₦airaland Forum

They are best friends.

These two.

Who met while walking on the corridors of work.

A fast friendship that developed without conscious effort.

Lunch together at the office cafeteria that progressed to -

"What are you doing after work?"

Then to.

"Whats up for the weekend?"

And before they realised it, they were spending most of their time together.

A pair.

Nouveau bachelors.

Since their wives and children were living in America, while they paid all their bills from Nigeria.

Great jobs these two friends have.

Handsome salaries.

You hung with them and you saw how they spent money.

Taking turns covering the bill.

"Let me pick the bill."

One will say.

The next time.

"I will pick this."

The other one will say.

Another time.

"I saw these cool leather sandals. I picked one for myself and one for you."

Another time.

The other one will say.

"Hey, I am at this joint. They have really cool hausa hats. I have sent you pictures via Whatsapp. Check them and pick the one you like, so I can buy it."

Their friendship was like it.

Money never an issue.

As life will have it one of the friends got another job at a different company.

The other friend advised him to take it.

More money.

Less work.

More time to visit family.

He took it.

All was rosy.

They still hung out in any spare time they could find.

Very close to what they had before save for the not working in the same office.

Then the economy happened.

The one who got the new job, lost the new job.

The other one consoled him and cheered him on.

He was bouyant for a while as he searched for something new.

His savings were rotund.

But as the search continued without success, his savings began to lose weight.

Slimmer.

Slmmer.

Until it looked anorexic.

All the while, the two friends still hung out.

But progressively with a difference.

Unlike before, the one with a job now picked up most of the bills.

And picked up less of the phone calls of the one without a job.

Less.

Less.

Until there were no - "let me call you back." - "My phone was on silent the whole day." - "I called you back, your line was redirecting my calls." - "It is this network, I didn't see any of your calls."

Then.

Silence.

For.

Months.

The time in which the one without a job calmly carried his cross.

Alone.

He moved out to stay with another friend who all this while was never part of their hang outs.

Never invited to the parties.

Never a regular in his life or their lives.

But yet an old friend.

Dating back to high school.

But one who came to the rescue when he heard what was going on with his old friend.

He didn't have a fancy house.

Neither did he have a rosy job.

But he had a bed to spare.

A large heart.

And a small but very generous pocket.

He was there when the old friend needed him most.

He was there to call another of their old friends who lived in America and coincidently in the same city with the family of his friend who had lost his job.

That friend in America, opened his door for the family of the friend without a job.

That friend helped work out the transfer of the children of the friend without a job to a public and more affordable school.

That friend helped link up the wife of the friend without a job to a woman who gave her a job.

These two old friends were present.

And life happened.

And the friend without a job, got a job.

A better job.

A higher paying job.

In the fmonth, after his first allowances came in, he moved out.

New digs.

In months, his wife stopped working and the kids transferrd to a more expensive private school.

And the old friends that had stood by him saw less of him.

And the friend who was once his best friend began to see more of him.

More.

More.

Until they were back to what they once were.

Inseparable.

Picking bills turn by turn.

And one day during the birthday party of the one who had lost the job, I noticed his old friend who had stood by him was not at the party.

So I asked the friend who lost his job and his best friend and found a better job and a rekindled friendship why the old friend was not there.

He said.

"There was no point inviting him. He will be so out of place."

I stood there looking at him in silent pity.

He read my mind and spoke.

Sadly.

"Jude, I know what you are thinking. But you won't understand. There is a point a man reaches in his life, where he needs to compartmentalize friendships. There is no romantizing it. You have friends for various reasons. I know he was there for me, but that was his role. I have passed that phase now and for me to maintain that friendship as I maintain this one, it would be fatalistic. I will be trapped there and not progress. He is a friend that mourns with you when you fall off the ladder. His friendship thrives only when you are not doing well. When you are suffering. So I have to be wise to be with him at that time if not he will drag me down and keep me at his level with the smallness of his mind and the danger of envy and inferiority complex. But this guy here opens the world to me when I am on my A game. The right crowd. The right opportunities. The level in society where things happen."

I stared at him silently.

He continued.

"I am not fooling myself about defining friendship as what it is not. We all are selfish and self preserving. Are there not old friends that he knew are doing worse off than I was doing when he helped him? Of course there were. But helping the once rich guy made him feel good about himself. Far better than helping a guy who never had anything. He wanted to be part of my story. The hero. I appreciate it. I asked him if there is anyway I could help him? Any dreams of his I could bring to life? He said no. That I didn't need to reward him for helping me. That God will do so if at all he needs to be rewarded. You see. He is comfortable in that mindset. At peace with his level in life. For me, I was created to have more and be more. Now let me continue writing my story. Let my man here also serve his purpose in my life. I know what I am doing. It might look how it looked like before, but it's not. I nearly lost all, he hasn't. I now know what he does not know. Worry for him, not for me."

Still I looked at him silently.

Still he continued.

"Jude, gratitude does not have to be shown foolishly and there is a reason why rich people don't keep poor friends. Wealth and poverty are contagious. If my wealth cannot infect you and make you rich, then your poverty will infect me and make me poor."

Lagos.


From Mr. Jude's collections

So I was called to stop a family feud from degenerating into full-blown disintegration this evening.

Husband and wife, at each other's neck because of husband's infidelity.

And gross insensitivity.

He was caught, literally pants down, humping his side-chick.

No, not on his matrimonial bed.

But does it matter?

Unfaithfulness is unfaithfulness - no matter where the field of (guilty) play is located.

Happened that husband (okay, some ladies would wish I call him "horseband" henceforth), a businessman, has his factory/office at the other extreme end of town where the family residence is.

Takes him at least three hours to shuttle between home to work each day, each way.

In mind-bending Lagos traffic.

So he told wifey, a Registered Nurse, that he would like to rent a place close to the office where he'll stay, Monday through Friday, when he'd return home to be with his lovely wife and three lovelier kids.

That was two years ago, when husband was 50.

Wifey, ever the loving and caring gentle spouse, saw the sense in it.

And agreed to the arrangement, albeit reluctantly.

Hubby wasn't growing any younger, she rightly reasoned.

First weeks of the home-every-weekend arrangement, hubby stuck to the deal religiously.

A couple of months into it though, a weekly return-to-home, grew into a fortnightly return.

Then, a once-in-a-month thing after the first six months or so.

Each time wifey, now 45, complained of being denied her conjugal rights and pleasures, hubby always blamed it on a problem or the other at the factory.

Problems that, according to him, needed his attention at all times.

Wifey didn't understand.

He had a staff of all hues and colours.

Why would he need to stay behind to fix all the problems?

But she accepted.

And endured on.

For the sake of family stability.

And hubby's business successes.

No, according to her, she wasn't all that trusting.

Or naive.

Hubby has a history of dalliances with willing pretty young things.

And has always denied whenever he was caught.

Truth is, he was good at playing away games - as he was at playing home ones.

Only problem was, the away games were apparently getting more than the home ones.

And whenever wifey raised these concerns, hubby was always at the extremities proclaiming his innocence.

On a few occasions, he has invited the wife and the children to spend sometime with him at the "second" home - to put her mind at rest.

But wifey's mind was not at rest - a woman's intuition is sharper than King Solomon's sword.

So on this night, as she tried fruitlessly to go sleep, after not seeing hubby for close to one month, she got a crazy urge to see him.

No, not for a piece of pie, according to her.

She was almost beginning to forget what that even tasted like.

But to prove to herself that her mind wasn't playing chess games with her.

At 10pm, while sensible human beings were getting ready to sign off for the day, wifey got into the car and drove over two hours across town.

From Lekki, on Lagos Island, to Ota, in Ogun State.

Alone.

No driver.

No companion.

She said she knew exactly what she was going to find.

And was prepared for it.

But didn't want a third pair of eyes - or ears - witnessing it.

A few minutes after midnight, she arrived at her destination, quietly woke the gateman up, and walked into what was initially meant to be her husband's temporary, week-day home.

Went round to her husband's bedroom window.

Window was ajar, curtain pulled apart but room darkened.

Hubby had always preferred the breeze of fresh air to the manufactured air of airconditioners.

Especially when he's about to do his thing.

The muffled scream and the grunt that she heard at that auspicious instance, could only be one thing.

Having been married to the man for all of twenty years, it was a grunt and muffled scream she was all too familiar with.

Hubby had just landed back on earth, from a trip to Cloud 9.

She walked around to the door, and gently knocked.

And apparently not expecting his wife at such an "ungodly" hour, uncle, still groggy from the recently concluded trip, opened the door without thinking.

And was confronted - standing in all his naked glory, his manhood limp and looking south-south from the exhaustion of the marathon he just completed - by his wife, from across town.

She violently brushed past him without a word, and headed for the direction of the slaughter slab.

The freshly slaughtered body was still lying down, naked, innocently thinking it was the man that had come to start a another journey into Neanderthal.

Until she felt a strong, angry hand yank her off the bed violently, and another dazed her face with a brain-resetting, pleasure-clearing, dirty federal slap.

As she screamed out in pain, something in her voice made the wifey dash for the light switch almost simultaneously.

Then she stopped dead in her track: standing scared-shit in front of her was a face she was all too familiar with.

It was the face of someone who had lived with her once for over a year.

The "husband's niece" the horseband brought home two years prior because she was in town for her National Youth Service.

After her service year, she had been given an employment at her husband's office as an Admin Officer, with her blessing.

The shock of the discovery paralysed her mind.

And her mouth.

Madam quietly and calmly pulled herself together, got into her car, and drove all the way back to Lekki.

I was called-in in the morning, by the husband.

He was convinced beyond all doubts that the wife was going to divorce him.

And strip him bare of everything he's ever worked for.

"No, Uncle Ade. I'm not going to divorce him.

Why would I?

Divorce him and take my children out of this home?

Destabilize their life and their education?

Walk away and let one idiot come and enjoy the things I've spent half of my years on earth building?

Naaaah, Uncle Ade. I'm not going to divorce my husband.

I have not the slightest intention of doing that.

But I'll wait for him.

In a few more years he'll grow old and weak, needing the companionship of a caring, loving, listening wife, won't he?

Men age faster than women, you know? And they get ravaged by illnesses quicker and more debilitating than us women.

I'm a Nurse, remember?

I'll wait for him.

When all these young girls are done with him and have all gone, he'll come back to his senses.

And then he'd meet me here.

I'll be waiting."

The coldness of those words chilled my mind.

And I remembered a certain old man whose story I was told.

He is in his mid to late 80s - weak, fragile, sickly.

And totally helpless.

And at the mercy of his long-suffering wife.

He is forced to go to buy his own food, cook his own meals, wash his own clothes, clean his own room, and tend to himself each time he is sick.

Of course, not many 80-plus man can do any of those things for himself.

So he suffers.

Greatly.

I was told he was once extremely mean to his wife, at the height of his wealth and power.

Abandoned the wife while he chased everything in skirt, in his youth.

Now the chicken has come home to roost.

"Tell him if you want, Uncle Ade, I'm not bothered.

He's not going anywhere, no matter what.

Neither am I.

We'd grow old together in this home.

And we'd take it from there."

******************
POSTSCRIPT:

WOMEN!!!
I plead with you with everything I've got: please do not hold this kind of extreme grudge against your husband - even if he deserves it.

See, ehn, no one knows who is going to be healthier than the other in old age.

No one knows who is going to die first - except God.

Resolve to forgive, love and live in harmony with your husband.

If he's not giving you the life you envisaged,

if he's been callous

and disrespectful

and you're convinced you can't change him,

please take a walk - instead of planning to take your own pound of flesh in his old age.

It is just not Godly.

******************

MEN!!!

Eti yin melo?

How many ears do you have?

Listen up and listen good:

If you've taken her to be your wife, please make her your absolute best (and only) friend.

Treat her right.

Uphold and uplift her.

Take excellent care of her.

Love her with everything you've got.

Treat her with respect.

Protect her from the rain.

Shield her delicate skin from the sun.

Make her happiness, yours.

Make her well-being, your priority.

Apart from the immediate joy and satisfaction derivable from loving your own flesh of flesh and blood of blood, you're also laying a soft bed for yourself to sleep in in your old age.

In a well-loved, well-taken-care-of woman, you're investing in your own long-term well-being.

And happiness.

© Ade King Ebimomi

daviesblaze:
so touching. i feel like crying

.
You're among the rare few who still have a heart.
Indeed it's touching and one should cease to judge a book by its covers.

At the major intersection on the road to my house in Lekki, there are traffic lights.

Everytime you stop, there is also a deluge of beggars around your car.

I have been around for months.

And primarily recognise most of the beggars.

The ones I give to and the ones I do not give to.

There is one I give to.

He is old, blind, a huge scar running from his head onto his forehead and a double amputee.

One arm above the elbow, the other at the wrist.

He always has the arm amputated at the wrist on the shoulder of a girl.

Usually adolescents, dressed in the manner of their faith.

Two things stuck out to me.

First it was always a different girl.

Secondly, both the girl and himself spoke good english.

They walk up to the car and the girl will begin.

"Good evening sir, please can you help us with money for food, school and house rent?"

Then the man will also begin.

"May what has happened to me never happen to you. Please help me with anything you have and Allah will help you in return."

Yesterday I asked the girl to lead him to me as the light was turning green.

The taxify drove across the intersection and pulled over.

They came.

And before I gave him money I asked.

"What happened to you and why are you always with a different girl?"

He said.

"I use to be a teacher in my village in Sokoto. Over 35 years ago, cattle rustlers from Niger came and attacked the village. They stole our cattle, killed a lot of people and kidnapped some of our girls and our women. I was defending my wife and three daughters. They attacked me with their swords. Cut my head open, and cut off my arms. I fainted. They took my wife and daughters. When I woke up in central hospital, I was blind. Up till today no one has seen my wife or daughter. I couldn't teach again because the village didn't recover from the attack. The state government couldn't help me with another teaching job because of my condition. To survive I had to come to Lagos to beg."

He stood ramrod straight, looking ahead into his sightless world as he spoke. Licking his chafed lips at intervals.

I spoke again.

"I am so sorry to hear that."

He smiled.

A smile that softened his coarse features and showed a glimpse of the handsome man he must have once been.

Then I asked.

"What of the girls?"

"They are my students."

Surprised.

"Your students?"

"Yes. In Oyingbo where I live. My people send their daughters to me to teach them English, Mathematics, history and handiwork for free."

"You?"

"Yes. I teach them how to speak, calculate and know who they are, where they are, where theu come from and where they can go to. My wife helps me teach them how to write and the handiwork."

"Your wife?"

"I married again."

"Why do you bring your students out to beg?"

"They volunteer daily. It is for everybody. Whatever money we make is what helps our small school survive and helps put food on the table for me, my wife and my two children. Their parents will not send them to school so this is the only way they can learn."

The girl spoke.

"We are happy to do it sir."

I looked at her.

She was smiling cheerfully.

I asked her.

"What do you want to be in future?"

"I want to marry a good educated man who likes a wife that can read and write. So that we can send our children to a real school and they can become doctors and lawyers and engineers and teachers."

It was a simple goal.

I smiled.

And turned back to the man.

"What of the sons? What happens to them?"

"Their parents send them to learn work."

"Work?"

"Yes. Butchers, traders, crafts, things like that. Some become Alaru in the market, some ride okada, some sell Suya, some go back to farm."

"None go to school?"

"Very few."

"So the girls are lucky to have you?"

"Yes."

The girl was smiling.

"You said you have two children."

"Yes. Hassan and Hussein. Twins. Fourteen years old."

"You teach them?"

"Just as a father and mother does. They go to a real school. A Catholic school. SS1. When they get back they help out with the girls too."

The girl giggled.

The man smiled and continued.

"You see the girls are fond of them."

She giggled even more.

My heart melted.

I told them to enter the car.

We drove to the Zenith bank close by.

I withdrew handsomely from the ATM, gave it to them.

The girls eyes were wide in shock as she collected the wad.

She began speaking rapidly in Hausa.

The man cut her short.

"English."

She stopped and continued in English.

"Baba, he has given us a lot of money."

He turned in my direction and spoke.

"From where that money has come, Allah will replace it with even more money. From the heart that has shown kindness, Allah will make others show more kindness to it. Thank you for looking at us as human beings. Allah will always remember you."

She said Amin.

I and the Taxify driver said Amen.

Then we drove them back to the intersection.

As they alighted, the Taxify driver turned and handed some money to the girl.

She relayed it to the old man in English. He smiled and prayed for the driver. We all chorused Amin again and they left.

As we drove away, the driver said.

"This life sha. We will sit down and be judging people. Condemning them without knowing their story. Na wa o. The one we think we are better than, is even better than us."

Lagos.


From Mr. Jude's collections

�
Whenever a desperate maiden meets a PERFECT gentleman she'll want to ALTAR him.

Burnavick:
The seminar tagged "How to avoid fraud" is canceled.

Tickets are non-refundable.

Nonrefundable?
Which country was this CONdoned