So, i came home from school yesterday. Something I really did not want to do but as we say, 'wetin man pikin wan do if e no get money." I was dead broke and I had heard through the grapevine (i.e my younger sister Sayo) that pupsie had arrived from Abuja and so like the dutiful dead-broke daughter i was, i put all my kobo-kobo together and left Ife for Lagos.
The trip was the stuff of nightmares. first, one of the passengers in the five-sitter cab that we took paid for the trip and then disappeared. We had to wait an extra hour just for his sorry ass to show up and then it turned out that he had a running stomach which we did not realise until forty-five minutes into the journey. needless to say, we spent an hour-forty-five minute long journey in almost three hours because we kept stopping for him every few miles so that he could disappear into the bush to take care of himself. The second to the last time, we did not need to be told to stop. the stench of his body releases informed us of the poor man's predicament and accompanied us the rest of the way to lagos. The trip taught me something about myself....I can be a bitch sometimes. I compalined the loudest about the incessant stops and made the most fuss when the man messes himself up. I refused to see his very embarrassed and uncomfortable expression. Others were more accomodating and one of the women gave him something in her bag to chew and it seemed like the mixture of black leaves that she had squeezed into her cellophane bag, worked because he did not have to go to the bathroom till we got to Ojota where he got off. All we had to bear with was the smell. We simply wound the windows all the way down and my magazine, 'Gbefila', one of the latest gossip mags on campus flew out the window.
I guess that was my punishment for being unkind to another.
I was so tired from my trip and looking forward to a nice night's sleep but mumsie had other huge plans. i have this feeling that nothing gets done at home when I am not around. All the ideas for huge meals seem to appear the moment my left foot crosses the doorway. That's when my mother said in her tiny voice, "i think we should make pap." I looked around the kitched for the huge pap bucket where we usually soaked the corn for the pap and I did not see anything. Apparently, what she meant was that i was to wake up at the crack of dawn this morning and accompany Tawa, the housegirl to Tejuosho and buy fresh dry corn to bring home and wash and soak. As well as all the ingredients necessary to cook for two thousand years. For a house where only three people live at any given time, we sure cook a hell lot of food and as the eldest and a female, I have been 'blessed' with the opportunity to help prepare everyone. I do not know why pupsie has to feed everyone that comes to see him. there is one of his friends, Alhaji Gbadamosi that i believe strongly, either does n0t like his wife's cooking or is just to miserly to leave soup money (as i know that his second wife, mama Ayoka does not work) because he is always in my house and eats every square meal. I ams o used to having to cook his food and that of my dad's seperate from the family pot....he is diabetic and pupsie has high blood pressure.
Sha, we watched a movie in the living room upstairs. An american film. Some boring thing on the hallmark channel. there was a scene where the daughter in the movie yelled at her mother and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. My mother had reacted to the scene the same way she always has. She clapped her hands in an up and down movement the way nigerians especially yoruba people did when they were suprised by a situation, tapped her feet in a fast movement on the floor and shook her head.
When we were little and used to live in ibadan, in that old house that belonged to my grandfather, she would look at me and dare me, after seeing scenes such as this where the white children were rude and disrespectful to their parents and threatened to call 911 or child services or something like that, to do the same. She would say aloud as if to no one in particular, when we children knew she was referring to us, that we should indeed try what we have just seen on her and that when she is done with us, we can go and call 'olopa' and then she would hiss in her long, ssssssss-ie way. I would shake my head rapidly to tell her that i was not born with two heads to try and disrespect her, Oluwafunmilola Ajike Fabomilasiri, aya Emmanuel Oladimeji Fabomilasiri; mother of five. In my mind, i would think to myself, 'which phone?'