother proceeded to fast for several days. Later, my mother insisted that I had to go see our pastor and confess all of my sins, which I did. She also advised me to contact all the people that I ever wronged and apologize to them. Meanwhile, my sickness only got worse. I was rapidly losing my body and mind. It was unbearable. It seemed as if there was a crazy person inside my body trying to control me.
My mother also wanted me to pay back my uncle for the money I had made by selling the aluminum zinc from his property, so we traveled to Aba to see him. I apologized profusely, telling him I was wrong and asking him to forgive me. I returned the money, but he wouldn’t accept it. He said he had forgiven me. My mother and I pleaded with him to take the money, but he refused, saying he didn’t need it.
We returned to Owerri Nkworji, where my mother and siblings moved because the new house there had finally been completed, and there were two rooms for them to stay in. I had been there for a month and was still battling with my demons. My grandmother Nwanyi Burunnu was sad. Through her powers she already knew I was sick; even before I had returned to Nigeria, she had been going to a person she called a prophet to pray for my survival. She told me someone was after me, but as long as she lived, they would not succeed. I was restless and was doing everything possible so the sickness would leave me. I even had a dry fast for two days, yet I was not getting better. I didn’t want to give up, and was determined that I would not die in Africa. So I resolved to do everything possible to stay alive.
By this time, my mother’s elder sister, who had been living in Mbasi with her husband, the pastor, had moved to the town of Umuahia. Her husband had been promoted from associate pastor to regular pastor, and as a result they were relocated to a bigger church. I went to stay with them in Umuahia, thinking that proximity to a holy place might help in deterring my demons. My aunt’s family was pleased to have me and they prayed for me. My cousin, Mercy, did everything possible to make me comfortable; she realized that I needed someone to talk to me all the time in order to drown out the voices in my head, so she wouldn’t leave me alone. Per tradition, the whole family would wake up early in the morning and pray; we would also pray before going to sleep every night. There was also a daily church service. I become deeply immersed in religion. Sometimes, I slept in the church just to scare the devil away from me. I would get a few minutes of respite, and then the battle would continue. At other times, I would just lie under the sun and stare into it, hoping that God would radiate some magical power into me that would cure me from the demonic attack. Still, I did not get better. I became even more restless. Finally, I decided to go back to Owerri Nkworji.
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I need motivation my people..so show me some love through some criticism, even if its one sentence...remember no body is that good!so I seek improvement which can only come through your criticisms...so yab my people yab!

benjames: sis: if u read my last post u go see say i say i did't read his latest post na. so na em make i dey talk..

ben ben ben..pump your breaks my brother. we're still at the beginning...hang with me brother, Rome was also a failure as you would find out in my next post..

Just need to drink some juice to wake me up before I post..still late/early here(0420 am)

I truly appreciate your passion, but not sure if u can compete with with melady..

#30,
Our young warrior emboldened by events of the past follows the part often envied by others and embraced by some..enters the era so familiar to his people..
Show me one Ibo man who does not love business and I'll show an eagle that can not fly..no offense my brothers/sisters, this is actually a complimentary stereotype, but once again i digress..back to the story..
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Chapter Thirteen

To our great relief, Ernest returned with the goods a few days later. He gave them to his Lebanese friend and got paid. Apparently, all the goods he brought had been taken from his stepbrother’s shop in Lagos. With the proceeds from the goods, we were able to replace the car engine and continue our journey to Nigeria.
On the morning of July 17, we left Ghana very early and drove through Togo and Benin Republic. We arrived at the Seme border, the border between Nigeria and Benin Republic, at 3 p.m. The Nigerian customs officers insisted on a huge bribe to allow the vehicle into Nigeria. We tried to negotiate with them, to no avail. Eventually, it was decided that we would leave the car at the border and get into Lagos to look for money, then return later to clear the car with customs and get it back.
Ernest and I went to stay at his stepbrother’s house. I couldn’t separate myself from him at that time. My life depended so much on selling the car so I could collect my money and continue my business. I couldn’t take the chance of going anywhere else in case Ernest decided to abandon me. I told him I didn’t know anybody in Lagos.
From what I could sense, Ernest’s stepbrother wasn’t happy to host us. Ernest and his stepbrother had long talks that I suspected had to do with their old rivalry as well as the fact that Ernest was requesting money to get his car from customs and to add to his business.
After a couple of days, Ernest was able to raise enough money to clear the vehicle from customs. He started looking for a buyer for it, but apparently, the price he had set was a little too high for the car’s present condition. After almost two thousand miles of rough terrain, the vehicle had experienced a lot of wear and tear. To make matter worse, when potential buyers heard that the engine had been changed, they would change their minds. The vehicle was sold at a much lower price than Ernest had anticipated, and I immediately told him that I wanted to go to Aba to buy the goods I needed to take to Freetown. He asked me to exercise patience for a couple of days because he was hoping to get some more money from his stepbrother. He appreciated what I had done for him and intended to give me enough money to put into my business. But the next couple of days were very unpleasant because Ernest and his stepbrother kept fighting. It became obvious that he wasn’t going to give Ernest any money. So Ernest finally gave me some cash anyway. It wasn’t enough, but I understood his predicament. I accepted it and left for Aba.
When I got there, I decided to go to CY’s house. I was surprised to find Bongo and Donkey there. They had come back from Liberia, where they had lost everything because of the war. They told me that CY had made his way to Sierra Leone. As for them, they had no idea what to do next. I immediately saw an opportunity. I told Bongo that I could take him to Sierra Leone if he would agree to sell my goods like they had done in Liberia. He jumped at the offer, and it was agreed that he and Donkey would pay their way to Sierra Leone and I would provide them a place to stay in return for selling my goods for me.
With that, I went to the market in Aba and ordered custom-made shoes, mostly for women. I also bought a few handbags. My orders took about three days to complete, and while I was waiting, I went to Orji Uratta to visit my family. My family knew that I was running a legitimate business, selling Nigerian-made products in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
My orders were completed and I returned to Aba, collected my goods, and traveled to Lagos. From there I flew back to Sierra Leone. Fortunately, this time all my goods made it to Sierra Leone. I left the goods at customs and returned to Ernest’s shop. Some of the guys there lent me some money, which I used to clear the goods the next day. A few days later, Bongo and Donkey showed up in Freetown. I picked them up from the airport and took them to Ernest’s shop. The other guys at the shop weren’t pleased, but I didn’t care since the shop belonged to Ernest, and I knew he wouldn’t mind.
Bongo was very much ready for business upon arrival. Within a few days he had made a bunch of contacts and started selling my shoes. Within one week, he and Donkey had sold everything, and after another week all my money had been collected. Subsequently, I returned to Nigeria and brought more shoes. Upon my return, I learned that Bongo had moved out of the shop; he had rented a place for himself and Donkey. He had also allied himself with some of my friends and struck a deal similar to the one I had with him. Consequently, now that he had many people going to Nigeria to bring back products for him to sell, he seemed less enthusiastic and even reluctant about selling mine. Apparently, he had ripped me off so much that the profit he had made from my products was enough to get him started. I was really upset and was thinking of harming him, but I restrained myself. Without anyone else to sell for me, my goods were stored without any potential supplier or buyer. I couldn’t sell them myself—retailing my own products didn’t resonate with my new status as an importer—and I had nobody to do it for me. Frustrated, I decided to walk the streets of Freetown, looking for someone to whom I could supply them.
After talking to a few shopkeepers, luck finally shined upon me when I spoke to the son of a Lebanese shop owner. I later showed the father and son samples of my shoes, which they agreed to display for a few days to see if there would be a demand for it. When I returned two days later, the samples were gone and the shop owners asked me to bring all the shoes I had. From that day on, almost all my shoes went to this shop, and they would pay me a few weeks later.
I also had a few other customers. There was a lady who lived on the street where Ernest’s shop was. Her daughter, Abigail, was dating one of my friends, Emeka. Though Abigail’s mother still lived with Abigail’s father in the same house, she was also dating a married man—her boss at the government ministry. Abigail’s mother took a few samples of my shoes and handbags to her office, and her coworkers liked them. She became one of my vendors. She was doing so well that her lover decided to get into the business. As time went on, I started supplying half of my consignment to her lover.
Now that I had more people buying and selling my shoes and handbags, my trips to Nigeria became more frequent—every two to three weeks. I wasn’t making a lot of profit, though, due to the small capital involved. But I was content. I was running my own business and able to sustain my family with the little profit I was making. I just needed to do it long enough to save money to travel overseas.
Each time I traveled to Aba to get my goods, I would arrive with US dollars and British pounds. Typically, after selling the goods in Sierra Leone in the local currency (Leones), I would convert the Leones into dollars and pounds, which I would then convert into naira when I got to Aba. On every trip to Aba, I stayed at my Aunt Comfort’s house. Her son, Ike, already owned his own shop in the same market where I bought my shoes, and each time he would ask me to give him all of my dollars and pounds so he could exchange them for me—and also use the money for his business for a few days while my orders were being processed. When my orders were ready, I would go to his shop and he would return my money. I didn’t mind this arrangement, even though I knew he was ripping me off every time he exchanged the foreign currencies for me. The rate at which he claimed to have changed the money was much higher than the going rate elsewhere. But since he was my cousin, it never bothered me. On several occasions I pleaded with Ike to invest with me in order to increase my capital and boost my profit margin, and each time he would decline, saying that he didn’t have enough money. Yet he was more than happy to use my money to do business each time I was in Aba.
Meanwhile, I stayed informed on what was going on in my beloved Liberia. By September, the West African community was trying to persuade President Samuel Doe to go into exile, but he refused. He was later persuaded by the Nigerian head of state to seek exile in Nigeria. Subsequently, he accepted and flew his family to Nigeria using the Liberian government executive jet. The Liberians were relieved, thinking that Doe had finally left, but there was a bizarre turn of events: instead of remaining with his family in Nigeria, Doe said he would not abandon Liberia and was willing to die fighting. Ironically, he was captured and killed a few days after returning from Nigeria.
The port area of Liberia, Bushrod Island, was controlled by Prince Y. Johnson at this stage during the rebel incursion into Monrovia. Apparently, Doe and Johnson had initially reached an understanding to establish a certain level of cooperation since Charles Taylor had become their common enemy. Johnson was now heading a breakaway faction from Taylor’s group. Doe, believing that he had a trusted partner in Johnson, arranged with him to visit the Freeport and assess the possibility of bringing more arms into the port.
That morning Doe went to port with minimum security, leaving behind the ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) troops that had been assigned to him. Upon his arrival at the port, Johnson’s men captured Doe. During his subsequent interrogation in a video, which was later marketed in West Africa, Doe was completely humiliated and tortured. Johnson and his men had Doe stripped naked and on his knees; at one point he was shown begging for his life. Johnson kept asking Doe where the country’s money was, and Doe tearfully continued to beg for his life, reminding Johnson that they had been best friends since they were in the armed forces. Johnson kept humiliating Doe and saying, “You call yourself a president? Where did you put the people’s money?” At another point in the video, Johnson called the United States embassy and told U.S. Ambassador that he had the president of Liberia and wanted to negotiate with the United States. Later in the video, Doe’s ears were cut off and shoved into his mouth, and he was ordered to eat them. At the end, he was tortured to death.
I was stunned to learn the news. Poor Liberia was still in chaos.
I continued to travel between Sierra Leone and Nigeria for business. In November, Ernest brought Chukwuka—the guy who bought his Mazda—with him from Nigeria. It wasn’t surprising, though; Ernest had always let his kindheartedness overshadow his good business sense. Not long ago, he had also brought Pascal, one of his suppliers, from Nigeria. He didn’t take into consideration the fact that each time he brought a new person to Freetown, the market got more saturated. The number of Nigerian suppliers kept increasing, but there was no corresponding increase in the number of vendors to supply the goods to.
Chukwuka owned many shops in Lagos and normally supplied goods to most of the guys who brought goods to Sierra Leone. He wanted to diversify his business, so instead of staying in Lagos and waiting for people to go there to buy from him, he decided to bring his goods to Sierra Leone and supply them directly to the Lebanese himself, thereby cutting off the middlemen, Ernest, and the rest. We all ended up living together in Ernest’s shop.
Chukwuka and I became good friends. We were always together, and I would accompany him to get his supplies while I waited to be paid by my clients. He was impressed by how my shoe and bag business was moving, but he couldn’t understand why I was dealing in small quantities. I confided in him about my financial constraints. I later realized that he might be interested in investing with me. As time went on, we started having conversations about it, but he was looking for a long-term commitment. He had been a businessman for a long time and owned several shops, so this was his life. But for me, though I enjoyed what I was doing, it wasn’t something I saw myself doing for a long time. This was merely a conduit to my overall goal of traveling overseas. I didn’t reject Chukwuka’s offer to team up with me outright; rather, I asked him to invest a little in shoes and see how he would like it before he committed to anything on a larger scale.
By December, my desire to abandon everything and go overseas had become insuppressible. After selling my goods in Sierra Leone that Christmas, I determined that I would not be returning to Sierra Leone the next time I went to Nigeria. I had researched and found out that I could travel to Malta without a visa. Malta belonged to the British Commonwealth, and Nigerians didn’t need a visa to travel there. The idea was when I got to Malta, I could easily go from there to Spain or Italy. I left Sierra Leone without telling any of my friends what my plans were.
However, as I was leaving, Chukwuka asked me to buy shoes for him. Instead of telling him I wouldn’t be returning, I saw it as an opportunity to rip him off. I was to buy one hundred pairs of shoes for him as test run prior to him investing more into the shoe business. I accepted the money. Upon my arrival in Aba, I bought a hundred pairs of shoes of lesser quality and inflated the purchase price by fifty percent. I sent the shoes to Chukwuka through the help of other guys returning to Sierra Leone. I then bought my round-trip ticket to Malta.
On January 10, 1991, I was packed and ready to fly to Europe. Though I was very excited, there was a nagging uncertainty at the back of my mind. It felt like something was going to go wrong. I checked in my luggage and went to the departure hall to wait for boarding. When I arrived, my heart stopped beating: Bobby was sitting at one of the benches at the boarding gate. He was the last person I would have expected to run into. Luckily, I needn’t have worried; on the contrary, Bobby was happy to see me. He told me that he and Elise had survived the mayhem in Liberia and returned to Nigeria. Elise had eventually traveled to Spain, and Bobby was about join him there. He whispered that he was traveling with someone else’s passport. Someone had used his passport to obtain a visa, after which he sold the passport and visa to Bobby; now Bobby had assumed the name on the passport. I told him that I was making my way to Malta. We said our goodbyes, and I continued on to my boarding gate. My flight would take me from Lagos to Rome, and from Rome, I would change planes for Malta.
Luckily, I had no issues boarding the plane. I reached my seat and put my bag in the overhead compartment, my heart pounding the entire time. I felt like the security guards would come and pull me out of the plane at any moment. After takeoff, I started to calm down. The pilot announced that we would arrive in Rome in six hours. After an hour, I had a change of heart: I decided not to continue on to Malta. I figured that it would be more difficult to go anywhere from Malta, granted that it’s an island, whereas if I stayed in Italy, I could easily travel by road to either Spain or France.
But in order to stay in Rome, I had to somehow destroy my passport and claim asylum in Rome. Without giving it a second thought, I went straight to the toilet, tore up my passport, and flushed it down the toilet. I returned to my seat feeling a little relaxed. I was open to whatever future awaited me in Rome.
Meals were served and I washed mine down with two mini bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. We arrived in Rome at 6 a.m., and I was immediately impressed by how magnificent the airport looked. I was thrilled to be in Europe for the first time; however, I needed to remain calm and take it all in stride. I knew this joy wouldn’t last—I would have to face reality once I got to immigration.
Unfortunately, even with my careful planning, I had forgotten to take a winter jacket. Nevertheless, coat or no coat, I was in Europe, and that was all that mattered. Besides, Europeans were said to be generous people; I was sure it wouldn’t be hard for them to find me a jacket. I continued toward immigration. For a minute, I regretted tearing up my passport—it would allow me to get on my connecting flight to Malta without a problem, should I have changed my mind again decided not to stay in Rome.
I casually tried to walk through immigration, but they stopped me and asked for my passport. Since I couldn’t speak Italian, I made an expression implying that I didn’t have one. The officer immediately alerted the police, and I was taken to a detention hall at the airport. To my surprise, there were many other people—Africans, Pakistanis, Indians—who had been detained for immigration violations. Among them was a young Ghanaian girl, Helen, who was crying uncontrollably. She was traveling to America with a fake British passport, and had been caught and detained in Rome since the previous night.
I settled into a corner in the detention room, waiting my fate. After what seemed like ages, Italian immigration personnel brought us some apples and pears. All the while, I remained calm, calculating how to pursue the asylum angle, which became the obvious choice. Without a passport, I couldn’t be deported anywhere. My country of origin could...

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Yabis yabis yabis..like the great Fela would say, let make this a yabis night..let loose and make it rain on me.

repogirl: This was too short, any hope of getting more today? , we've been waiting all day so it wouldn't be bad to indulge us a bit more.

me lady.. have I ever say no to you?..hope you did not take offense on "the one who shall not be named"
will update in in two mikes.

vanagon: nice write up here,am followin.tanx

VG: no! thanks to you my brother.

nelxsantos: guy U gt sum move 1. B concious of ur time frame nt 2 contradit them. 2. Dat swift responds nd acceptnc on d marriage proposal I tink it need 2 b changed s 2 quick 4 a devoutd xtain if she turely is?. 1ox jus my op' no offnce. Keep it up dude.

thanks my bother.. your honesty is breath of fresh air..i see you just join us. obviously you're still on the prologue, so indulge me a little. read some more and hit me back later.

Jake

#29,
It's 1730 and a bright spring sunny day in DC, our gentle warrior returns from his devil dog training, hungry and exhausted from the belt way traffic. he has two option, eat/rest or open his computer....while his body aches and yawns for nourishment, his gentle soul was inexplicably captive by his beloved readers/follower...full with imagine and fantasies of a forbidden love... love supposedly hidden within the lines she uttered... she who could not be named, please take solace in the fact that thy imaginary Romey name is distance and thy husband name is closer..

He opens the computer and as usual nairyland's onezes and zeros started appearing in all its glory... the patronage and words of the readers were overwhelming...his heart worms up and his tears were unstoppable...tears from recognition that maybe and just maybe he could make a difference..maybe if he or some of his friend that died along the way had opportunity of reading a similar story before they started off, who knows,some may still be alive today...

Here I go again..getting carry away..I know..I know..by the way THANK YOU all from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you all have a take away from this story..Ok Ok, I'll stop now..the story..
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Since his release from prison, he had been helping others bring drugs and sell them in Freetown. He seemed to be connected with the police and other influential people in Freetown. His biggest problem, though, was not that he peddled drugs, but that he was also an addict and was a big train wreck waiting to happen. He always made me laugh with his jokes.
I continued to research the possibility of selling shoes and other items in Freetown, just like CY was doing in Monrovia. It seemed like no one was doing it Freetown, and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to get it started. I decided that once Ernest and I returned to Nigeria and I got my money back from him, I would buy goods there, bring them back to Freetown, and find someone to sell them for me, just like CY did.
Ernest remained the kindhearted soul he had always been. Everyone loved him. He had being living in Sierra Leone for a long time and had not visited his family back in Nigeria. From what I heard, his family had requested that he come back home. Ernest later told me that the reason he didn’t want to return to Nigeria was his stepbrother. His father had married twice. The first wife had had a son before she died, and then his father had married Ernest’s mother. After his father died, his stepbrother took charge of all the property he had left. When Ernest eventually became old enough, he went into business with his stepbrother. After several years, Ernest was ready to move on and start his own business; however, his stepbrother refused to give him enough capital. With the little money he was given, Ernest started doing business between Nigeria and Ghana. After a while, he got into the drug trade in Sierra Leone.
On his last trip from Nigeria to Sierra Leone, he was arrested and the drugs were confiscated. After he was released, he met a young Sierra Leonean lady called Beckie. She took him in and took care of him until he got back on his feet. Though Ernest had bounced back and was doing well with his shop, he refused to return to Nigeria; instead, he invested all his money and energy in his shop. He ordered legitimate goods from Nigeria and sold them at his shop. He had being living with Beckie all these years, and other Nigerians wondered why he stayed with her for such a long time. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to hurt her after she had been kind to him, yet he did not seem to love her. Beckie was a scary woman, very possessive and jealous. She had a habit of always showing up wherever Ernest went and seemed to have this uncanny control over him. Many people suspected that she was controlling Ernest through voodoo magic because of the things she made him do—things he wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. Ernest was always sick and we suspected that she might be slowly poisoning him, perhaps so she could inherit all his property in Sierra Leone. They were not married, but their relationship had the semblance of marriage.
For this reason, everybody was pleased that Ernest was finally taking this trip to Nigeria. The hope was that it would do him some good. He would have the opportunity to reconnect with his family and clear his head.
A few days before our departure, I decided to call Ike, my secondary school friend who was now living America. He had given me his brother’s number in New York before he had left. This would be my third attempt at calling Ike. I had called him on two previous occasions while I was in Liberia.
The first time was when I returned from my misadventure to Mali. I was broke and desperate. I thought maybe if I called my old buddy, he would send me a few dollars. After all, he ate a lot of my food while we were in secondary school. But to my greatest shock and disappointment, when he got on the phone and I said who I was, he started rapping to me in an American accent. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t speak to me in Igbo; after all, he had only left Nigeria less than two years ago. I, on the other hand, could not speak to him in any other language than Igbo. I told Ike all the difficulties I was facing in Liberia and that I was broke, stranded, and in desperate need of cash. After a few moments of silence, my dearest friend said, “Listen, buddy, ain’t got no money.” He continued, “Man, you got to speak up. I can’t hear you and I got to go.” And then he hung up on me. A similar thing happened the second time I called him. As soon as he got on the phone and heard my name, he hung up. Now I wanted to give him an opportunity to redeem himself.
This time he did not hang up on me, but he made it clear that I was bothering him. He said that he was living with his brother, who did not appreciate people calling his house. I apologized and hung up the phone, more determined than ever before to travel to anywhere in Europe or America.
Everything was set for my trip to Nigeria with Ernest. The Mazda 626 had been serviced, we had bought enough food for the road, and we even had a mechanic traveling with us. He was a Cameroonian guy who had been stranded in Sierra Leone for years. Rumor had it that he was a stowaway on a ship from Cameroon to Europe. When he was discovered, he was thrown overboard in Sierra Leonean waters. Fortunately for him, he was a good swimmer, and after two days was rescued by a fishing boat and taken to Freetown. While living in Freetown he had learned to be a mechanic. He was employed in an auto repair shop, and though he was making a living, he couldn’t save enough money to travel back home to Cameroon. When he learned that Ernest and I were traveling to Nigeria, he begged Ernest to give him a ride. Since Nigeria and Cameroon have a common border, it would be easy for him to get back to Cameroon from there. For Ernest and me, this was a no-brainer. We knew that a mechanic would be useful since the journey would be long and the road would be treacherous.
We left Freetown on July 1, 1990. Since I had traveled by road before, I would lead us all the way to Guinea through the Ivory Coast and then Ghana. From Ghana it would be a straight shot to Nigeria, passing through Togo and Benin Republic, since there was only one international road leading from Ghana.
The journey went smoothly until we got into Guinea. The roads there were terrible. The Mazda 626 was a sedan and didn’t have a four-wheel drive, and the roads could only be navigated easily with an SUV or any other 4×4 vehicle. In addition, we had to deal with constant stops by the police and gendarmes. There seemed to be millions of them, and since we had a foreign license plate, they demanded all kinds of vehicle papers. It didn’t matter to them when we explained that we were only passing through. We always ended up giving them money before we would be allowed to move on.
On July 2, when we had gone midway across Guinea, we had to cross a river that had no bridge. We could not go back, and only big trucks and big SUVs could cross the river without any problem because their engines were a little higher off the ground. Our vehicle was very low, and we knew that if we tried to cross, our engine would be soaked. Our mechanic friend so far had proven to be useless to us. On several occasions since we had started the trip, he had failed to demonstrate a good understanding of various functionalities of our vehicle. He could not be trusted, but at this point it was already too late; we were stuck with him. I prayed, remembering all of the miracles that God had performed when the children of Israel were going to the land of Canaan. I remembered how the Lord, through Moses, parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could go through on dry ground, and hoped that God could do something similar for us here. After I prayed, we proceeded to drive through the river. We went across, and as soon as we got onto the other side and up the hill, the car shut down. But after a few more prayers, the vehicle started and we continued on our way. We thanked God for getting us through.
We had more car problems every now and then, and as usual, our mechanic friend wouldn’t know what to do. At times we would use roadside mechanics to solve the problem. We were almost at the border of Guinea and Ivory Coast when we ran into more trouble with the gendarmes and police. By this time we were running out of money and didn’t want to give out any more unnecessarily. Because we refused to give the bribe, our vehicle was detained, and by the time it was released, it was late and the border was closed for the night. We spent the night in the car, waiting for daybreak.
We crossed the border into the Ivory Coast on July 3. The roads in this region were still rough, and we still had to bribe the police and gendarmes when necessary. But the car was showing signs of giving up—after three days, the roads had taken their toll.
We arrived in Abidjan on the evening of July 3 and decided to spend the night there. This was my first time in the city. We were directed to a place called Biafran market, which was supposed to be a predominantly Igbo market.
During the Nigerian civil war, a large number of Igbos left Nigeria and became refugees in neighboring countries, including the Ivory Coast. Even the Biafran leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, went on exile to the Ivory Coast after the war. Some of the refugees returned to Nigeria after the war, but a large number remained in diaspora and adopted their host country as their home. Being an industrious tribe, the Igbos excelled in all walks of life in the different countries where they resided. The Biafran market was a typical example. It was the biggest market in the Ivory Coast, and it was believed the excellent economic condition that the area was enjoying at that time had a lot to do with the presence of the Igbos and their ingenuity. When we reached Biafran market, we ran into many Igbo people, as we anticipated, and one was kind enough to provide us accommodations for the night at his house.
Before going to bed that night, we decided to explore Abidjan. It was indeed a beautiful city and the people were very proud of it. That night we visited an area called Le Plateau, aka “Petit Paris.” It was the most beautiful place I had ever been to. I was impressed to find such a place existed on our continent. The Ivoirians are proud people and don’t spare anything in their effort emulate their colonial master. On the way to Abidjan, we had passed a town where we saw a marvel of a church. It was said to be the largest and most beautiful Catholic church in the world. The construction cost was equivalent to the country’s total budget for a year.
The next morning, July 4, we started on our journey to Ghana. The road got better, but the irritating presence of the gendarmes and police persisted. So far we had had little use for our Cameroonian mechanic. Since he was a Cameroonian, we expected him to speak French, which would have made our interaction with the gendarmes and the police a lot easier. But he was not educated, so he only spoke Cameroonian-broken-French and Creole. Whenever we had problems with the gendarmes and police, even the simplest situation became complex because of our inability to explain ourselves in French. The Guinean and Ivorian gendarmes and police could barely understand the mechanic’s broken French.
We ran into another situation with the Ivorian gendarmes and police later that evening. They wanted us to produce the import license and documentation for the vehicle. We tried to explain that we were in transit and were heading to Ghana, but they wouldn’t listen. We spent many hours at that post, and by the time they let us go, it was getting dark. To make matters worse, the car refused to start. As we were fiddling with it, one of the custom officers who had detained us earlier was on his way home. He happened to be very good with cars and he helped us start the car. He insisted that we spend the night at his home and continue our journey the next morning. We accepted his offer.
He took us to his home and introduced us to his wife and two daughters. This man was by far the kindest we had met on the roads thus far. It was hard to see this generous man as the same monster that we had encountered earlier at the post. His family made us a delicious Ivorian meal. One of his daughters took a liking to me and we spent a lot of time chatting. It seemed the officer was pleased with his daughter’s friendship with me, because while I was talking with her, he brought me their family album and showed me all her pictures. He later pulled out two of his daughter’s personal pictures and gave them to me to keep. He invited me to come back and stay with them again sometime. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers. It was a delightful evening, and it was late when we finally went to bed that night. We woke up the next day and had a fantastic breakfast. I couldn’t believe their hospitality. We were treated like VIPs. Before we left that morning, we thanked them for their kindness. I promised that I would return someday, and also that I would write to their daughter and perhaps send her a picture of myself.
With that, we continued on our journey to Accra. The sound coming from the engine was ominous, and we weren’t sure the car would make it to Accra, much less Nigeria. We hoped and prayed, but as soon as we got to Accra late that afternoon, the engine died. We thanked God Almighty for three things: 1) that this happened in an English-speaking country; 2) that Ernest had friends in Accra; and 3) that it was just six to eight hours away from our final destination, Nigeria.
Ernest contacted one of his friends, a Lebanese guy to whom he supplied spare car parts when he was doing business in Ghana. His friend allowed us to stay at his house. Meanwhile, he and Ernest reached an agreement that Ernest would go to Nigeria and bring him some goods, and when he returned, he would help replace our car engine, which was completely dead.
The Lebanese guy could only accommodate one guest in his house. With Ernest about to leave, there were still two of us. So before Ernest departed, we borrowed money from the Lebanese guy to send the Cameroonian all the way to Aba. I gave the Cameroonian my uncle’s address in Aba, and instructed him to go to him and tell him that I sent him. I asked him to explain his situation to my uncle and ask him for money to transport himself to Cameroon. From what I was told later, he did stop at Aba and my uncle did give him money to travel back to his home in Cameroon.
Ernest took off for Nigeria and would be gone for three days. For me, it was no big deal; I could afford to wait for a few days. But after one week, Ernest still hadn’t shown up. The Lebanese host was getting nervous because he had given Ernest money for the goods. Even though they had been doing business for a long time and must have trusted each other, he was still worried. However, as long as I was in the house, he was okay because I kept telling him that Ernest would return to Ghana.
The truth was that I was worried, too.
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please don't forget to opine opine...yabis yabis, and remember no yab is too good or too bad, so go ahead and throw you best yab at me.
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repogirl: Yabis abi? Ow..kay, the ship sinking incident was a close cal. Surprised that didn't put the fear of God in you... And then abt Baba Ali's mother trying to play a fast one, she nor kno say Naija nor dey carry last?

You've got a really lucky star as in how many mishaps can a person jump pass? And there's still so much more to come.

As for me, I think I'm learning too, maybe your resilience is starting to rub off here. I vow to be more unrelenting from now on.
Your story is seriously inspiring someone over here, I'm sure many others will feel this way on rerading it.

its always very refreshing to hear from me lady..meanwhile, you force my hand again to spill the bean.. word on the street is that I have 7 lives..hint, Iraq,earthquake,plan crash..plus what i may or may not be living from next week, all which will be capture in book#3-living it and not written yet-

yabon me lady..will continue/post upon return from training later in the evening.

#28

Junior league is over..we are now entering the main season of...
may the battle of the wits begin..
and the forces remained with our noble warrior--the sprite of his ancestors and the warriors before him never left..
once again I digress, my apologies..the story:
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I met another young traveler and convinced him to walk with me to Kenema. Since I had no watch, I lost track of time. We walked day and night, and after what seemed like two days, we arrived in Kenema, exhausted and hungry. From Kenema I was able to catch a taxi to Freetown. Before leaving Liberia I had obtained Baba Ali’s family address in Freetown, and I headed straight there.

Baba Ali’s mother, Ms. Mariam, had moved to Freetown after divorcing his father in Nigeria. His grandmother had been very prominent in Sierra Leonean politics when she was alive; she was once the mayor of Freetown. When I got to the house, I met Ms. Mariam and explained that her son was my best friend and we lived together in Liberia. I also told her that Baba Ali could be in great danger because he was living on the street and had no money to go back to Nigeria, and most importantly, that the rebels had already penetrated Monrovia. She had no idea that her son was in Monrovia; she thought Baba Ali was still at the university in Nigeria. He had been missing for a while, but no one knew he had traveled to Liberia.

She took me in and fed me. Their house was Victorian style and she had a live-in male servant who cooked and did all the maintenance in the house. One of Ms. Mariam’s brothers also lived there, while two others lived with their family elsewhere in Freetown. Ms. Mariam was a very pretty woman; too pretty for her age, I thought. She was about sixty years old, but she looked forty. She was very tall, just like her brothers; they were all well above six feet. After my first day at their house, she gave me a lot of books to read, mostly romantic novels. She was nice and we would sit and talk for hours about a variety of topics. She was very intellectual and I enjoyed conversing with her. She wanted to know about her son—how life was going for him and if he was healthy. I wondered how long she would allow me to stay at their house.

I didn’t have to wonder long, though. On the third day she let me know that she wanted to go to Liberia and get her son. By this time the media was reporting that the rebels were in Monrovia. She needed my help to go to Monrovia and I accepted, even though I knew the danger involved. Baba Ali was my best friend and his mother had been so kind to me. Besides, we would just be spending a few hours in Monrovia, just enough time to find Baba Ali and take him back with us. Since I had no money left, I assumed Baba Ali’s mother would pay for our transportation to Monrovia and back, especially since I was doing her a favor.

A week later, Ms. Mariam and I headed to Liberia. We got through the border, and I introduced the nice immigration officer to Baba Ali’s mother. Ms. Mariam liked the lady a lot and told her I was her son. I was already calling her “Mom” anyway because she had been treating me so nicely, like a mother would treat her own son. We took a taxi from Bo Waterside into Monrovia.

When we got there, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Most people had already been evacuated from the city and there was a lot of indiscriminate killing going on. The rebels had launched several attacks against the city. I went searching for Baba Ali at the port and was told that many people had been killed by the rebels the previous day. Some of the victims were people that I knew. I also tried to look for Amara and someone told me he was one of those killed. Luckily, I found a person who had information about Baba Ali. He told me that he had escaped the attack, and gave me an address where I could find him.

Baba Ali was staying with a girl at Logan Town, one of the slums of Monrovia. He was shocked to see us. He looked very haggard and a little disoriented. His mother immediately broke down and started crying, saying she had come to take him home. Baba Ali didn’t say anything because he was high on marijuana, but his expression showed that he was more than happy and ready to come with us. It was agreed that we would all leave for Freetown the next day. Baba Ali’s mother told me she wanted to spend time with her son and I should meet them at ten the next morning so we could leave for Freetown. Apparently, she hadn’t considered the fact that I didn’t have money or anywhere else to go. Suddenly, her attitude toward me changed, and I suspected it was because she now had what she wanted. I heard her whispering something to her son and I became suspicious of her. It appeared that she was scheming to abandon me there and secretly take Baba Ali back to Freetown. Indeed, if that was her plan, she did not know who she was dealing with. I left them and decided to spend the night with Elise and Bobby, thinking that by now Charles would have paid most of the guys that I owed, particularly Elise and Bobby.

As soon as Bobby saw me, he went ballistic and attacked me with a knife. He thought that I had collected money from Charles and run away. I tried explaining that was not the case, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried to talk to Elise and get him to make Bobby see reason, but that didn’t work, either. They were both mad at me and were willing to kill me that night. Thinking quickly, I came up with the only solution: taking them to Charles. I managed to convince them both, and we went to the Star Hotel, along with the other party that I owed. Luckily for me, Charles and Ngozi were in their suite. It didn’t seem like they were ready to go anywhere; rather, it looked like they were looking forward to the war. War profiteering was a very lucrative business, and those two would sell their mothers for profit.

I had them explain to my partners what had happened. Ngozi’s tone was very arrogant and she acted as though what we had given her wasn’t important. I realized we weren’t making progress, and I was ultimately responsible for these people’s money. I pulled Charles aside and begged him to promise them that he would return their money the next day. I asked him to be convincing, even though we both knew he wouldn’t pay them back. He accepted and went to talk to the guys. It was agreed that we would all meet again the next evening to settle everything.

With that, they all left me alone. I sure couldn’t sleep at Bobby’s house any longer. I couldn’t be in Monrovia after noon the next day if I wanted to stay alive. I knew those guys were desperate and would kill me without question. Even though Bobby and Elise didn’t want me to leave their sight that night, I was able to convince them that everything would be resolved the next day and that I was going to sleep at CY’s house.

I couldn’t stop thinking of how my situation had deteriorated because of my goodwill. The lady who had brought me back to Liberia to help her rescue her son now wanted to abandon me, and the people I owed wanted to kill me. I decided not to stay at any of my friends’ places, just in case Bobby and Elise decided to look for me that night. I also thought it best to stay close to where Baba Ali and his mother were staying, so they couldn’t sneak away and leave me behind. I spent the night on the street, despite the dangers all around me. At five the next morning, I made my way even closer to where Baba Ali and his mother were. At six o’clock, a taxi pulled up in front of the house, and Baba Ali and his mother emerged and walked to the taxi with the bag she had been carrying when we arrived yesterday. My fears were confirmed.
Without hesitation, I walked up to them and said, “Mother, thank God I got here in time, since I didn’t know you had decided we would leave earlier!” Her face dropped. She didn’t know how to react. We all got into the taxi and headed off toward the border.

We crossed Liberian and Sierra Leonean immigrations without incident. However, when we got to the Sierra Leonean side, Ms. Mariam pretended she didn’t have enough money to get us all back to Freetown—she only had enough for herself and her son. I told her I had no money with me, but she said that at least I was free in Sierra Leone now and should be able to manage on my own. I didn’t want to be rude to her because I planned to end up at her house—I was broke and had no place to stay. I tried to play smart without being too aggressive. I immediately went and grabbed the female immigration officer to whom she had already introduced me as her son. I introduced Baba Ali as the elder brother we had gone to find in Monrovia. I asked the officer to stay with us until we could find a taxi that would take us to Freetown, and while she made conversation with Baba Ali and his mother, I found one. Taxis usually collected fares before passengers were allowed into the vehicle, so I figured that once Ms. Mariam paid the fare for all three of us, she would no longer kick me out. I took the taxi driver to Ms. Mariam in the presence of the immigration lady so she couldn’t argue or refuse to pay my fare. The expression on her face was priceless. We all got into the taxi and started our journey back to Freetown.

To my amazement, Ms. Mariam allowed me to stay with her again. This time Baba Ali and I shared the room she had given me earlier. It was hard for me to tell whether Baba Ali appreciated what I did for him, since he never thanked me, and neither did his mother. I figured that allowing me to stay in their house was thanks enough. Some of their relatives stopped by to see Baba Ali; they were all pleased to have him back. Baba Ali and I continued to be friends, but our friendship had become one of convenience. I believed that deep down he saw me as a nuisance in his mother’s house.
After a few weeks, his mother tried to convince him to go back to Nigeria to continue with his studies, but Baba Ali wanted to travel to America, where some of his uncles lived with their families. Two of the cousins, a pair of twins the same age as Baba Ali, had just come to Freetown. The girl was very beautiful, but had a weird complexion; I suspected she must have bleached her skin. She wore designer clothes. The boy was an all-American boy; he wore the typical jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps, and walked with a swagger. They both had Walkmans and listened to the hottest hip-hop and R&B songs. Baba Ali was taken by his cousins’ American way of life. His mother spoke to her brother, and he agreed to find a way to get Baba Ali to America.

I was so jealous. There I was, trying so hard for so long to travel abroad, but everything I had done so far toward that goal had ended up in pure disaster. Now the person I had just helped rescue from the slums of Liberia, who would have eventually died otherwise, was going to America and I was still nowhere close to leaving Africa. It was not that I expected his family to send me to America; I just felt so used and neglected. With the mission of retrieving Baba Ali completed, there was no further use for me, and it became apparent that my presence at the house was no longer welcome.
After three weeks, I decided I had to move on, but I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Then I remembered Ernest, the Nigerian shop owner who had given Elise and me money to return to Liberia after we had been thrown off from the ship River Magidon. I decided to pay him a visit.

Luckily for me, he was at the shop when I arrived and was happy to see me, especially knowing that everybody was leaving Liberia due to the war. During this visit I met a guy named Kelvin, who slept in Ernest’s shop. He was a stranded Nigerian and Ernest had taken him in until he could get back on his feet. In return, he helped Ernest run his shop. I later found out that Kelvin had brought some marijuana to Sierra Leone to sell, and it was confiscated by customs. He was lucky to have escaped arrest because the customs officers weren’t able to connect him to the marijuana packages that were seized.

While I talked with Ernest, he mentioned that he wanted to travel back to Nigeria. He had just bought a Mazda 626 car and intended to transport it by road. He was also looking for someone who could help him drive the vehicle to Nigeria. I immediately volunteered to be his co-driver. He was pleased and we decided to leave for Nigeria in the first week of July. Ernest promised to pay me after selling the vehicle. That same day I received chilling news about the River Magidon.

During my conversation with Ernest, we got on the subject of my stowaway experience, and he told me an incredible story about the River Magidon. It had been all over the news a few weeks back that the ship had sunk off the Spanish coast and everyone on board had died. Apparently, after the ship had left Africa and gone into the Mediterranean Sea, it had developed a very serious problem that caused it to sink. It was said that the crew had sent an SOS to the Spanish authorities, which was ignored. As a result, the ship, the entire crew, and the cargo had gone to the bottom of the sea.
A chill ran through my body. Had the captain not decided to kick out Elise and me in Freetown, we would have still been on the ship and would have perished with everybody on board. I couldn’t believe that God had saved me from this terrible tragedy, and I was just hearing about it. The saying that every disappointment is a blessing was very true in this case. I thanked my God for preserving my life.

For the next few days, I hung out with Ernest and the other Nigerians. Since I wasn’t getting adequate meals at Baba Ali’s house, I decided to sell the bundles of brocade I had brought with me from Liberia to sustain myself. I gave the brocade to Ernest, hoping he could find someone returning to Nigeria who could sell it for me. Luckily, the guy he found decided to pay me upfront for it. I took a portion of the proceeds and gave the rest to Ernest, telling him to invest it in his business and return the money to me when we got to Nigeria. I knew that if I kept all the money, I would end up spending it.

A few days later, Ernest suggested that I move into the shop. He must have realized that I wasn’t happy staying at Baba Ali’s house. Ernest usually stayed at his girlfriend’s house while Kelvin and a few other men—Nigerian businesspeople who didn’t want to pay for hotel rooms—slept at the shop. It was like a community of friends. I jumped at the offer.
The following day I took all my belongings and left Baba Ali’s house, thanking everyone for all they had done for me. No one made any attempt to dissuade me from leaving. The shop I would be sleeping in had two rooms: the inner room, where everyone slept, had a bed in it; the larger outer room displayed the goods for sale. At night, while some of the guys slept in the inner room, I would lie on one of the tables in the outer room. The shop closed at 7 p.m. and opened at 7 a.m., which meant that everyone had to wake up early, go to the neighboring house to shower, get dressed, and then get the shop open for business.

Staying at the shop turned out to be an exciting experience for me, especially because all the Nigerian guys would come there to hang out and share all kinds of stories. Sometimes we would play chess or checkerboard games, and everyone seemed happy. The guys who hung out at the shop were mainly those waiting to collect money for the goods they supplied to their customers. I never went hungry; there was always someone willing to buy my next meal.

I poured my heart and soul into reading books again. My whole life revolved around the characters in the books. On average I read three hundred pages a day. The books were my way of escape, and through them I was able to travel to those faraway lands that had so far eluded me. I also looked at my map frequently. I knew that I was getting close to achieving my dream of traveling abroad; it was just a matter of time. I started preparing myself for what I would do when I finally arrived at my foreign destination.

I also got plenty of exercise. I wanted to be fit in case I tried to join the armed forces. In fact, after secondary school, while I was still living with my uncle, I had tried to enlist in Nigeria—in the air force in particular. The recruitment exercise was scheduled at an army artillery base. Unlike in developed countries where people were persuaded into the service with a lot of incentives, in Nigeria it was the opposite. There were always more candidates than the number of slots available. On that particular occasion there were barely one hundred slots to be filled, yet more than two thousand people showed up to be recruited. All two thousand candidates were required to pass several physical challenges in order to be considered. The first challenge was a two-mile run. I was nowhere close to the top two hundred and went home disappointed.

Still thinking I might have the opportunity of joining the armed forces in whatever country I would end up in, I started a disciplined physical training regimen. Every morning I would run up and down the hill, lift some weights, then read my book and hang out with other Nigerians. In the evening I would join the local Freetown teams to play soccer.

Ernest’s shop was situated in a prime location in the city, and while sitting at the shop, we would admire people passing on the street. That was how I met a beautiful Jamaican girl who was born in London. We became good friends after we had chatted few times on the street. She lived with her family up on the hill at Fourah Bay College, where her mother taught. I became friends with her mainly because she was born in London. She was mixed race—her father was black and her mother was white—and she spoke with a British accent. Every evening, as she returned from town, I would walk her halfway to her house and she would tell me wonderful things about London. The other Nigerians who stayed at the shop started to make fun of me because they thought I was smitten; I thought they were just jealous of me.

Ernest’s shop was never short of drama, as could be expected whenever a group of guys lived together for a long period of time. Testosterone ran high and the equilibrium would start to unravel. A lot of times the guys would argue, fight, and make friends again. Other times, new people would arrive from other countries and end up at Ernest’s shop. There were also drug dealers in transit who would stop by on occasion. Though most of the guys who hung out at the shop had legitimate businesses, a few were drug dealers. Nigeria had a reputation for drug trafficking, so it wasn’t unusual that people would come around from time to time assuming we knew a thing or two about drugs.

On one occasion, a Nigerian had brought in a Ghanaian guy called Nicolas who lived in Las Palmas, Canary Island. He was in Freetown looking for drugs to take back with him. We were introduced, but didn’t speak for long since I wasn’t at his level of affluence. I saw him a few more times, and then he was gone. I wasn’t sure whether he had been successful in his quest.

There was also a character called Achito. He was a very funny guy; eloquent and well-spoken, always in and out of jail. Achito was stranded in Sierra Leone because he had been caught trafficking drugs........

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"yabis yabis yabis..no yab is too offensive, so let it rain on me my people