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CHAPTER 2

THE HOSPITAL

Get up, get up little one, someone kept shuffling me left and right. I was mentally awake but was still deep asleep physically. Little one wake up, you have being sleeping for two days now, wake up and take breakfast. At the word breakfast, my stomach receptors and deceptors started pulling a fast one on my psychic. I love food and every little kid of my age loves food also, except he or she is sick. I tried waking up but felt weak which was expected because I hadn’t eaten for two days. The pain was more significant at my mid-rib section. I managed to pull myself together and with the help of a pretty lady with spotless white gown, I rose to a sitting position. Really, the lady with a spotless white gown was also spotlessly pretty, though from my childish point of view.
Probably I slept for too long because, when I arose everywhere smelt clinical and medical. It never crossed my mind that I might be in a hospital. The lady with the spotless face and gown touched my head and my neck, and then she brought out something she used in testing my heartbeat. But I knew at that present state of mine, my heart would beat five times faster because I was severely hungry. She said that my heart beat faster than usual which I expected to be and would have felt surprised if said
otherwise. She said I was cleared to be fed but I should be fed spoon by spoon. I was thinking, how was I supposed to be fed initially? Hand by spoon or shovel by spoon? They were my kiddish thoughts though, so nobody felt it, nobody touched it and nobody got pissed.
The food tasted good in my mouth notwithstanding the fact that the sight before intake was appalling. Hunger has a way of playing with the section of a kid’s brain responsible for taste because I am yet to understand how the food tasted good in my mouth. The lady with a spotless gown and face which I was later told was a nurse, left us immediately I began eating and came back almost immediately only to realize I had already finished the food. As she saw me, she just screamed “shioooo, now now now, u don finish the food? Na only coma u enter oooo, u no die oooo, pikin of dis days self “. I didn’t understand what made her scream so I cared less.
After the meal the nurse with a spotless face and gown, started saying lots of sweet things and played with me, I never knew she was on a mission. As she joked with me, she brought a syringe and I asked what she wanted to use it for because I hated taking injections. She said she wanted to use the syringe to kill a rat, and guess what, I foolishly believed her. I was deep in my childish thoughts when I heard from nowhere, kid, could you turn your buttocks to the right. And I asked for what and the nurse said for your injection and I said, I thought the injection was for a rat and she said yes, small rats like you. Before I knew it, I was turned to the right and fired the injection. My buttocks became very stiff and I thought I was about to die. I cried for two hours.
After the injection and crying for two hours I fell into very a deep sleep, which I was told lasted for 18 hours. I woke up to many faces just staring at me. There was the fat lady and the little one, there was a man of average height, wearing a spotless white gown, who every one called “Yes doc, Yes doc “, there was the nurse with a spotless gown and face, there was a nurse also with a spotless gown but a spot-full face and finally there was a nurse with a spot-full gown and spot-full face. They all stared at me while I stared back at them.

Nkpume Iko: Nkpume Iko is here now, so throttle ahead man.
*starts erecting a hut*
Na here i go tanda!

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we would roll this evening after work

I am back, should i go on?

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How I survived the trucks assassination was a mystery to me and probably the devil. I bet the devil lost a big bet on me that night. I opened my eyes after what seemed like eternity and I was hearing a lot of “dis fine bobo fit don die too oooo”. I thought I was dead but I saw live people around, I said live because I was taught angels don’t wear rags. I touched something soft and cold which drew my attention, right in my warm hands were the cold palms of my dead mother. I stared and looked at mums humble last, I touched her cold hands once again but it felt lifeless. Dad was in a perfect shape but he was without his head on his neck. It looked strange to me so I started crying. I cried and searched for dads head but it was nowhere to be found, I just wanted to see dads smile one last time, but I was denied that little favor.
I was yet to fully comprehend what death was, maybe because I was still a kid, but everywhere looked strange to me. People started gathering and a few were shouting “the baby still dey alive oooo”, much more people started arriving, some people started crying while so many just looked and shook their heads. Some wanted to take a photograph of me, everything looked strange. A lot of things were happening at once like I was in a trance. Someone put his hands in daddy’s pockets taking out his wallets; maybe he was disappointed because he found nothing in there. I wanted to tell him daddy only put church papers in his wallets and puts his money in his pockets but I decided to let go. I watched him leave and he never turned back, maybe he was a thief, I wouldn’t know because I was just a kid.
Are you alright little one? An Angel said to me, as I turned to reply I was disappointed because standing in front of me trying to pick me up wasn’t an Angel but a fat lady whom I had never seen before. She helped me to stand but I felt pain, I cried out loud, my bones and legs were on fire. She laid me down on the cold floor close to my mum. She touched my lips and said lovely kid. That word sparked a faded light in me, and I searched and I remembered. Mum use to say that exact words “you are a lovely kid, you look just like your dad” that was it; I started crying all over again. I asked the fat lady, when would mama wake and who took papas head? She looked me straight in the eye and said. Lovely kid, you might not understand this now, but when you grow older you would understand it better. She was probably right, because I didn’t understand one word of what she was saying.
A man said to me; mama and papa were long gone through death, they are in Gods bosom. The man was saying some elderly jargons though while I just looked at his strange beards. I stopped crying and just looked at his strange beards. Why were his beards scanty? I thought to myself, probably his beards were starving just like the man’s lanky body. While he spoke he tried touching me, and I started crying all over again, but the man made it more complicated when he flashed 10 brown teeth’s. I was shocked. Just 10 brown ugly broken dirty teeth’s.
The fat lady came to my rescue and tried picking me up away from the man’s dirty brown shining teeth’s. I felt a little pain this time but it wasn’t as painful as the first. This time, the fat lady had an accomplice, a little girl. They both lifted me tenderly from the cold floor and placed me on the old lady’s back. My leg that hurt was placed horizontally from the base of pain. I was then supported at the back of the fat lady in mid air with a wrapper. The wrapper had an ammonic smell. The smell was bad, I mean really bad, but I had no choice and it was better than the cold floor. I tried stealing a gaze back at my mother’s lifeless self, but some men in a bright orange top were taking her to a van with a toy light at its top. It made a strange noise just like my toy car. There was this periodic noise all over, people kept moving fast, faster than I thought. The men in bright orange top were back to pick dads body. But they were skeptical about taking dads headless body. The men in bright orange top talked in close proximity, then after what looked like 10 minutes they all dispersed in several directions in search of something. Something which I think I knew. But something all the men in bright orange top knew; my dad’s head.
After a while, I started hearing a lot of people talking all at once again at the top of their voices. “We don see am oooo”, “we don see the man head oooo”. A lady who was close to me but didn’t know I was the victims child or rather she knew but didn’t care said “ewo oooo, see the man head oooo, the man fine sha no be small”. At this point, they wrapped up daddy’s head and body in a bag and the men in bright orange top carried him away. Some men in black shirts and trousers with a bold logo of the word police were talking to some people standing at the corner and they in response were pointing at the fat lady and me. The men in black walked up to the fat lady and asked her some questions which she answered. While the fat lady explained what she saw, a man who also was with the men in black but wasn’t wearing a black and black over-all kept writing while the fat lady spoke. In between he would ask the fat lady some questions and start writing as soon as the fat lady starts speaking.
The men in black led the fat lady, the little girl and me to a car and after some time we left to where I had no idea about. The fat lady kept telling me it would be alright. But I kept asking myself, how could it be alright when I knew not my left from right? How could it be alright when my mental state are of those of blood and the death of my parents? But I am an African, and we believed in the word Hope. That was a word our colonial masters roped us with. I had just lost my earthly pillars and Mrs. Fat lady said it would be alright. It would be alright while I keep losing reality to nothingness. I just needed to sleep. I just needed to place my head on something soft, anything soft. I needed someone to console me, someone to say to me, it is all but a dream. But the truth must be said, I knew it was only just the beginning.