Finally, Alfa Ligali admitted that my problems transcended gbere (incisions). That was the most sensible decision to take.
Having designed my head and face with all manner of lacerations and nothing seemed to be working, it was time to concur. He therefore opted for preachment. He was still scolding and preaching to me over the indefinite suspension when I heard another knock on the door. I was going to open the door when the two people knocking came into the living room. When I saw these two people, I knew that “my own has reached me”. It was my mother and her friend, Iya Folake. My mother didn’t even wait for me to greet her before she assaulted my fragile frame with a massive “abara” (a range of slaps that comes with rage) that landed me back on the chair.
She was beating me as if I was the first pupil to be suspended in the community. After all, Dada Gbadebo and Bidemi Humber had been suspended before me. They were suspended in primary two and my own was in primary three.
So, what have eyes not seen and what have ears not heard before? I was trying to voice out this observation when Iya Folake threw a wind-assisted slap on my right cheek. It was a dirty slap that cleaned up my running nose. I was surprised that I didn’t lose a tooth in the process. What an ungrateful woman. Let me digress and discuss Iya Folake and her act of ingratitude.
One day, Iya Ibadan sent me to her house to buy soap. This was around 6 am. Those days, most people used their living room as shop. I was her first customer on that day. Since then, I never slept well again. The following day, someone came to knock on our door very early in the morning. It was my great-grandmother who opened the door. The person said, ” Iya Folake ni ki npe Dapo wa”. My great-grandmother was wondering what could have happened. The way she looked at me suggested that she thought I had committed an offence. Anyway, I assured her that I didn’t do anything wrong. In less than 5 minutes, I was back in the house. Iya Ibadan was curious to know what happened. I said nothing happened. She now said why did she send for you then? I told her that she asked me to collect money on her behalf from the boy that came to buy groceries from her. That was strange to me and Iya Ibadan.
She did this up to four or five times in one week and she didn’t tell anybody why she was doing that until Iya Ibadan demanded an explanation from her for this weird behaviour. It was then she told Iya Ibadan that any time I was the first person to buy groceries from her, she always had huge sales and big profits. She called it “Owo Aje” (good luck).
I observed that not long after my great-grandmother spoke to Iya Folake, she started her own petty business too. The difference was that I had to now hawk mosquito coils around and about all the streets in Surulere. My regular areas were ile-gogoro (now known as Stadium Bus-Stop) where you have about 30 to 50 two-bedroom flats in one five-storey building. I think there were (are) four of such buildings standing side by side. By the time I moved from one end of the building to the other end, I would have finished selling about 20/25 packets of Tiger coils and other assorted brands. To be candid, the assembly of humanity (mostly settlers from Ofin, Idita, Apongbon, Onitolo all in Lagos Island) in those massive buildings could consume hundreds of packets of coils on a daily basis and they will still not be enough. Just call that place “Mosquito Emporium”. So, in less than an hour, I would be back in the house with an empty tray. It was only in very rare circumstances that you would see me hawking through New Era Girls Grammar School along Ogunmola Close, Abebe Street, Akerele Extension, and Super Cinema before navigating my way back home through the alley in front of NEPA office, Gbaja, then to Olumegbon Street from where I would cross the Western Avenue express road to my Street (Ilelogo) or to Iyun Road. I normally hawked in the evening after returning from school.
Most often, all the energy and stamina I inherited from the eba and ẹfọ riro that I consumed as lunch would be dissipated on street hawking. Iya Ibadan was a strategic thinker. She would load my tummy with starch so that I could have the stamina to walk and hawk in the whole of Surulere. I could see that she was very happy with me because I was becoming more useful to her in revenue generation. In matter of weeks, she introduced ogun efu (White tongue syrup) and old newspapers sales to Boli and akara sellers into her petty trading business and I was the only one selling all these “products” until much later when I was joined by my cousin, auntie Nike.
My great-grandmother decided to bring Nike Buraimoh to the Barracks from her Alagomeji residence for two reasons. One, the business was expanding and secondly, because of me. On a certain day, I fumbled big time because of Gen. Yakubu Gowon. I just left the house through the back door which would lead me to Iyun Road. I was ready to cross the Western Avenue express road when the vehicle leading Gowon’s convoy with the screamer “ROAD CLOSED” sped past. Literally and figuratively, not even a fly was expected to cross the road. The acrobatic display of Baba ibeji on his power bike was very fascinating. Baba Ibeji was Gowon’s most prominent outrider. I was mesmerized that I had to put down my tray of coils so that I could enjoy his display. After about 2 hours, Gowon’s convoy cruised past with majestic splendour. By this time, the roadsides were jam-packed with ecstatic crowds. As if I knew something was going to happen, I started warning those around me in Yoruba: “E ma fo coil mi o”. As I was sending out the warning, one bambam boy was pushed in the thronging and he landed on my tray of coils. Not even one packet out of the 25 packets in the tray survived the fall. Every packet was crushed beyond recognition. There was no single survivor. I started crying. About 10 people followed me home as eyewitnesses. Immediately I saw “Broda mi Nureni”, I concluded, like CHRIST did on the cross, “It is finished”. All my eyewitnesses narrated how it all happened but “Broda mi Nureni” was just nodding his head as if he agreed with their narrative. But inside of me, I knew he was faking the nodding. The person that I knew very well. He would not beat you in broad daylight when people would come and plead on your behalf. He was good at midnight flogging when there would be no interruption and he would still be telling you “to ba mi fikin” as if he was beating iroko tree. However, I did very well in every subsequent hawking enterprise particularly now that I had a new supervisor in Aunty Nike.
The moment most of the elderly people selling stuff in the neighbourhood got to know about my “owo aje” as evident in the flourishing small-scale business of iya Ibadan and Iya Folake, they turned me to “money collector”. My job was to stand in the middle of the buyer and the seller. I would collect the money from the buyer and give it to the seller and that would be it. More or less playing the role of POS. That was how “owo aje” got me into a phenomenal trouble as I began to act as a transferor of money between two individuals with contrasting characteristics. One was considered an agent of bad luck, that was the customer and the other, that is, the seller, a morbid victim of superstition.
Here I am, the mediator of destinies bridging the gaps in human deficits and deficiencies and helping people to develop their ventures without stress. Yet what I received as compensation was a dirty slap for stressing them a la iya Folake. There is GOD o.
Within ten minutes of my mother’s arrival, the whole room was full to the brim. Here is the list of those in my house: Iya Bose, Baba Suru, Mr Sulaimon, Broda Láìsí, Mrs Euba, and Iya Olojojo (my grandmother). Though I knew their coming was connected to my suspension, I was just wondering why this large number. Mr Sulaimon was the only person whose presence was very comforting among the lot. He was a nice man that every child in the neighbourhood loved to go and welcome anytime he was coming back from work. The reason was that he would definitely give you money or sweets for helping him with his bag or for just coming to welcome him back home from work. As for Broda Láìsí, forget it. Laisi no dey give kobo. In this our job of welcoming our neighbours, you must apply strategy and wisdom otherwise you would end up running errands from 4 pm to 8 pm for some neighbours with only “O se àbúrò” to show for it.
All this while, my great-grandmother was in her room. As soon as my grandma surfaced, we all started moving towards my school. That was when I knew that Iya Ibadan had used the two weeks I had spent at home to mobilize the Community elders that would follow me to school to plead with the school authorities over my indefinite suspension. The rumour in the community was that Dapo Thomas had been sent away from school. But I kept correcting them that that is not the meaning of suspension. They said I should go and stay at home until they would call me back. I knew the school would still call me back at least, that was what Kolawole Aladetoun told me and you know Kolawole was a brilliant boy. In less than seven minutes, we were in my school. We were about to enter the Headmaster’s office when I saw Alhaji Raji and Alhaji Dindin supporting Iya Ibadan to the headmaster’s office from the parking lot. She needed it because she was 84 years old at that time. This was 1968. Alhaji Raji and Alhaji Dindin were eminent and prominent members of Surulere Central Mosque which was to be built on the Elelubo football field where we now have Stadium High School right in front of Stadium Hotel and beside Biney Centre. That was the very first time I knew how famous I was in the Community. Those who thought I was nobody were humbled by the galaxy of influential community elders that followed me to school just to beg the headmaster. When the headmaster, obviously a Christian, saw Iya Ibadan and Alhaji Dindin with their long rosaries, he knew that it would be religiously insensitive and disrespectful not to lift the suspension immediately. That was exactly what happened. After ten minutes of meeting with my delegation, the headmaster pardoned me unconditionally. Thank GOD I didn’t not return with my entourage to the house. The way all of them were looking at me, I knew that I was not safe, especially with the women who didn’t know more than dishing out ‘abara’ as if it was food. As at the time of this meeting and pleading, I had not eaten and I was hungry. It was almost 12 noon. I looked at all of them to see who I could approach for money. I couldn’t see any. I mean, not even one person had a friendly disposition towards me including my very kind great-grandmother.
I decided to go to my class with dignified hunger. I didn’t know why I decided to do “Oobi” (a kind of spiteful expression) to Alfa Ligali. As I turned my back to move to my class, I had a head-on collision with Mr Cane who was standing on my way. His instruction was troubling and worrisome: “Go and wait for me in the staff room”. What have I done again? Is “Oobi” an offence? The tragedy that followed after the staff room encounter overshadowed what Mr Cane did.
To be continued
