₦airaland Forum

Thanks a Lot Maclatunji. Point noted.
Meanwhile I tried to update the final part of chapter 1(as the title indicates) but I got a message about an antispam bot, and that the update is hidden for the while. So please bear with me. I have made a complaint and it should be rectified soon.

. Took a bit to figure it out sha.

Thanks a lot Oluchi. That was what I really wanted - someone else's view aside that of my friends. I appreciate it. Points taken.

Hi guys.
So here's my first book (still in the works, by the way). I want to put up the whole of Chapter 1 here and get your feedback. Your comments and critique will be most appreciated.

                                                                                      CHAPTER ONE

           KPI-I-I-I-I-H-H! The horn of an okada sounded behind them. Chiamaka instinctively tightened her grip on his hand. He sympathetically lifted her up and held her to his chest, simultaneously stepping over a gutter onto the door of a shop. Her arms circled him immediately and she nested her head in the hollow of his neck.

            “God!” he muttered to himself. “This is no place for a kid to be by herself.”

             As he passed by, he looked into shops to his right with increasing alarm. He’d been up the congested Akame intersection once before already, on the other side of its constricted road, looking into shops on that side without success. Now and again, he gave the entire street a sweeping glance desperately hoping to find a figure that matched the one on his mind: a dark skinned, wiry girl with a prominent forehead at the top of her four-foot eleven-inch frame. Her piercing dark eyes shone like polished glass in and out of light. A roman nose and a long bony chin culminates in a very striking face.

              Certainly, he thought, a trained eye would pick her out of a crowd with some ease. He wondered whether he’d find her playing in the streets all by herself, indifferent to the dangers around, or sitting by a street corner, weeping, her sense of loss having overwhelmed her. He shook his head at the thought. The possibilities of the later scenario were remote. A little less than ten, Nkiru was too mischievous to fit the role. If ever she were lost somewhere, he thought, she’d threaten everyone within reach of her shrill voice to either take her home or face an outpouring of hailstones from a magic cloud she’d conjure. That they had nothing to do with her predicament wouldn’t make the slightest impression on her. She was that kind of person; she carried around a false sense of her importance like a rice bag that forgets that it had been emptied.

              They reached the posterior end of the street, a Tee junction. Dawodu crescent ran across this end, linking a part of the small town to another. It served to decongest traffic on the busier, dual carriage Egbeda road at the other end of Akame. To his right stood the Immaculate Heart Nursery and Primary School where he’d collected the two girls twenty horrendous minutes earlier.

An alternative route exists down this crescent, bursting out on the main Egbeda road further down its length. They’ll then have to make their way back a few metres in the direction they came and then down into Anifowose Street where they lived. It was a less busy route, but was much longer. It would take forever to get two little girls home, walking at their own pace. On the other hand, Anifowose Street was only a few metres off the opposite side of Egbeda road, standing at its junction with Akame.

             Akowonjo was originally conceived as a residential area. That grand idea has long been overtaken by enterprise, both the tangible and the indefinable. Most landlords have converted their front rooms to shops which attracted higher rent rates. Signposts made ugly heaps at street corners. They seemed in a subtle, yet resolute battle for the passers by’s attention. They advertised wares and services from the mundane to the ridiculous. Cars and buses filed in and out of mean roads. Daredevil okada riders filled whatever spaces their more accomplished colleagues left at the roadsides, sometimes creating paths of their own in crazy, hair-raising stunts it would seem an Olympic gold was at stake. They fitted their bikes with horns meant for trucks, and used them lavishly to scare anyone crazy enough to “loiter” on their paths, assigned or not. The entire scenario was a mad house. He wondered how adults survive the high chances of getting knocked down. He wondered how a child would survive. His shoulders slumped in sympathy.

“Bro Nonso have you seen her?” Chiamaka asked in a quivering voice. The sight outside her school always scared her.

       He tactfully hid his own apprehension. “No, I haven’t.”

       He thought of re-entering the school to ask the guards if they’d seen her, but dropped the idea immediately. Not yet, at least, he reasoned. They’ll think him inept and may call her mom to inform her about it. He couldn’t help chuckling at the thought. The result of letting Udoka in on the present situation would be like calling a dictator a coward to his face: the possibilities are endless, the end certain. Moreover, for all he knows, she might already…
No! He countered himself. She could not have crossed the forever-busy Egbeda road on her own. Still it was worth checking. Even if she wasn’t there, he could at least drop Chiamaka off in Feyi’s house and resume his hunt. It may then be the appropriate time to come back to the school and ask.

       “Let’s go home, Chi,” he said to the little girl on his chest.

       You should have been more careful, he berated himself inaudibly. Every school day, seven months now, he’d been responsible for picking up the two girls from school after closing hours. At first, he’d been piqued at the task. It wasn’t that he felt any animosity towards the girls. Rather it was the way he was ordered at it by Udoka. Wasn't he always at home? She must have reasoned. But there lies the contradiction, for it was thanks largely to her and his father’s lame-duck posture. She must think of the task as a way for him to earn his keep in his father’s house.

He’d handled the girls roughly at first, as an outlet for his anger. Then days ran into weeks and weeks into months and his anger burned out. These days he does the task perfunctorily, with neither bitterness nor fun, only a remote sense of responsibility. He’d hold their hands, one on either side of him as they made their way home through the mad traffic on the roads. But time went by and Nkiru would not let him take her hand. He’d consented. She’d walk directly in front of him and he’d momentarily hold her shoulders to steer her out of any danger.

On this day though he’d been distracted by Chiamaka who directed his attention to one of the yoghurt peddlers outside her school, asking for some. He’d had to deliberately search his pockets and empty them to convince her there was no money on him. Nkiru had disappeared before he returned his gaze to the road. Now he’d have to hope that she’s somehow made her way home.

He watched carefully on their way home for any crowd gathered anywhere on the roads. That was a constant denominator in accident sites in Lagos. Thankfully, there wasn’t any.

“My! You look worried?” A familiar voice broke into his thoughts.

(To be contd.)