₦airaland Forum

Tolu


Lagos! I fell in love with the beautiful skyline again, and the thrill of doing the countdown until touchdown made me feel like a child on her first trip. I couldn’t wait to see Duke and give him a very large hug, as much as my huge stomach could allow. As soon as I disembarked, I dialed Duke’s number and waited for my luggage. He picked up on the second ring. I pulled my bag off the carousel and wobbled towards the arrival lounge.

‘Hi babe, I’m in Lagos.’ I chirped happily. The arrival lounge was nearly full, and I was lucky to find a seat. I put my luggage next to my seat.
‘Oh, alright. Welcome. I’ll be there within the hour. I’m in Surulere at the moment.’ He said. He didn’t sound excited. What could be bugging him so much?
‘Thanks.’ I replied flatly and hung up. It was the first time we’d been apart for more than 48 hours in our marriage, and he couldn’t even say he had missed me. So much for wanting to hug him.
‘Excuse me, but you look really pretty for a pregnant woman.’ A voice from beside me said. I turned to see who it was; a young man in his twenties sporting a goatee and wearing nerdy glasses.
I smiled my thanks and made to browse my phone, but he continued.
‘But you really are a babe; you should see some women when they are heavy, you’d be shocked at how much they have transformed’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t see how that is a fault of theirs, somebody but them in that position.’ I told him, giving him a tight smile that didn't reach my eyes.
‘I am not blaming them, ma’am. Just saying. By the way, I can tell what you’re going to have by looking at the palm of your left hand.’ He said confidently. Who was this weirdo spookiddo?
This was the reason our parents asked us not to talk to strangers.
‘But I already know what I am going to have’ I said, getting annoyed that he didn’t know when to shut up.
‘But you won’t lose anything by letting me try.’ He said, smiling sheepishly. Just then, my phone rang. Talk about being saved by the bell!
‘hello, are you here.’ I asked Duke, giving the noise maker beside me an apologetic smile.
‘Yes, just walk out and I’ll pick you up.’ He said.
I pulled out the handle of my bag and wheeled it out. I saw Duke cruising slowly in front of the lounge and walked over quickly. He parked and came out to get my luggage. We exchanged pleasantries and got back in the car.
‘So what’s this gist you can’t wait for me to come back and hear?’ I asked playfully, hitting his laps. Paul Play’s ‘Angel of my life’ was playing on the car stereo and I began hum along.
He breathed deeply, taking his eyes off the road for a brief second to look at me. This must be serious, I thought to myself. A deep-breathing Duke is a bad omen.
‘Toluwanimi, what’s the worst thing that could happen between us?’ he asked me, staring straight ahead at the road.
I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. Duke never called me by my full name except it was really bad.
‘Nothing now. Just tell me, ha.’ I was exasperated. Had he used all the money in our joint account to do business with swindlers?
‘Okay, okay’ his voice quavered, ‘Tolu you just have to forgive me, please you have to.’ He started to cry, his hands gripping the steering harder.
‘But I can’t forgive you if you don’t tell me. Just go ahead and say what it is please.’ I nearly screamed. This was far from the welcome I had anticipated. Didn’t I just wish yesterday evening that my marriage should get rosier from this point on?
‘I had an affair with a lady, Tolu, and she’s pregnant’ he blurted out.
Nothing in my entire existence had prepared me for that confession, and I gasped in shock ‘you did what?’ I said in a whisper. This was the moment in Nigerian movies you could aptly say ghen-ghen.
‘I’m so sorry Tolu, I really am.’ His body shook. We were on third Mainland Bridge now and fast approaching Ikoyi. I felt like a widowed orphan with a terminal illness. I quickly held on to a glimmer of unbelief and challenged him.
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’
‘I wish I was, but it’s the truth.’
‘So you’re telling me that I all the while I was married to you, dutifully being your wife, you slept with another woman and she’s going to have your baby?’ I confirmed
‘I’m so sorry please, I thought it would be a onetime thing but..’
‘Oh, so it wasn’t even once? You this man, how will my god punish you? You have ruined my life, ahhhhhhhhh.’ I didn’t even know when the tears began to flow. The salty taste of mucus touched my tongue and I brought out my handkerchief to wipe my face.
‘Tolu please let’s sort this out, I beg you.’
‘Beg me for what? All your dead ancestors whose waywardness you’ve inherited will beg you, randy goat.’ I cursed.
‘Please darling, let’s weather this storm together, I beg you’ he pleaded.
I had a confusion of emotions coursing through me; anger at him, bitterness for the woman who had come to invade my home uninvited, pity for my kids who would be born into these.
‘See, forget about me being your darling, I didn’t ask you to go and get involved in this mess, but I am leaving you’ I hastily declared, but what else was there to stay for?
We didn’t say anything to each other after that, but I was sure we both had a million things going through our minds. When we got to the house, I ran into the room and shut the door behind me.
I needed time to grieve.


Unita


The flight from Lagos to Portharcourt had been quite bumpy, and I had gone to the toilet twice to throw up, to the consternation of the person on the aisle seat. Her annoyance was understandable since I wasn’t showing yet. Even now, as the cab driver was weaving through the busy roads to my parents’ house at Choba, I was feeling quirky.
I had called in sick to work yesterday morning and slept in the whole day. Everything smelled like expired lime and tasted worse. The smell of toothpaste nauseated me; the sight of food annoyed me. And the idiotic man who had put me in this mess had the guts to tell me he was married. I shuddered at what my parents would say when I told them, because I had ruled out abortion from the moment Nurse Babosh waved the home test kit with a big fat positive in my face.
The cab pulled up at the gate and dropped me off. I pushed the pedestrian gate open and walked in to the familiar compound. The trees with their huge canopies were still firmly rooted in their place, and seeing them brought back fond memories of a childhood where I had to hide to eat stolen chocolates and other treats.
There was no one downstairs when I opened the door, so I called out a ‘hello.’ It echoed all the way to the back of the house, because my mom came running to the living room, rubbing wet hands on her wrapper and opening wide flabby arms in a hug.
‘Ah, Orokunitakpanam, we had no idea you were coming o’ she was so happy to see me she almost carried me off the floor.
‘Haba mama, in my own father’s house? I know I am welcome anytime duwe.’ I retorted, excited to be home again. Whilst my mom had become closer to me over the years, my dad was always distant, like his dignity would be compromised if he became friendlier.
‘But you look sick and underfed, is that Lagos air sucking fat now or what’ she queried, leading the way up to my childhood room. To think I’d spent the first fourteen years of my life being called fat by these same people.
‘Mama it’s the stress o. If you know how I work hard every day you will not talk like this.’
‘Eh, no problem, I will fatten you up before you leave, under one week everyone who sees you will know you’ve been home.’ She pushed the door open. It was neat and smelt nice; I guess it was also used as a guest room once in a while. I put my bag on a bedside stool and sat on the bed.
‘Mama I’m not staying for a week o. where is papa sef?’ I asked, yawning.
‘He went for a meeting for a meeting of the elders. When last did we see you that we cannot enjoy you for a week?’ she queried. Her arms were folded across her chest as she sat on a bedside stool, peering at my face the way an artist would his finished work.
‘My annual leave is still a few months away; I only took a day off work. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning’ I told her, smiling and patting her Christian mother arms. Her face was beginning to wrinkle in the manner of aged people, but she was still as pretty as I remembered. A pity I didn’t inherit her good looks. ‘I have something to tell you and papa, but let me tell you first.’ I said, my heartbeat increasing.
‘What is it, Akpanam,’ she inched closer. You’d have thought my parents would pick a nice version of my ugly full name to call me, but they made it worse. How could anyone look at a 21st century sophisticated babe like me and call me Akpanam? Anyway, that’s not why I was here.
‘I am pregnant, Mama,’ I told her. She looked at me from head to toe, then stood up and did a funny dance that looked like Etighi. Her wrapper came loose in the process and she retied it, singing about what a mighty God she served.
I didn’t, think her excitement would last long, and I was right.
‘The man is married, and he is not a Witness.’
That cut her short and she looked at me sternly, daring me with her eyes to repeat myself. I said it again in clearer terms. ‘The man is Yoruba and he has a wife mama, we can’t get married.’
‘And you didn’t know this when you opened your legs for him, you this daughter of antichrist.’ She lamented, ‘even your cousin Rachael that got pregnant for someone younger than her had the sense to do it with a witness. Why must you bring me shame, this foolish girl, why?’
That was news to me. I had no idea that my goody-two-shoes, only-long-skirt-wearing, no-ear-piercing cousin had even had sex. I’d pegged her as a lifetime volunteer, too busy to engage in worldly passions. I nearly asked if she swallowed the sperm like a tablet, because she was too holy to have a vagina, but the atmosphere was so tense at the moment.
‘Better know what to tell your father o, since you’ve reduced yourself to a maggot, meddling with people who slave for worldly governments’ she hissed, walking out the door and slamming it so hard the window panes shook.
This had turned out worse than I thought. I silently prayed papa would not kill me.


Duke

'Oga, you no fit park here o,' the valet yelled rudely, waving me off. Any other day, I'd have given him an acidic reply, but the weight of the world was on my shoulders. In my mind I prayed that on the day he had sliced pepper, he would forget and rub his crotch.
I parked somewhere else and headed for the Wet and Waiting Bar. I was meeting my colleague from the office, Patrick and didnt want to go anywhere popular. It was Friday night and most of the guys were at the popular lounges in the island.
A short girl wearing red shorts and a white tank top showing off her flabby breasts did a bad imitation of catwalk towards the table I was seated.
'What would you like to have please?' She asked, her fingers running through her hair coquettishly. The smell of stale sweat wafted from her armpits into my nostrils, and I wondered why some humans thought deodorants were optional. I asked for water and adjusted my chair to face the TV screen. Arsenal and Everton football clubs had a game on, and I got so engrossed I didn't know Patrick had arrived until he tapped my shoulder.
' Dikoko, how far?' He bantered. He was the colleague I was closest to, and he would have been my best man during my wedding but for his ICAN exams. We shared confidences and so he knew about Unita.
'Guy I dey o. It took you forever to get here, what happened now?' I asked. He was looking around to see if he would spot any waiter to take his order.
'It's the traffic that held me up a bit at Falomo. Abeg where these waiters dem dey?' He was a Delta boy and he spoke pidgin fluently.
We finally saw Flabby Breasts and waved her over. She did the miserable excuse for a catwalk and sauntered to our table. Patrick looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eye and I held back the laughter that was threatening to erupt.
'Fine girl, how you dey? I like you oooo.' Patirck faked admiration, and she smiled. He placed his order of beer and assorted meat offals in cayenne pepper sauce, and I asked for energy drink and cowfoot in oil and potash sauce garnished with onions.
Our order was placed before us under ten minutes. The admiration had worked.
'So how is Tolu coping with this situation?' He asked, his mouth full of meat.
'She's taking it so bad. Really bad. She hasn't said a word to me since the day I picked her up at the airport '
'Are you serious? She must be really heart broken. So what do you want to do now?'
I shook my head in despair. 'I don't even know. She won't talk to me or even acknowledge my presence. She doesn't even cook my meals anymore.
'That is serious,' Patrick said, rubbing his chin pensively. The DJ had started playing music at this time, and some scantily clad girls were dancing. 'Should I talk to her for you?’ he asked, his dark brown penetrating eyes looking straight ahead at a couple of girls who just walked into the bar. I couldn’t be bothered.
‘No o, don’t worry. But guy, you know wetin pain me pass? This wasn’t the agreement between us. It was to be a chop and clean mouth thing, and just decided to go all Mario on me.’
‘Guy, forget these babes o, they are ready to do anything to latch on to you. That’s why I always play safe. I can never get carried away and do skin lailai’
‘Well, I guess I got too carried away, and boy, she’s a wild one. ‘I smiled as I remembered how Unita was insatiable and creative. Every time I was with her I felt younger and reinvigorated. Tolu preferred to take things easy and was conservative. I felt blood rush to my groin, and as I shifted in my seat, I continued ‘All the ‘styles’ she gives me eh, Kama sutra is introduction. Tolu won’t even let me go down on her.’
‘Really? Some women dey miss out sha. Anyway, wetin you go do now as e don be so?’ he asked as he swished his drink in the glass, and then raised it to his lips.
‘She wants to keep the baby, and even have them in the states,’ I told him, a sad smile playing on my lips. Even my wife had never mentioned having our kids anywhere other than Nigeria. She was just contented with using the hospital our HMO provided.
‘You can’t come and fall mugu now. Because of what?’ he banged his fist on the table in protest. I didn’t know if he did it out of concern for me, or if the alcohol was beginning to control him.
‘I don’t know, but she seems unbending. She has even refused to use a private hospital in the league of St Nicholas. I don’t know what to do again, but I wish I never even looked twice at her,’ I said, feeling bile rise to my throat.
‘My guy no worry eh,’ Patrick patted my shoulder. It was easy for him to say. He didn’t have two women pregnant for him at the same time.
I looked up at the skies and wondered if God was really watching out for me.


Tolu.

My mom was the closest person to me in the entire world, but I couldn’t bring myself to share my predicament with her. Over the past few days since duke told me about his other family (as it were), I had felt a range of emotions; hatred so deep I could feel the heat of it pouring out of my pores, anger, jealousy, pity for myself, loathing for the other woman who didn’t know any better and pain for the heart that was returned to me shattered after I had given it to a man I trusted, loved and married. I felt shame, and blamed myself for not being able to tame and keep my man. Right under my nose, another of my own species, probably not as pretty or intelligent, had taken my place.
My heart broke into five hundred tiny pieces, and all the love I ever feet for Duke turned to disgust. I stopped speaking to him and ignored all his pleas. I was patiently waiting for my office to approve my leave. I had decided that I was going to move back to my parents. I couldn’t stand being under the same roof with this cheat. But first, I had to talk to someone. These waves of emotions were eating me up bad and I was bordering on loony. I couldn’t talk to Yewande because she would not understand. She’d never being in love for more than 24 hours so what did she know?
I picked up my phone and dialed my mom’s number. Better to brave it than die and rot in silence and anguish. She picked it up on the fourth ring.
‘Tolu jeje omaami, how are you?’ she asked in her heavily accented English. Because she was a professor, she rarely spoke in to us in our Yoruba dialect, except to make proverbs or driver her point home. Even her annoyance was expressed in English. ‘Why is your voice like this? Is everything alright?’
So she could hear my pain? Oh Mother, I thought, and I began to cry.
‘Tolu, Tolu, what is it, talk to me, is it labor, are you in labor’ she sounded scared, and I allayed her fears ‘No ma, it’s not labor, that is still like two months away’ I said, sniffing.
‘Then what is the matter? Why are you crying? Did your husband refuse to eat your food?’ How naïve, I thought to myself. In her world, where my dad was the perfect husband and father, the greatest offense a man could commit was to refuse to eat your food.
‘No mommy, it is not food. It is something worse than food, ah mommy, Duke has finished me o, he has killed me.’ I wailed loudly.
My mom wasn’t calm at the other end, and she asked me again. ‘What do you mean, what’s the matter? Did he hit you?’
‘No ma, he didn’t hit me. Mommy, Duke has gotten someone pregnant. He said he had an affair, and the woman is expecting his baby. Ha! Mommy, my life is over, my own is finished’ I wailed on.
‘He did what? Lord have mercy! What’s this? What is all these?’ she asked in agony.
‘Mommy there is nothing I don’t do for this man, I have never been a bad wife to him, and how could he do this to me?’
‘Don’t worry dear, calm down. I will talk to you dad, and we’ll talk to him. For God’s sake, don’t do anything rash okay?’
‘Okay mom, I won’t. Please pray for me.’ I said, sounding like a baby. I would always be a baby in her eyes anyway.
‘Sure, Tolu. Just take care, and I will call you tonight. I love you, okay?’
‘Thanks mom.’ I said, and hung up. I stood up to go to the kitchen and get a glass of water, and my eyes fell on our wedding portrait. I was smiling ever so beautifully into the camera, and Duke had hjed me so close you’d think I didn’t want to willingly pose for the picture. Seven months later, another woman is pregnant for him.
Such love.

W

Softandmoist I've done it

softandmoist:
It will post these useless comments, but not the story. Please which mod can I talk to? Or else I'll just take all posts down and continue on my blog only. Wth.

softandmoist:
It will post these useless comments, but not the story. Please which mod can I talk to? Or else I'll just take all posts down and continue on my blog only. Wth.

Finally! I'm here.
Started from the first page.
Wow! Ishilove is such a prolific and surreal writer.
In fact with the way you described Unilag and it environs I just can't help wondering whether this is a true life story, you know, it's so real I could even smell the bread at bakery in new hall I used to love the bread especially after a rainfall .


I also remember someone's story about coming late from an overnight party and not been able to enter unilag at that late hour, she later stays in her "friends" friends house who tries to sleep with her and she spends the night in the toilet drilled with her smelling crap, without water to flush.

BTW are you going to finish this Or NOT?
Ishilove Ishilove Ishilove please finish this.

Nice one, following fully.
Soft

I sincerely think Seun should see this in order to at least regulate our front page and rid it of annoying celebrity topics that contribute virtually nothing to those who visit such threads. There are lots of interesting, inspirational and educative threads that never had views more than 10-100 just because some MODS are more interested in Tonto Dike or Seyi shay.
In other words I think we need to CHANGE our value system in this country especially during this dispensation of CHANGE and put more value on real education rather than paper certificate while also not giving space to illiterates to lead us pun intended

joseph1013:
Yes, he appears more intelligent and superior intellectually than you just because he types in full and not shorthand.



No, it's a way of telling the world that you are a lazy person who cannot communicate effectively in writing.



So, tell me, are you under pressure when you write on facebook, whatsapp and nairaland? What time have you saved by writing in shorthand when it is easier to complete your sentences via built-in intellisense. I am probably faster than you in typing via intellisense than you are via shorthand.



[b]Of course, tenses and spellings are issues with the poorly-educated kids in Nigeria. However, we can do all of these corrections at the same time. They do not have to be mutually exclusive.

That the 'whites' have issues with certain words do not mean they do not have a better grasp of written communication than people like yourself.

As an aside, I've interacted personally with a number of educated Westerners (Europeans & North Americans) both in the physical & the virtual world. I stay in Africa and I interact with educated Africans on a daily basis. I took time to go through the link sagamite shared about the kids discussing feminism later that day and I'm left with only one conclusion: we educated Africans are not as intelligent as the Westerners. Full stop.

You may crucify me for saying this but that's the only conclusion I'm left with.

I know IQ is not a failproof test of intelligence. I'm not even sure if I can harvest IQ scores for Africans & Westerners and compare but if there's a reliable method of estimating intelligence, we educated Africans will score lower than our western counterparts. You listen to a Nigerian professor talk, you listen to a British undergraduate student talk and you wonder who's smarter.

I've interacted with toddlers from both parts of the world and somehow, I think there's no difference in the level of intelligence. So where did the disparity in adulthood come from? I know it's nothing genetic but purely environmental. There's only one answer: our educational system.

What we do here is basically rote learning. That's why most Nigerian intellectuals won't pass simple elementary-grade tests in deductive reasoning.

Why am I bothered? Because that's why we're mostly ignorant and sheepish and in turn, that's why we're still underdeveloped. That's why we are easily fleeced. That's why someone like you will come out openly to criticize something that ought to be common sense.

We focus our energies on irrelevances like 'stunning picture of Fani Kayode's wife' and leave out the relevant stuff about national and individual development. We're products of a handicapped system and the handicapped system is a product of our brains. [/b]