Onyinye

 I once met a girl in NYSC camp whose aura got me fixated in her. There was something overwhelming about her physique that was plum and chubby in a beautiful way, as it was tempting. 

I remember the day that I met her, that cold and frosty harmattan monday morning at Yikpata camp with the bugle blasting martial music and the soldiers bursting from room to room shouting, "If you're sleeping, you're wrong! If you're still dressing up, you're wrong! If you're still sitting you're wrong!" and people- bleary eyed graduates, weary from journeying thousands of miles from all over the country, with no respite nor welcome, ran here and there, c

onfused, jarred and jolted from their comfort. This was Yikpata, the oldest NYSC camp in the country and it was wosky in the real sense of it. 😂

And I, ever conscious I, was in the bush trying to ease myself as there were practically no toilets..And the nearby bushes had already been filled by northerners who liked to do it nearer the blocks. 

But, it'd become something I would be gratefully for because that's how I would meet Onyinye, the chocolate skin-coloured damsel from Anambra who often ended our evening walks, years later when we'd end up serving together at Nteje, with the words, "if you're not loving me, you're wrong," mimicking the female soldier who made a boy roll on the floor because he'd said he'd never love a soldier. 😂

It was in that bush that I met her, vulnerable with all her fancy glitters down as she squatted to do same business I had come to do. We'd sneaked out of camp for the quiet seclusion of the bigger woods where the wind blew in a quiet caress over our skin. 

We really clicked, loved each other, held each other closely. She was my companion through out our service year working at a community health centre, me the doctor and she, the nurse- the beautiful nurse who made every man turn twice to look at her. 

We made memories, colourful memories, going out in the evenings to Onitsha mall to eat Kimanjero fish peppersoup on our pay days, window shopping at Finenet for phones we could not afford, 😂 and at times, going to main market in a keke to shop bargains from importers of same goods sold at premium at the mall.

"You're the real calculator, Emeka," she often teased, highlighting my penchance to penny pinch." and I'd tell her that I was only saving for her sure-to-be hefty bride price. And we'd laugh. Our laughter was easy. Loving her was very easy. 

She was my first girlfriend in the true sense of it and I was very welcome at her home which began to feel like home when her mother began to like me and make me feel at ease.

I remember her, the fair tall woman who spoke softly to me, gave me food during festivities, enough food to last me weeks and often mediated when Onyii and I had problems. And when corn and ube came out, she'd give Onyinye alot of boiled corn and ube for me. 

And as the service year came to an end, with the first winds of September and harmattan dust, I lay in bed with Onyii and told her that I was going to marry her once I got enough savings for her dowry.

It was something I couldn't explain how I had said, "Do you want me to see your parents now, Onyii?". It was after she'd began crying in the middle of our affectionate cuddle and I was confused as she didn't want to tell me why she was crying. "Will it stop you from crying? Am I good enough to marry you Onyii?"

I looked into her eyes, expecting a 'yes,' a resounding 'yes,' but I got nothing because Onyii simply looked at me and said nothing. That afternoon, as I drove her home, I would get frsust3d by her vehement refusal to discuss her problems. She even said I was a complainant and that I should stop bothering her.

Her coldness prompted me to talk about it to her mother who'd assure me that she would sort it out. I had wanted to also talk with her brother but was put off by his recent cold shoulders towards me, often refusing to talk to me nor respond to me. I was desperate but I found no help. 

Looking back now, I think that was the beginning of the end of that beautiful relationship which had made me so happy, like my mouth was full of melting sugar. It was the beginning of a period of coldness in which Onyii would totally change towards me and never again would open her heart to me.

Everything onwards would be purely mechanical between us and after 3 months of trying to get her to love me again, I would refuse to give up, still crying to her to love me, still trying my best, still trying to avoid other girls, still driving out in the night to buy her 'best' creamy milk which I gave her at work, until that rainy monday morning after my first semester MSc exams when I would text her, "you're my life, Onyii" and she replied, "I shouldn't be your life, you should have a life without me," that I would smell the coffee and decided to sit her down and talk eye ball to eye ball.

"Tell me the truth Onyii! Tell me where your heart lies now, what you still feel for me, if you still feel anything for me?" I asked her over the phone after my exam. I was lying down on the bed, tired, with my heart beating, waiting for her answer for by then, I had become totally conquered by her charms as any man who met her would surely be.

But she didn't talk, she said rather, that she would chat me her response which when it came read, "there's someone else Emeka, and I've said yes." And then, she logged off.

My heart was broken and the bits fell into my belly, like the rain splashing on the roof in heavy slanting drops. The world around me stopped. And I'd begin to slide into darkness that'd would last for months and cost me 20kg of weight, my job and my masters exams. 😂

I became a robot at work. I could not eat, could not sleep, could not function and her face formed a huge shadow around my soul.

I begged her. I cried. I called her cousins and mum and I cried. "Please come back! Please come back,! Don't turn your back me Onyii, hear me now." But she said no.

My pain would totally submerge me when I learnt that the man who took Onyii was living in Canada and doing well and was so handsome in an Odogwu kinda way, that although my Onyii hadn't seen him, she'd excitedly said yes when his people came to their house to tell her mum that they'd seen a very ripe ụdara in her house and wouldn't love to pluck it, flashing before their eyes a picture of the would be suitor in winter coat and head gear. 

And months passed and I began to heal. But my masters was gone. And so too was my shine and pride, for everyone who knew us now, laughed at me. My boss tried to shout me out of the darkness but when I failed to get out, he fired me.

***

Months rolled into a year and then another and I would leave everything behind in Nteje and relocate to Abakaliki. It was there that I would meet Onyii again, heavily pregnant but not for her husband.

"For whom?" I asked out of turn, surprised at the nonchalant way she said it. "It's not for him," chewing her gum loudly, parting her expensive bone straight hair. 

She told me that the man never returned after their wedding, that not even when she had surgery for her baby nor when she fell ill, did he return. She said she was now alone, that she'd have loved him, that she had hoped he would have taken her abroad and if things didn't turn out well, she'd have left him.

She apologised, "sorry, for the way I left, Emeka. I was just focused on leaving Nigeria then and he was my prayer answered until he suddenly wasn't."

She rubbed my hands and said, "whatever you want now, I will be open to do, I can even have a baby for you if that'd make sense to you," looking into my eyes the way she often did in the consulting room back at Nteje when both of us were on night duty and everyone had slept.

"It was just too tempting Emeka," she explained further.  "You know we wømen marry not for love but, for comfort."

I was now a resident doctor and she'd come as patient and we had the discussion in the air conditioned consultation room which reminded me of our little office at the health centre and the many times we'd kissed and held each other.

I looked at her and I wanted to say something about her still shinning skin but no words came out. Except for "here, that's your prescription. We'll see you again when you're meds are done."

"Yes," she said, extending her hands to take the papers. "Thank you doctor."

And there was a lasting silence as we stared at each other for what seamed like a century. 

Outside, the sun blazed hard and the wind stood still. I wanted to have a shower and then sit in the shower for the rest of the day.

To be continued.

Written by Nnaemeka Ugwu

Ogho in her last days

 

When my grandmother ogho was old and dying (she was the eldest person in our village), papa would go home every weekend to see her. He was as broke as broke could be because it was during Abacha’s regime and food was scarce yet, he would go every weekend. Unfailingly.

 

He would walk up to her house  once he arrived at the village and upon opening her door call out, 'mama' and ogho would get elated immediately, replying "ọ bụ Imma? Now I know that I will eat today." Years later, papa would always fight tears whenever he got to this point  of his mother’s last days. He would beat his chest and cry, "mama m! Mama m!"

 

He never forgot for once during his life time, ogho's love for him and how she sent him to school against all odds. Even now that I remember this, I am fighting tears. That was how powerful papa's love for his mother was during her last days.

 

It was touching in a lot of ways because besides cooking every week for her, assorted soups which he left with his elder brother and his family to warm for her and feed her daily, he also ensured to give her personal care anytime he was in the village. It was the part he found difficult to do because he was a man and grand mother was a woman. And that's where my own mother's compassion came in.

 

Mama remembers it with compassion in spite of the messy condition Ogbo was in the first time they came home and found that she'd soiled herself. Mama remembers how she melted on seeing papa in tears, begging her to help because he was too embarrassed to wash his mother. He pleaded and mama helped him. And both of them did it together.

 

Mama washed Ogho while papa cleaned the soiled floor and washed the beddings.

 

And when it was clear that she’d lost her independence completely, papa bought a full mackintosh covered mattress for her. Uncle Thomas brought cleaners and antiseptics. My cuz Luke took charge of the cleaning when Papa and mama were not around.

 

Every weekend mama washed her mother in law and when she returned to the township, she’d be mortified at how old age took power from people, people like Ogho who was the strongest woman in her days. The cycle went on until grandmother's death.

 

That was the first time I saw Papa cry. He came home and removing his shirt called out on our neighbour, “Peter, mama m anwụgh!’ That was the first time I saw someone related to me die.

 

People gathered and consoled Papa. He said that his only consolation was that Ogho, before passing, laid her blessings on her children.

 

She told mama that she would not suffer in her old age, that her daughters would be like men. She blessed Luke, told him that his business would flourish. She blessed all her Sons. She told Papa that he'd not suffer in death.

 

***

 

I am remembering all these things in a sports shop where I've come to buy some shoes for work but instead of buying shoes, I am sitting on a chair and crying because I remember papa. I have just seen an old man fall by the street, soiling himself, with no help in sight. It hurts me to see.

 

I am crying and sad but my only consolation is that papa didn't suffer this way. His death was clean in a hospital, within minutes.

 

It was his mother's blessing. It was what she told him after he took care of her. “You’ll not suffer this way, my son.”

 

Nnaemeka Ugwu

October 2022.

Agwor'oha

 Agwor'ọha! I first heard the name and it's story when mama Okenwa had a serious complication from pregnancy and her womb was damaged and she was dying.

I remember vividly how she bled and bled till her eyes turned white, like paper. I remember her children crying, running to our side of the face-me-I-face you, calling on papa, "papa! our mother is dying. Please help her!"

Papa sprang into action, like he was known to do. He ran to mama okenwa's room and grabbed her, calling for help in the process, and within minutes, the compound was full of people ready to save one of their own, for those days in the public yard, we lived like family.

But getting people to help was easy.

What was difficult was deciding which hospital to go to in the rural farming community where we lived. It was almost a ghost town because herdsmen violence was starting at the time. There were no hospitals in sight with a surgeon that was capable of saving the woman.

Yet, papa and everyone tried their best. They loaded Mama Okenwa on papa’s Suzuki motorcycle and he sped off. To stem the bleeding, the women of the yard stuffed wrappers and pads between mama Okenwa's thighs. I could only watch in confusion, dazed as I was by the blood. 

The first clinic they got to had no doctor. The second had none and likewise, the third. And these hospitals were all separated by what papa would tell me later were hundreds miles, a system of measuring distance between places.

In the end, according to papa, they could only end up in a town called Ukehe where they were told a powerful surgeon who had returned from Germany lived. His name was Agwor'ọha, the healer of the people. Papa said it was luck that led them to the town. 

He said he was surprised at first as per what was such a qualified doctor doing in his home town, when he could have a far richer life in the cities. But then when he heard the surgeon's story, he understood. 

Papa was so concerned when he told me the story. This doctor had been trained by the mission of that town when he had no one to help him. He finished medical school and went abroad. He lived there for years until he read about the mission hospital which had trained him, how dilapidated it had become, how badly they needed help, and how people died for simple cases he could solve.

And so, began his journey home. An orphan boy who had no one to feed him except the mission. He decided to make the sacrifice and headed home to help the mission. 

"everyone thought he was mad," papa said. "What stupidity could do such a thing to a man?"

I listened quietly, surprised that papa did not see, could not see how much truth there was in the opinion of these people who saw the 'madness' in the decision of this doctor.

I told papa that I would never leave abroad for a place like the place we lived, like the big doctor's home town, a town without running water and reliable electricity. 

I held my views even when papa told a glorious tale of how Agwor'ọha had saved mama Okenwa who was like a mother to me. "It still doesn't matter," I insisted. "He's wasting his life."

But then, what did I know then? A boy who didn't understand what true fulfilment and happiness meant, what sacrifice meant, how personal ideals led people, people like Agowr'oha who had seen everything there was to see in life. 

I still wanted to be a doctor but I was never going to do what this old surgeon had done. Even the changes of the years with the constant drifts between the rains and the hamatttern would not change my mind.

Until I too fell sick when I was in the university and was dying because no doctor could tell what was wrong with me. They prescribed drugs upon drugs until the tablets were nearly killing me. Then enter the great man, Agwor'ọha.

I remember the day I met him. I had given up hope when papa went to him and pleaded for him to see me. He was such a busy doctor then and ran the mission hospital all alone. In addition to healing, he also trained the other doctors in the town on how to perform surgeries.

So I was really privileged to have met him. I remember my body having goose bumps when I saw him in his gray hair and deep lenses and heard his English that sounded like flowers. I stood up and greeted him. I was star struck in a way I couldn't understand considering my disapproval of his austerity.

He was shocked when he saw me. He said, "you're lucky son. You've nearly lost your virility as a man but now, it won't happen because you've come to the right place." He smiled. "We shall heal you."

And so, I was healed.

I was recovering from the drugs when papa came and held my hands and we talked and I told him that we would have to really thank the doctor in a big way.

Papa concurred and then smiled. "Do you still think he is crazy to stay here in his homeland to help people like you? Do you still think his critics are right?" he asked. 

Papa waited for me to open my eyes and shake my head then he said, "you might not be as brave or you might not approve the 'crazy' actions of heroes but what you should not do is discourage them for laying down their lives for others."

***

This is a true life story concealed in fiction, a story about Dr Nnabueze, and one dedicated to all the other doctors who saved Nsukka and environs. Without them, many of us would've died in infancy.

They're doctors like Dr Nnabueze, (Agowr'oha), Dr Attah, Dr Elechi, Dr Nnaji, Dr Ochili, Dr Oguonu, Dr Akulue, Dr Onwurah, Dr Nnamani, Dr Iyoke, Dr Ozoemena, Dr Ndukwe, Dr Ezenwa, Dr Sadiq, Dr Odoh, Dr Ezeugwu and all the others whom I did not hear about.

The least we can do is encourage them for all they did and are doing. Because when they're gone, I don't see anyone there to replace them.

By Nnaemeka Ugwu.

 September 2022.

Nunez sent off Liverpool vs Crystal Palace

Liverpool striker Darwin Nunez has become the first Liverpool player to receive a red card following Sadio Mane's red card vs Manchester City in 2016.

The 23 year old striker who cost £64 million was sent off for violent conduct as he appeared to have headbutted Joachim Anderson of Crystal Palace.

He will now go on to miss 3  matches in a move that will surely infuriate Jurgen Klopp and excite wicked Manchester United fans.

The man and his wife

 So, this man came and parked in front of the barbing salon, his car completely obscured by the darkness save for the little wisps of light from the generator powered barbing shop when the woman whom I'd later find out was his wife, came crashing a pestle on the wind shield of the man's car.

It happened in a spit second and I was horrified by it all, by the crashing sound of pestle and that of the falling glass; I imagined it was my golf taking such a hit and so, I panicked even as I was able to phantom what'd just happened - raging wife confronting a cheating husband. 

My heart beat fast because I didn't like staying close to fracas especially this type which had the woman armed and fighting like a crazed bull, screaming in a hoarse voice, "you idiot! You he-goat! You're finished! I will totally destroy you! You men are worse than animals!"

I panicked because I was a man and men were being called 'worse than animals' just a few feet away. 

The woman let the pestle fall hard again and again and again on the car,- a shinny new Lexus sedan whose screeching alarms and hazard light made the torture it was going through look like a beautiful thing, like it was being beaten to shape and not totally being destroyed, like it was being handled the way girls around this hotel were handled by the men who came to pick them up. 

In a short time, a scene was created as was normal whenever a voice was raised on this street, this immoral space around this ever busy hotel which always had uncountable number of prostitutes swirling around, looking for men to take them home. Once, I was coming back from work late night and one with big breasts approached me, saying in the most lustful of voices, "come let's go home. Come, let's go home." I ran. 

They were often overtly painted and scantily dressed. They ranged from the wrinkled 50 year olds who scrambled for the lowest of men, the only one who'd be interested in them, to the 35 year olds who were desperate to make a living before losing their youth, often taking only men in cars. There were also the young teenagers who in their naivete often settled for the little keke boys on whom they learnt how to satisfy men, in readiness for when they'd become the 'hot cakes' in their 20s.

They all gathered around to watch the scene and to laugh and to try to rescue one of their own who was now being threatened by the woman with the pestle. "Dirty girl! I will carve out that thing in between your legs and feed it to my dog!" the woman screamed. 

The man was trying to restrain his wife from smashing the girls head since she'd been locked in the car and couldn't get out easily. She looked so terrified, a girl of about sixteen. She was pleading, "madam abeg, face your husband, not me. I am only trying to survive and feed my siblings who all depend on me. I am orphan oooo!" Her eyes glistened with desperate tears. 

Her voice was so soft and poignant that I felt like going over to help her, to hold her and shield her from the chaos and terror. But then, Nnaemeka, you're an ọzọ title holder and if that pestle lands on you and these people make a video of you with all sorts of captions like "a married man caught with a prostitute and his wife smashed his head with a pestle," what will you tell your ancestors?

That idea terrified me and so, I quickly decided to leave the scene entirely.

I walked fast, out of the barbershop and onto the other side of the road where the night girls stood laughing, and threatening to kill the woman if anything happened to their colleague. Beside them was the suya man's stand. I often bought from him on many nights I felt like chewing spicy meat on my way back from work. The light of the hotel gate and the white lights of the street made the smoke from the fire look like a war from afar. I must leave without looking back.

After a few steps towards my street, I heard the man's voice, tearful, weak, pleading, "Ifunanya you have to stop this. You really have to leave this girl alone! What did you expect me to do when you hate me, when you totally are disgusted about me and my life, when you have refused to have sex with me for the past 3 years? What did you expect me to do when all I've gotten for all the love I've shown you, was a total rejection?"

I looked back. But I couldn't see much now in my dimmed view. I only heard the voices. The pleasing. The woman pounding the car into a heap of mangled metal.

***

But in your opinion, who's at fault here. Was it the woman who refused to give the man sex or the man who took to cheating as an outlet?

©Nnaemeka Ugwu. 

Odumeje severely brutalised by Soludo's men

 

Breaking the gods

 Breaking the gods. 

Dude just had an accident and is being wheeled into the ER. I am on duty so I am on ground to 'welcome' him. 

My stethoscope is hanging on my neck as usual, even though, Nonso Oguonu hates that. But, I don't care. He is just a lump of meat waiting for egbe ìgwè to tear apart, on my behalf. 😂😂😂

I am also carrying the investigation forms and other things. And I am thinking about the back side of the girl I saw in Nauth earlier in the day, as I wait for the patient bearers to meet up with me.

The nurses are running helter-skelter, perhaps because they're are confused by the blood and screaming from the injured guy who's also cursing. 

"It's a set up!" 

"It's a set up!" 

"God!" 

"Iam dying! I am dying" 

He is crying, shivering, bleeding from here and there. I feel pity for him because I always feel pity for the patients when I'm in a good mood, when the sun is up and the day, bright with daylight. Plus the girl I met in Nauth is bombing my WhatsApp with messages. 

So I say, as the trolley stops abruptly at the spot I'm standing in the ER and the dude is being rolled onto the couch from the stretcher, "Nna, sorry oh! I'll take care of you." I actually felt for him. At times, it's difficult not to feel for a man when he is crying. 

The flowing fresh blood stain the mackintosh. Broken ones creak. Some held only by dangling flesh. The words of an old man flash through my mind. 'Aren't we all nothing but, lumps of meat, held together by nothing but, bones? Aren't we all ashes, in the end?' 

The story is that just a few minutes ago, the patient was hit by a truck on reverse, while he tried to unload the truck. But, that's not all there is to it.

Some of the people with him are saying that the truck guy had done it intentionally. 

"They had a little quarrel last night and then, this happened this morning. Can you see the correlation, doc,?" one asks. He's the guy with clean shaven head and long neck. His hands are stained the most with blood. His clothes too, are stained with blood. He's the little brother of the wounded guy. He has some tears in his eyes, too. 

He is also angry, just like the rest of the men. And they're getting rowdy, each speaking whatever the hormones and the sight of the horror,  threw into his mouth so, I try to calm down them down. 

"Can you guys please, move to the out-patient? I need space. We need space to work." 

My voice is calm. I don't shout at men in situations like this because, situations like this turn men into beasts. The other day, my colleague was nearly stabbed by angry boys because, she couldn't wake their dead friend. Down here, in this jungle, you don't meet up with friendly people all the time. 

My calmness pays off, as the men begin to clear. One by one. Each muttering some angry words. But, the patient asks for his little brother to stay behind. 

"I want my brother to be with me," he pleads.

Little demand. No problem. So, I let him have his wish. And it soon pays off. 

I take history and carry out examinations very quickly. I ligate the few bleeding vessels. I also take care of the major wound sites. I sterilize them as much as possible. I pack them up and bandage and splint some of them. He is fairly stable. Youth is on his side.

But, there's a problem. 

Whereas the guy allows sutures, and the other things, he vehemently refuses to allow me set up an IV line in order to administer fluids and other medications.  The refusal baffles the nurses and the men who are with him. And to an extent me, too. 

The thing is that patients refusing to allow one form of treatment or the other is not a new thing to me but, the dude on the couch looks like someone who cooperates, judging by the fact that he's been so polite from the beginning. And when I scan his body, I find no talisman or charm on his body. Or marks even. Hence, my surprise at his refusal to let a needle near him. 

Time is running out though, and I need to act fast, in order to free up time for the other patients. There are always many of them, waiting.

 

At first, I shout. "I'll slap you! Will you keep quiet and let me treat you so, I can see the other patients?" 

I try to look as stern as I sound. I've used the trick before. And, at times, it works. In fact, it has worked more times than not. But, this time, it doesn't work. The guy is not giving in. Cha cha. 

His wife comes forward and cries a river of tears. His friends shout and cajole. The nurses pet him and beg him. Some other patients and passersby try but, all fail. 

I too, try to beg and cajole. I try to explain things. I try diplomacy. I even tell him some funny things. But, no way. Then, I become more stern and coldly tell him off. 

"You're going to die and I'm leaving you. Don't ever call me back." 

I make a fuss about downing tools. I remove the apron and gloves and try to remove the boots and only then does he try to compromise,  to comply. 

He looks at his wife and kids and shakes his head. He looks at his wounds and at me and shakes his head again. Then, he whispers, imploringly, "Doc, I did 'odeshi.' If you give me any white man's medicine, I'll die. Please, give me some time to call on my 'chi' and perform some rites." 

Really? Rites? Rituals?

For those who don't understand Igbo, 'odeshi' is a form of juju that makes one immune to bullets.  A lot of people trust in it but, in my experience, it doesn't work. I always tell them that 'odeshi' is not for an AK47. 

I want to laugh like I've always done each time I've come across such patients but, the guy is looking real(sic) scared. His eyes tell as much as his words. "I don't want the spirits to kill me," he pleads. "Let me speak with the gods, first." 

They say a good doctor, listens and I want to be a good doctor. So, I listen to him and move a few paces away. I instruct the nurses and the other people to move away, too. Only the patient's brother stays. Because the patient needs him to stay, to help him 'call on the gods.'

I watch from where I am standing, along the passage that leads to the morgue, as the little brother brings out a red clothed charm from the patient's back pack. I watch him smash the charm on the patient's chest and fore head, three times, before moving it round his head thrice, chanting in Ebonyi dialect. I watch him reach out to the earth. 

He scoops a hand full of sand from the nearby lawn and hands it to his wounded brother. The ritual is about to be completed. But, I am disturbed. Because the sand is contaminated, probably full of infectious agents.

This is a hospital for God’s  sake and the earth in a hospital soaks too much blood. And diseases reside in blood. Spilled or not. So, I try to stop him but, his brother urges me not to interfere because the earth that breaks the 'odeshi' must come from the immediate surrounding. 

"The earth must come from the immediate surrounding" he states. They are both still chanting. Their eyes are rolling. Their hands are up in the air. The people watching must be scared.

Yet, almost everyone urge me to allow them finish the ritual. His wife and friends also urge me and so, I step back and only watch in horror as the patient pours the sand into his mouth, chews it and swallow all of it. 

Then, he declares in a whisper to me "the charm is broken." Relief is on his face. Even with the injuries. Pure relief. The gods must be happy now.

I want to laugh but, instead, I move in to complete my job. My hands move fast as I suture the remaining fine lacerations in his tongue and lips and face, after the lidocaine infiltration. I finish up in no time and remove my apron and gloves to do a little write up. 

As I leave him for the nurses to clean up the move him to the ward, I feel another urge to laugh but, I restrain myself. 

I remember the words of the old man 'we're just nothing but, what the world around us makes us to be.'  

He was a wise man. I met him on the day that they shot many people. He often said to me,  before he died of his wounds from the assault rifles. 

"Some of us are fortunate to have enlightenment, to know what's true and what's a lie. It doesn't mean that we should have disdain and laughter for those who believe in other things." 

The sun is suddenly cut off by a rain cloud. I can feel the new cool breeze on my skin. It will rain soon and I know I will like it because I like rain.

It reminds me of childhood and freedom.

By Nnaemeka Ugwu. 

©all rights reserved.

King Rudy's New album is here!

Rudeboy of the defunct Psquare hip hop band has released his new album titled Rudykillus.

Ezinne

Most times, I find it difficult to smile for the camera. Have always found it difficult to. Have always seen it as something abnormal. Like dancing. I  guess it’s because, I am not the normal guy down the hood.

I became aware of it, from childhood when mother would always rebuke me during photo shoots. Or when something good happened and I was supposed to smile. And, I didn’t.

"Put up a smile, you moody child! Why don't you ever smile?"

Then, she’d proceed to use every trick in her armory to try to get me to smile. All to no avail.

I didn't understand her then. I thought she was just being overtly overbearing. That’s how my little mind interpreted a mother’s intense love  for her child  who  looked  exactly  like  her, on whose face, she wanted to see beautiful smiles.

And she’s a beautiful woman, my mother. Watching  her  smile  would  most  certainly,  make anyone  smile. But, not me-the young me.

And so, she rebuked and rebuked.

“Even your mother’s smile cannot get you to smile,” she’d sigh in disgust.

It was same thing during my nursery school graduation. The same during secondary school graduation. It was same during my matriculation. And on that one she almost flared up.

“The least you can do for your extended family is to smile in a picture you’re taking with them. You’re going to be their first doctor.”

Then, she  put on that  frown, that long  face, that mine looks exactly  like on a normal day.

Yet, I did not smile.

There was still non for my convocation. I didn't even wear the gown, didn’t  take  pictures and, didn't inform them about the damn ceremony.

Not that it mattered, anyway. Convocation had since become nothing to celebrate in this country. The country has become a very difficult  place.

***

So, when I woke up  this morning, having dreamt all night long  about the hefty  fee I’ve had  to pay  for an MSc  program I’ve just enrolled for,  I was certain I wasn’t gonna smile all day.

I was sure that my  face was  consistently  going  to look  like the  one  my  friend  Ugochi Iroegbu  used to  call  ‘sad face,’ back then, in unec, when she always tried to get me to smile more often. “You don’t know how handsome you  look  when you smile,” she’d smile.

I  was sure I  wasn’t  going to  smile when my new little ‘patient’ friend, the  little girl  recovering  from some  serious injuries, following  a road traffic accident, would  ask for my phone and for me  to  pose  for  a picture.

She has  been  doing that since she became my  friend,  since she started  walking again, after I removed  her last sutures, deeply  rueful that the nylon sutures might have marred her most immaculate skin.

Yet, she’s still such a cute  little  fellow  with  the  loveliest of brown eyes, dimples and an electrifying smile and, since she’s been asking  me  to  pose  for  pictures,  I’ve been managing to smile for her. Strange. But today had started in a bad way and I  didn’t  think I’d smile for  her.

So, ward  round  over,  I went  to  her  room  to give  her  injections,  silently praying that she wouldn’t ask  for my  phone,  for a  pose and her other  demands like me inspecting her wounds and reassuring her that they were all fine- little things her  grandmother told me, a few days ago, “make her- your wife,  happy.”

But, soon as injections were over, the cute voice went “Doctor can I take  a picture of you? You’re  looking fine  today.” She gave  out the  most radiant  smile.

But, I said “no.” “Today is not  a good  day.” I tried not to look at her face.

I wanted to leave  as  soon  as  possible, to go after my chores in the hospital. But,  she  held me  back. “Please, let me  snap  you,” she insisted.

“Next time,” I tried to  sound nice. “I’m busy.”

I knew she wasn’t happy with my ‘impatient’ replies  but, I just had to make her understand that the day wasn’t a good one. I had issues, bearing down on me. And taking pictures was not one of them.

So, I walked away from her room and, into the  oxygen room  to get  my  stethoscope and my new Pharmacology text book. I wanted to read something, in  between attending to the patients.

But, a soft knock soon followed me. And when I opened the door, there was little Ezinne, looking  at  me  imploringly. So imploringly that the scars on her face  appeared more conspicuous.

“Why are you sad?,” her  voice  sounded  broken. “Grandmother said  I shouldn’t  bother my husband  because ‘can’t I see that  he  is  unhappy?’”

She looked at one of her scars,  the  biggest  one on her left thigh- a blackened rough scar, one that’d likely be the reminder of that dark day when she was brought in by the Keke that had knocked her down, her blood dripping here and there, the Keke driver- a chronically ill looking  middle aged man, fidgeting and muttering “I’ve killed somebody’s child.”

“Why is my  husband  sad?” Her eyes looked even more imploring.

There was a moment of silence. And, I could hear the leaves of the pine trees  caressing one another. Then, She began  to cry.

Really?

I  was shocked. I could have said ‘moved’ but, things don’t easily move me when I have issues to sort out especially, financial issues. But, that’s my little friend crying. So, I bent over and consoled her.

The nurses at the table began  to laugh, to ask what was wrong between ‘husband and wife.’

“Stop crying,” I  consoled. “You know I hate to  see you  cry.”

“Then, let me take a picture of you.”

It’s not even as  if  she  knew  how  to  use  the  camera properly. And it’s not as if she got  to keep  any of the pictures she took of me. But, right  there  and  then,  I sensed  that the relationship between us and  the joy she  got  from  it  stemmed  from  me, each  day, looking at each  blurred  pictures  she  took  and  smiling,  calling her a ‘brilliant photographer.’ And  perhaps  because of  the fact  that ‘true friends don’t  feel comfortable when we  don’t  smile,’ as Ugochi  would  often put it during those  days in unec.

So, I decided  to  flash  a smile. No matter  how fake  it  appeared. And, once I had smiled, I  watched  her  face soften up too and, the tears dry away.

I handed her the phone and went to stand in front of the new door, striking my  usual  pose, faking a smile. As always, whenever I’ve had to,  in front of the camera.

Soon, the camera  went off a number of times and the little girl beamed out another  beautiful smile.

“Here,” she  stretched out her hand, bearing the infinix hote note, coming closer to  where I  squatted, tying my  shoes lace.

“See how handsome  you look when  you  smile?” She giggled.

“Grandmother said  my husband  must  be  handsome.” She took my stethoscope from the table and hung it  on my  neck. “Now, off you go to work.”

By now, I couldn’t hold back  the  care  free laughter. Or should I  say ‘emotional laughter.’ Just  as she  could not keep  back her  joy  when  I gave her some eclaise.

We both ended up laughing, till our eyes got  misty.

***

She said “bye,  doctor” and, began  to  walk  away, back to her room, to her grandmother who had called for her to come take her tablets. The limp was still in her steps. And  her full  black  hair  bounced  in a carefree ponytail.

As I watched her  walk,  I thought  about  my  mother  and  how  happy  she would have  been had she been  able to get me to smile and be happy the way little  Ezinne  had  just  done. Especially, on those  beautiful  days  that she  tried  her  best  but  failed  to  make  me  smile.

I thought about having a daughter and naming her Ezinne.

I thought about Mercy-Iroegbu Ugochi Niteh and her sweetness towards me. A friend I’ll never forget.

You cannot go home because the roads are flooded.

You remember that time you drove a woman who was deep into the pain of obstructed labour from her house to the nearby health center.

Her house was in the ghetto in the outskirts of the city and you'd gone there to seek out a Welder when you met her screaming and crying, her unborn baby nearly dead because when you used the fetoscope in your car you found out that the foetal heart rate was on the roof.

You were forced to abandon the Welder and speed off to the health center where you would improvise everything in the process of helping the woman; she, having vehemently refused to go to a hospital.... because... money issues.

You did the section against all odds, using only flashlights supplemented by Android phone lights. There were no boots and no facemasks to protect you from blood splashes.

There were not much in the theater, which had obviously had its days of glory. There were simply nothing but the experience and passion of the matron and the nurses in the center.

Yet, you succeeded in bringing out the baby and after you blew air into his lungs, massaging his heart at the same time, he cried and regained life. And there were choruses of praise to God.

You remember the night that followed that surgery, the way you'd soon lose your job because your boss became unhappy that you had failed to incise a little abscess in the little boy's face because, you'd come back to the hospital an hour later that you should, even though you explained that it was while saving a life that you arrived late.

You're thinking about his words that night....now that you're stepping out from your new place of work. For the first time.

"You're worthless. Leave my establishment." He had sounded so cold...

***

His voice echoes so loud in your head now, as you're driving over the covet. You're rushing to head bridge to get some antibiotics.

The volume is so loud that you nearly fail to hear the voice of the man and the woman who are calling out to you asking for a lift.

When you're sad you hear no voices except songs and poems that soothe the heart. And you are sad most of the time.

"Please, are you going to junction," the man asks, waving you down. "Please, help us. It's about to rain. We're going to junction."

You look at him. You can't really hear him very well because passenger's 'home' was playing.

You turn down the volume even though you're addicted to the lyrics:

'They say fear is for the brave
For cowards never stare it in the eye
So am I fearless to be fearful
Does it take courage to learn how to cry
So many winding roads
So many miles to go.'

Beautiful song.

"Ebe?" you ask, turning to take in the man's face and then, looking away into the distant mirage on the freeway, to make sure it's all clear before you get onto the black asphalt.

When you are finally on the tarmac, you hear him answer, "Junction! Junction," in a raised voice.

So, you pull over to the nearby vegetation and motion him to get into the car. Ifem says you're too nice to strangers, that you always want to pick up people without thinking about the consequences. She says people can be evil.

Her voice echo in your mind and you feel guilty.
You'll explain to her why you're going to pick up this man and woman. Atonement for all the good you've failed at some points to do.

You feel the need to explain, until soon when, after a period of silence, after you've driven past the pharmacy where, just a few days ago, you and the manager had made concerted effort to get a dying man who'd been abandoned to die there, to a hospital, leaving you still feeling guilty, knowing you could've done more, if not that you were rushing back to the hospital to answer an emergency, when the man says something that makes you think there is no need to explain to Ifem anymore why you are in the same car with strangers once again.

It is how the man says the words that gets to you. "My wife has just had a dialysis but, the doctor said that she's reached the point where she'd need a kidney transplant."

It is the helplessness in the tone of his voice, the weakness which contrasts so much with his muscular build and sinewy features that makes you turn to look at him for a long time and then at the woman and ask if 'the wife' is the one on the back seat because, she looks too old to be his wife.

You feel embarrassed and apologize immediately.

"I'm so sorry, I assumed," you plead, turning to wave down a girl selling sachet water.

The weather is so hot with the sun blazing down on the street full of people in a hurry. There is an organized chaos exacerbated by the horns from overloaded lorries. And the noise from speakers announcing cures for staphylococcus eeeerus and tifoid.

Mad city this is.

The satchet water girl, a girl of about eight doesn't have change and before you can say a word, she asks that you forget the money, that she'll complete it with hers.

Her generosity touches you and you decide to give her an extra hundred naira note. But, she runs off to go sell to another scorched buyer.

You try to call her but the man's voice asking you to not bother apologising because you weren't far from the truth, brings you back into the stuffy air of the golf3.

"She used to be beautiful and young," the man says. "She used to feed us while I was in the university, until this illness took her strength away."

You're startled. You never countenanced  the possibility that such a man with such a street build could possibly have gotten a piece of university education.

You assume a lot. You hate yourself. You're silently embarrassed again.

The embarrassment will get worse when, after you get past the monstrous traffic at junction and new parts, and finally on your way to the relatively free expressway, the man says something about residency.

"You're doing your residency?" he asks, looking at you. "Are you specializing in surgery because you keep talking about surgery."

"No," you answer, trying furtively to hide your exasperation. "I'm not yet doing residency. I swore after school to go away from medicine but now, I'm beginning to change my mind. I guess I'll try to get a fellowship, perhaps in therapeutics. As planB, in case my businesses fail."

You always feel embarrassed when you have to explain to people why you are yet to start residency, why you find it almost impossible to commit yourself to it. Why you think the system will break you once again.

It's like the man hears the voice of your mind because just when you're about to delve into self pity, he says something that makes you feel better immediately.

"My brother was a doctor too. He did residency by force because his wife forced him. You're not alone. Some of us want to be somewhere else." He smiles at you, knowingly.

"So, your brother was a doctor? Why do you say it in the past tense?" You turn to look at him before suddenly stepping on the accelerator and asking him to put on his seat belt.

He cooperates. The seat belt clicks and then you hear the sniffing and watch his tears fall. He is crying. It's always an ugly sight when a man cries.

His voice is broken as he begins to speak about his brother. Passionately.

He was a brilliant boy. He was five years his elder. He'd wanted to be a fine artist but he'd been made to become a doctor. He was doing well but, soon after his fellowship in surgery, he died. A very sudden and painful death.

The man looks away at the busy road through building materials market. He's still crying. The streets hustles by.

"My brother would've helped me. His death broke me because I had put every hope in him and just when he was about to make it, he died on his duty post. I know if he is still alive, my wife will certainly live."

"How did he die?" you ask nonchalantly, trying to defuse the situation by your attitude. "How did he go?"

"Lassa Fever. He was working in Ebonyi when Lassa came and killed ten doctors. My brother was the first." He wipes his tears. "I know he'd have raised money for my wife's kidney transplant. But unfortunately..... Life always screws me."

He seems to have had enough of the crying and changes the subject. But, it ends up bringing him back to tears because when he asks you about marriage, you answer that you are married but yet to have children.

So, tearfully, he goes again. "My wife and I are supposed to have four children now but, we lost all of them to hypertension, to miscarriage. Each of them at around six months. They say it was the hypertension that eventually destroyed my wife's kidneys. Four children, doc. Four children, we've lost."

You're lost of words and you just look on. At the police guy checking out the cars. At the roadside mechanic trying to hug a plantain seller. At the long road ahead from Ugwunwasike leading to Awka where the man and his wife are going.

"You'll have more children," you assure, knowing how almost impossible it sounds as the woman in the back seat is as good as going without the transplant.

But, you say it all the same. "All four children, the two boys and the two girls are all going to come back."

"Yes," the man agrees. "I only pray that we'll be able to get the ten million naira it'll require to get her a kidney transplant."

By now you're speeding up towards Ogbunike and Ogidi, Achebe's home town. You think about Achebe and you momentarily wish you can write like he did so that you'll tell this man's story properly. It hurts you that you can't.

Yet, you promise to try. "Nna, I don't have money ooo. I'm still struggling to get above water but, I'll try to tell your story."

You hand him a thousand Naira note. "Here, take it for transport home."

You want to drop them off at Ogbunike in order to get back on your way to head bridge. But then, the woman cannot get down so easily.

She's weak and shaky. Her skin is unusually dark in the way a sick person's shouldn't even be.

You look at her and imagine how beautiful she must have been before the illness, how much dreams she must have had. Dreams about children. A home. A career. A life.

How sad the situation looks now. You can tell. You see the pain in her eyes.

You look up the sky and the cloud is really getting darker. You can't just leave them here so, you'll drive further to Afọr Igwe where they'll get a straight bus to Awka.

The Man is grateful. And on the way, he will tell you more about his family. How he'd met his wife in 2006. How he'd promised never to leave her and how that promise has encouraged him to keep persisting in his quest to save her.

He had a shop in Lagos. He loved education. He got admission in the university to study parasitology because he wanted to find a solution to the lassa fever which had killed his brother. So he left his shop in his wife's custody.

They nearly had children but lost all four of them. They were still struggling well until the disease came.

You'll listen without saying much. You're in a hurry to know more about the man because you're already running out of time.

So when he tries to get the story back to you, to your own life by asking "what do you intend to do now about residency? Will you try?" you stop him by asking how far he's gone in his quest to get help.

You already feel guilty by telling your own little pain in the face of the real pain the man and his wife are facing . "How far have you gone in terms of getting help?" You look at his wife.

He laughs at your question. "Ten million naira!"

He laughs again. "Who'll give you that? Almost all the people and Government have been delaying us and doing us turn turn. We can't even feed now talk more of having dialysis."

He stops suddenly. Seems he remembers something. I understand when he adds "But our church people are helping. There are other people too but they don't like their names mentioned."

He apologizes for almost failing to recognize those that are helping. "Pain and fear makes one forget the favors he gets," he explained.

***

His wife speaks. For the first time. You're startled but you urge her to continue with what she's just saying, something in the line of having a solution to all the problems.

You will have to continue taking until she says that she's been pleading with her husband to let her die in peace and go on with his life. 😳😳😳😳😭😭😭

"Doc," She calls you. "Please tell him to just leave me to go. He's trying to go down with me. He's love has been overwhelming. He's never hurt me. He has tried. I want him to save himself and leave me to my fate." She suddenly goes quiet.

Her husband starts crying again.

He is wiping his tears. His tears which bring your attention to the fact that it's already raining and that you need to switch on the wiper. You do that and continue driving.

There's silence. Seconds. Minutes. Close to an hour. You're driving slow because of the flood water.

You'll remain silent until you get to Afor Igwe where you'll take the pictures below and finally exchange contact with the man. And note his detail.

His name is Magnus Odimgbe. And his wife is Uju Odimgbe. And they live in Awka, behind Ezeanwanyi, Aquinas area.

He needs help. No matter how little.

His bank details are:

Bank: First bank.

Account name: Odimgbe Magnus Echezona

Account number:3043620466

***

When you drop them off at Afọr Igwe, the rain has already flooded the way back. You're told by a bus driver.

You'll have to wait for the waters to drain. You only hope you don't get to lose your job again.

©Nnaemeka Ugwu.
17/6/19

The red whirlwind.

                                       

The first day I read ‘psalm 88’ was on a day like this. A dull day, filled with untraceable feelings of emptiness. I had stumbled on the psalm, while praying my rosary, in penance, a few days prior.

I was a  teenager. 19 years old and fresh from making the 5th best result in WAEC in my school.   Plus a fine jamb score and  a name for my family because, everyone in the hood talked about me, my family. “Oga, ‘Allied forces!’” they  hailed my father, “we’ve heard what your son did, you’re going to be called nna doc.”

And, it made him happy, my father, added to his new found happiness, since Abdulsalami  Abubakar improved the lot of the federal  workers, following the death of the previous dictator.

It made my mother happy too, made her smile more often. She called me ‘nna m,’ more often. “Nnam, ime aga, how are you, Papa?”

She’s always believed that I am her father, reincarnate and so, whenever she got emotional, she’d call me ‘Papa.’ She did it a lot on those days that I  made her happy.

And, my sisters too, they were so proud. The little ones bragged about me. “Emeka, ba’anyi has set a new record in this neighborhood,” they bragged. “Imakwa n’onwe nine As, he got nine As?”

Everyone else came to congratulate me. “It’s not easy o! To write WAEC without 'expo' and still make only As and Bs. No Cs at all. And also, to smash Jamb, in the first sitting...You’ve done well, Emmy…”

I only nodded and shook hands, trying to smile too, to make it seem all was well. Because they all wanted me, the boy who never caused any trouble, to be well.

But, on that dreary morning on which I read that chapter of the psalms, I couldn’t hide it anymore- the silent  tears.

It was in the middle of a  heavy  Nsukka  Harmattan, full of cold red  wind and late aunt Rose had come visiting.  She  wore her favourite  sequined red  gown and laughed and sang her way, happy for her nephew who looked like her late brother, into the room where I had been, reading the Bible,  feeling like I  should  die.

It didn’t take long for her to find me out, even as I hugged her with a smile, like I did everyone else. She noticed, as she held me after the hug. Then,  she asked “Why aren’t you happy, Emeka?”

I was jarred out of my façade.

How did she  notice? How could she have heard  the stifled murmuring of  my soul, in spite of the noise and chaos of slaughter road?

I tried to find an escape. “Aunty, I’m ok. Maybe, it’s the psalm I’d been reading. It’s a sad story. Maybe it’s what’s changed my mood...” but, she didn’t buy it.

She  probed further, looking into my eyes, trying to see the face of my spirit.

“You don’t seem happy; you’ve never looked  happy. I’ve been looking at you since you were born. You’ve never smiled, freely,  like a teenager should. And now, you’ve  made everyone happy, except you. What’s wrong? What  is happening inside your soul?”

She spoke like a philosopher, my late aunt. Mother said she was their maternal grandmother, reincarnate.

I didn’t have any answer. And so, I looked at my toes and could do nothing else but cry, my whole body shivering.

“I don’t know, aunty, I don’t know but, everything seems dark, there’s no light in  my life…,” I  tried to use the words I had learnt in a poem, because I didn’t know any other way, to explain how I felt. Poetry always came handy, those days.

Silence. Distant noise from the streets. I could hear my heartbeat.

Then, aunty  hugged me again, this time, holding me tight. “It’s OK, nna. Ozugo, Papa,” she whispered. She sounded much like mama.

She asked me to dress up and come with her to Erina. She had come all the way from Ogbede, solely, to take me out, to celebrate my success.

That was the day, I started understanding myself, my soul, my life, because aunty sat down with me, to  talk it over. And, showed me the way.

She spoke vaguely about grandfather.

She said “You are your grandfather. He was brooding, too. Quiet, just like you. He was like you are now; he too, felt the same hunger for light, the same emptiness, in spite of his fortune. He  never took joy in materials things. He too, couldn’t figure out why he lapsed into sadness, in spite of the good things around, like when he bought his first car; he was the first person to buy a car in the whole of Ukehe.”

I listened, pretending to be eating the ice cream, on the table. It nauseated me. Heck!

What was happening to me? I was supposed to be reveling in the glory that surrounded me but, instead, I was overwhelmed with sadness.

She looked  at the piece of  paper on  the table, in which I had been scribbling a poem, a sad poem and, when she was done reading it, she continued, “So, don’t worry, this is how you were made. This is your design. You’ll achieve a lot. You’ll make your family proud but, don’t be afraid when you don’t enjoy the happiness. Because, just like your grandfather, you’re one of those who’ll play the role of the sentry . You  know  the  world  is a stage,  we all  have  our  roles  to  play.”

She let the paper fly away in the red whirlwind that had been building, outside. It got overwhelmed in the red dust, till I could see it no more.

She went on to say a lot of things some of which I understood, some of  which I didn’t understand. But, that word ‘role,’ together with ‘design’ that she had mentioned, steered my soul towards a little light.

I got to know the reason for my frequent state of unhappiness. I got to know what to look for in my search for light. I got to understand what  life, was all about- that people are different; that while  some people will always smile and laugh and dance, some will be like the sentry , sober, sad, at times, lonely and, far  removed from the merriment. But, in all of that, one  had to still find contentment. Because we all have unique designs.

“Your  grandfather was wealthy, he was the first to buy a car in  the whole of ukehe. He was revered. He was a legend. But, he did not feel the glory, the glamour. His happiness came from the feeling that he was doing the right thing. He valued  the fact that he was not a waste, more than the money. He was like Antonio, in the ‘Marchant of Venice.’ Perhaps, in fact, you’re like that,” she said, before looking me in the eyes, now,  more intensely, “You’ll learn how to embrace your soul, the way it is.”

And so, the years came and went. And in each, I’ve tried to understand more about life, about my life.

The years of medical school taught me that I wasn’t always going to be among the best,  no matter how hard I studied. I accepted it, acknowledged that everyone will not always be the best at a particular thing, at the same time.

So, when a secondary school friend of mine stopped talking to me when I had to drop a year, I didn’t think of killing myself. I understood, I had a different path. I forgave.

The loss of my first love, Ogoo, taught me that I could be rejected at times and that it’s as normal as anything, that my youthful good looks wasn’t  everything, that love is a two edged sword.

So, when she told me, on a rainy Sunday night “ I’ll never be yours,” I didn’t die  of depression. Rather, I embraced the loss and turned my pain into poetry.

The year after graduation, taught me that graduation wasn’t the end of all my troubles. That  for a man, troubles and difficulties never ends. So, when our licence was withheld for 7 months, because we had quarreled with the Dean, I did not think of taking  the pills. I understood that success and obstruction, sometimes, go hand in hand.

And during my first job, as a house officer, I realised that life can be brutal, that  there are many things, out there,  waiting  to  kill  a man. So, I learnt how  to  be careful about my ways. I also learnt that I had the capacity to improve myself and go from being seen as the laziest, to been loved, as the more hardworking.

NYSC taught me, to do my utmost best, to survive. And that my country doesn’t really give a shit about me, that I have to think about creating jobs, instead of waiting for one.

And so, on.

In all of those years, in the midst of the chaos and noise and mistakes and guilt and success and failure and little  flashes of joy, I’ve been carried through, by the one thing, the one understanding: It  gets easier when one embraces one’s soul. Just as aunt Rose said many years ago.

“Embrace your soul, learn to always understand that happiness and sadness are like day and night; you experience both and while you might love one, more than the other, you still need two of them and you can channel them, into strength.”

Embracing my soul meant that I stopped taking things so deeply, brushing off the many episodes of depression with the belief, that we’ve all been designed and equipped to survive our roles. No matter how horrific; that survival, is all in our minds.

***
So,  today, after a night of  insomnia and  thinking about the nation, about my life and the fact that I am not now, where  I am supposed to be, that some people I was better than, are now above me, that I’ve been stagnating and, about everything else that is wrong with the world, I was tempted to slide  into that dark mood again. That mood that makes everything seem hopeless.

Then, I remembered aunt Rose and her  last words, the day I went to Ogbede to tell her about my difficulties in my  practice. “Embrace both the mistakes and the failures, the guilt and the carefree state, the joy and the pain, the good and the bad and, try to rise above them. Use them to build new strength, new energy.”

And so, I’ll try to rise now, again, above it all. To keep the fight going, to be content with the purity of the effort and work, to understand again, that day and night are the same necessities of life and that all the things that try to take the joy away are only but, the price we pay for living.

I will keep mother's words closer now. "He who's still fighting is not yet defeated."

***

With mother and eldest sister.


©Nnaemeka Ugwu

I want to come home with you

I want to come home with you.

I was walking along the road to buy food from the mama put who cooked delicious egusi and onugbo soup. I was really hungry and needed to eat something fast but I was too weak to walk. Work had been unusually too busy of late. So, I dragged myself as fast as I could, all the while, thinking about home, when things were still good, about Ifem and her delicious cooking then, about the times when it was so easy to laugh. It was nightfall after all, the time I loved to enjoy my reverie the most. I was lost in it when the girl pulled my hands suddenly to stop me. "Good evening sir!"

I turned sharply to look at her, surprised, and at the same time, angry that she had the nerve to pull my hands. A total stranger. But then, I looked at her face, the innocence written on it, the slight uncertain smile, and I melted. A girl of 20 whose eyes told the story of a brittle despair. Especially when she pleaded, "please do you have any money to give me? I haven't eaten since morning and I do not know what to do."

Her words rolled out too quickly, too easily in a startling way. She said that the lock down was making life difficult for her. That she was visiting a friend from Lagos because the friend had promised to get her a job, that she was still searching for the job when the lock down came and made things difficult. "I really need help sir. Anything would be appreciated."

I had only ₦500 on me and that was 'home and abroad' because nothing else was left.The dinner I was going to buy was like a 'last supper'. Because certain failures by the government had left me stranded.

Yet, I couldn't ignore this girl's difficulties. And so I decided to split the money in two. "I don't have much," I explained. "But I can give you a little from this money after I must have bought my food." I asked her to walk with me so that I'd give her the change after buying the food.

As we walked, we talked about things. About her preparations for JAMB, her difficulties at home. She said she was the first child, that she just wanted to get out of home in order to see what life was about out there. That her step father wasn't kind to her. She said she needed the freedom and were it not for the lock down, she would've been happier.

I listened, wondering what it was that made her so comfortable with me, a stranger she'd just met, what it was that was going on on her mind, why she wasn't scared of me and so, I asked her why. "Why are you so free to tell me all that? Why aren't you scared?"

I had to interrupt her with the question because she talked so freely. And I had expected her to be startled but she wasn't. Instead, she smiled and said that she had seen my face and had felt it was the least scary, that she had told herself before walking up to me, that I couldn't hurt her, that all I could ask would certainly not go beyond sex, and that it was something she wouldn't mind giving since she already liked me from a far. She looked at me and smiled a little bit more elaborately. A knowing smile. Assured and unwavering. It felt powerful enough to seduce the unguarded soul.

We were now close to the cross road and so, even though I had been so stunned by her boldness and had wanted to talk about it, I kept calm as we waded through the maze of Okadas, and traffic. But, I kept turning the whole thing in my mind. What else could this child must have done since her travails started? Who knew how many men she must have given herself to just in order to eat? I couldn't help thinking of my little nieces. She was just about their age.

After buying the food, I decided that the ₦250 change was too small and so I asked her if she would follow me to my house so I could give her some uncooked rice and more change. "My place is not far," I pointed. "It's just a few minutes walk."

She followed me.

I couldn't stop thinking about her slight frame and chocolate skin. I wondered how much longer before the freshness and firmness of her body would be gone. Plundered by opportunistic men.

As we walked, we talked some more. This time, I did most of the talking. About the mess in the country, about the virus, about how she should focus on her studies and try to get home quickly once the lock down was over, about trying to repair her relationship with her dad. She had spoken of him earlier with obvious disgust.

I told her also, to be careful with men, especially harmless looking ones like me. "We could be dangerous too," I pointed out, looking at the mark on her neck. A statement which made her smile. Especially, when she began explaining that she had been seeing me for quite some time, that considering all the men she had been tempted to give herself to, that I would be the least evil among them. "I'm even attracted to you," she said, trying to avoid my eyes.

She was now more thoughtful as she added that she knew that one way or another, she could certainly be forced to sleep with a man for food and that she would he happy to do it with the man she'd grown to like. "All the times I've seen you pass by, you've looked harmless. I like you."

I was again stunned. Her boldness and openness were remarkable. I had never seen it before. I mean... this is Nigeria where if you said something personal, people would rush to use it against you. Why was this girl behaving totally different? We talked until we got to the house and I pointed. We're here. "Would you like to come in?"

"Yes. I would love to."

We were half way through the stirs when I changed my mind. I worried that the hallway was too dark, that it could make her uncomfortable and so I asked her to stop, to wait for me beside the jeep parked outside. I tried to smile as I touched her shoulder gently. "I hope you don't mind." I watched her face. It suddenly lost the smile and enthusiasm. I wondered if it would have looked same had she seen my ring, had I told her that I was married.

I soon returned to see her leaning on the car. "Is it yours?" she asked as she thanked me for the rice and little change. She whipped out her infinix spark. "Let me have your number," she thrust it towards me. "I'd love to chat."

I held the phone. A little while. A few minutes. Then a few more, all the while turning over in my mind, the difficulties that might have put this girl in such a situation as to actively seek out men, the unfairness of it all. The fact that the society was gradually breaking even the children amongst us. Her native hair style reminded me of Reginald Nwankwo's girl friend in the story 'girls at war,' and her famous request "if you must shell, please don't send in the boys," in reference to sex and not releasing of sperm, and I felt like crying at that very moment. I looked at her tiny waist and wondered if she would even be able to take in a full grown man. She looked almost like a teenager.

The rustle of the wind outside broke my thoughts. It was brewing. As if to usher in a minor storm. And so I tapped her shoulder. Out of the blue. "You have to go before it rains. You have to run now."

She looked up and I saw her eyes; they were sad. "I can stay for the night with you," she said, unwilling to take the first step towards the gate. "My friend told me to find a good man and satisfy him, to get him to love me and care for me." She held my hand and rubbed it gently. "Don't you like me?" Her voice was broken. So broken that it got to me as much her soft palms and the caress.

But I pulled my hands away, gently. "You're a child my dear. I like you but you're a child. It wouldn't be fair if I should take advantage of you."

My mind became full of emotions. I wished I could have been able to give her my number and keep in touch. I wished I could have been able to give her a little more help. But, my thoughts would soon be cluttered by the sound of the minor storm. And my anger against the world and how it breaks the children before they're grown.

©Nnaemeka Ugwu.

June 2020.

A blood stained wrist band. (For those who daily, suffer in the hands of rapists.)

                                                                       

He was bloodied and perhaps, disoriented. I couldn’t tell because I wasn’t close to him at the moment; I was trying to get into a vein in the arm of a day old child. But, I watched him from where I stood, as his fingers and toes twitched, his blood dripping from his body like rain from a leaky roof, as the stretcher rolled him in; something that looked like a large machete cut sliced his face apart. I could hear his groans- deep throated, and guttural. I could hear the song he was trying to sing, something about God not letting him die from the cuts of the wicked one, even though it was barely audible as it was masked by the shuffling sound of the hurried feet of the nurses and the broken voice of a girl who followed from a distance, crying. “My brother! My only brother!” 

I looked at her with pity. Looking at her reminded of the woman who had come with her sick child yesterday, holding him so close to her chest, screaming at him to never shame her, pressing his face so tight to her breasts that I feared she was going to suffocate him. The girl’s clothes were torn, her hair disheveled. There was a trickle of blood on her left thigh. Her face screamed for help.

But, I wasn’t focused on her as I hurried down to the man on the stretcher, my steps running into each other; I was as shaken as the people who were almost all on their feet, mouths open; hearts, beating fast, because the wound was enormous. It was during the period of the attacks and I had been seeing such cases. Knife cuts here, bullet wounds there, and I had been coping. But they were all little compared to what stared me now, in the face. A boy whose face I was trying to place somewhere at the recess of my mind, whose bloodied piercing eyes reached out to my heart and squeezed it to the point that I felt his soul reaching out and holding my hand, asking, “help me! Please, help me, brother”.

The voice sounded familiar; I felt a personal contact with him that I couldn’t explain. And so, I quickened my steps and ran from the stretcher to the changing room where I pulled out my white shirt, and covered my body with the scrubs and the apron, gloved my hands and covered my eyes and nose. The nurses got the stitches, the forceps, the swabs, and the injections. They were unusually fast because one of them had recognized the patient. I went back to him and stood over his face. “What happened to you?” I asked, lifting his hands which covered the wound.

His eyes were closed. So, I wasn’t sure whether he had heard me, whether he could see me; the blood was thick over his eye, and I needed to get his face free from it. It was the right thing to do even as his pains made my hands unsteady, for with every dabbing of the swab, every piercing of the stitch, his pain sent shock waves over my entire body; he gnashed his teeth ceaselessly. I worked double fast in a bid to finish before the pain killer would wear down. And soon, we bandaged his face, to the relief of the young student nurse who was almost crying in sympathy. I quickly wrote down instructions for the nurses to take him into the ward. It was raining and the weather was cold. It made his body shiver, his teeth clattering, making it difficult for me to hear when he called out my name. “Doctor Nna, do you remember me? Don’t you remember the day of the shooting and how you saved my life?” his voice sounded as if he was about to cry. It broke something in me.

My memories back to the last two years, when we had first met, years which had been nothing short of painful and haunting for me, years full of nightmares about the deaths and anguish and injustice. I dropped the folders I was carrying and made a few steps backwards towards him. I looked at him and saw the red stain in his left eye. And then, I remembered. I had seen it too on the day of the shooting, the day he was brought in with tens of other young men who were reportedly shot by some men in uniform, simply because, in their own words, they had come into the town at night, to sing and remember their heroes who had died in the war. The scars were unmistakable. His name flashed in my mind. “Chike!” I called out softly, reaching to touch his face. “What happened to you?” I asked carefully, trying to keep my voice down because I didn’t want the men in uniform, sitting on chairs a few paces away to hear. I feared they would keep their eyes on him, if they heard us.

And so I kept my eyes on his wrist band of the flag with the green, red, and black colours, and the half of a yellow sun. My eyes got misty looking at it because, the colours reminded me of that night of blood and tears, of Chukwuemeka, the fair boy who had laid side by side with Chike, breathing heavily as he handed me a little flag of same colors before saying his last words, “remember us doc. Remember that we did nothing wrong but sing and pray for our dead heroes.”

I loved to see that Chike was still alive, that he still held onto the colours in spite of all that had happened to him and his brothers. Things I would hear on the next day after the shootings, were unspeakable. Things about how according to reports, the injured boys with different degrees of gunshot injuries were whisked away by men in uniforms to different places unknown, with no atom of mercy and considerations of their injuries. Stories about how some of them had been bathed in acid. Stories of some of them being made to drink and swim in mud waters. Stories of inhumane things beyond imaginings. Stories of how people went online to point at their dead bodies and laugh.

I wanted to hug him with the colours yet, I had to take the wrist band away from him. Because I knew it wasn’t safe for him to be holding onto it at that very moment. I had recently been told about a mass arrests of boys and men like him, who had memorabilia of the war, following the most recent ‘sit at home’ call that their organization had issued. I felt his pain as he looked at me imploringly as I slipped the wristband from him, mumbling with a great difficulty, “Please don’t… doc… Let it stay with me in case I die”. There was something painful about taking something so dear to a man especially, when the man was helpless.  I knew he would have fought me off as he did on that day of the killings but, somehow, I felt fortunate now, even with the pain, that he couldn’t. “You do realize that you can’t fight for the land of the rising sun, if you’re taken away today?” I whispered as I folded the wristband into the pocket of my ward coat.

I tried not to think too much about his pains as I walked away, leaving the nurses to do their job. I instead, kept my mind occupied by the mini storm outside as the rain got harder, like the weight on my chest. The past haunted me with a renewed fierceness. I wished I could have saved them all. I wished I could’ve saved Chukwuemeka, and Omenka, and Obinna. I wished I could’ve stopped the cold hands of death, even though it overwhelmed the world on that night. I wished I had the powers of a god, to raise those who had died. Their voices would be in my head till daybreak when I would come back to know what exactly had happened to Chike. I had been too focused on stopping the bleeding to have bothered to hear the full story.

My night was a cacophony of nightmares. Even though it was full moon and I was supposed to revel in the winds and chirpings of the insects. My head was full of voices; voices of heroes dropping dead in battle at Onicha and Uzuakoli while charging against tanks and rapid machine guns. I thought and dreamt of children dying of kwashiorkor, their bellies rising to the sky in protest to the gods who had abandoned them. I saw my late father running from the blackness of the Illshyns as they bombed and strafed Onicha. I heard the cries of the women who were raped, sometimes, to death. I dreamt so much that my head was full of aches when I woke up on the couch in the consulting room. I looked up and saw the nurse standing at the door. It was daylight and I hadn’t seen the sun as it rose. I hadn’t even heard the early morning songs of the birds. I only saw the nurse. She said that Chike wanted to see me. I followed her to the ward. It was unusually calm now. I looked up and saw Chike.

I smiled, looking down at him. He was now trying to sit up on the bed even as he held his head in his palms, wincing in pain. “Guy, how far? Why don’t you want me to sleep?” I stared at his bandaging which was already soaked in blood. I found it difficult to look at it because it reminded me of that night, of all the blood and deaths. He tried to smile back. “I am getting a little more stable.” His effort to speak seemed to have made the blood soaked bandage begin to drip blood. He touched the trickle of blood and suddenly, the smile was gone. There was the renewal of the pain. I asked the nurse to get the things we would need in order to change the dressing. My voice was getting broken and my mind was about slipping back into the past and the scene of death and pain. I was brought back by Chike’s words. He was asking for his sister. “Doc you need to find her,” he managed to say, trying to fight the tears.  “You need to take good care of her. You need to test her because she was raped.” He shook his head, as if weighed down by the sound of that awful word. I remembered, at once, the little girl with the trickle of blood on her left thigh. She was lying on a piece of cardboard mat beside her brother. I reached out for her and helped her rise. I took her in to the consulting room.

I sat her down on the chair directly facing mine and looked into her deep piercing brown eyes and torn clothes and superficial bruises and scratches which marred her near perfect yellow skin. I watched the furrows on her face, betraying her broken emotions. I watched as she breathed ever so slightly, her chest moving in rhythm with her shoulders heaving slightly up and down. I stared at the tear trails in her eyes. Trails which would become wetter when I asked her to tell me what had actually happened and she would find it difficult to speak. I reached for her hand and squeezed it so gently, urging her to tell me everything. She couldn’t stop herself from crying and so I had to strain to pick up the words.

She had gone to the farm to harvest cassava. It was midday and the farm was not peopled. She was almost done when she heard footsteps and animals hoofs stumping the earth, getting louder and louder, bearing down on her. She had gotten scared immediately but was still a little confident because she knew that her brother was bathing in the stream a few poles away where he was setting his fish traps. But, before she knew what was happening, four cattle men had descended on her. They were wry and tall, their lean build and light skin highlighting their narrow facial features and tribal marks. They were not Igbo. They spoke French and a little broken English. And another language I would later be told, sounded totally alien.

They had daggers which were drawn, looking so sharp that their surfaces threw the light of the sun into her eyes. They surrounded her and demanded that she stripped for them. “Nyamiri, down,” they ordered, circling her, gesticulating at the ground, making a sign for her to remove her clothes. She had wanted to refuse but, had changed her mind when she realized that her assailants could easily kill her brother if she would alert him. He was her only brother and so, she wouldn’t risk his life. If it would take giving up herself to protect his life she was going to do it. So she asked them to keep the daggers and do it peacefully.

She took a few seconds now, and again to catch her breath as she spoke. “Doctor, I thought it was going to be bearable,” she sobbed. “But, I was wrong because they entered me very rough. They scratched my private parts. They cut little wounds in them in order for them to lick the blood, they wanted to take me with them afterward, to let their cattle enter me, too.” Her shoulders suddenly began to shake as she could not control her emotions anymore. My head got shaken too, and I became dazed. There was a certain kind of noise and cry coming from the labour ward but, I couldn’t hear it clear enough. The fan twirled and the children at the out-patient made their noises but, it all felt in my head like the world was about to crash in a very loud burst. I felt my shirt too tightly. I unknowingly unbuttoned it and stood up. I walked to her and held her. I was careful not to let her see my own heavily misty eyes.

“So what happened next, how did they get to nearly kill your brother?” I asked. I was struggling to conceal the fast developing crack in my own voice. I wanted her to be strong enough to finish her story about how her brother had come out at the point when the last of her assailants were on top of her. How he had come running toward her, muscles rippling, sweat, flowing like rain water, machete raised in the air as he ran and screamed, “nwannem oooo!” she wiped her tears. “He kept charging towards me, his machete raised, until the man who was holding me down, knocked me so hard with the head of his machete and I lost consciousness. I know he tried to fight them, and I think that’s when they nearly killed him.” I watched her breathing become more and more raspy. I watched her yellow skin turn entirely red. And I couldn’t bear it anymore. I freed my arms from hers and went outside. “Stop crying, child.” I called her ‘child’ because she was barely seventeen.

The day was getting older gradually. The birds were flying home. I could hear their distant songs. Earlier I had looked outside and for a brief moment thought about going outside to chase after the glass coloured Aku, flying in the newly freshened wind, like we did when we were children. I watched through the window as the cloud got dark again in preparation for another rain. The wind blew up red whirl wind and debris now and again. It was so cold, it reminded me of childhood in Nsukka. I had many out patients waiting and so I had to hasten up. I took the little girl to the lab for basic test. I wasn’t surprised when she tested negative for HIV and hepatitis. But, I was scared of the future. So I gave her the anti-retroviral myself. I told her relatives about hepatitis B immunoglobulin if they could afford to buy it. I wondered if the government would be able to help with the bill if they were to be informed of the attack. But then, I remembered that Chike and his group had been declared a terrorist group and so, I had to shelve the idea of going to report the case myself.

The rest of my day was too heavy with the image of the girl’s tears and sadness. There were too many questions in my head than I could answer. Why was the country letting this injustice happen? Why wasn’t the police doing something to curb the menace? Why was it becoming normal for blood to flow from the innocent? Every day we woke up to bloody news of an attack here, of killings there. People couldn’t even travel to the capital without dying of fear of being kidnapped. Some people, like Amaria, my customer could not even travel to their villages at the rich Benue basin anymore because, as she put it, their villages had been taken over by armed men who killed for fun. Why would cattlemen, as Dr Obinna put it, from different parts of West Africa have unfettered access to indigenous lands, to rape, to pillage and to kill? When would the people of this side of the divide truly have peace again?

I remembered often, as I walked through the wards, setting lines, reviewing my new admissions, making the nurses do their jobs, the thing Chike told me after I had splintered his broken leg and resuscitated him on the night of the shootings. He had told me that their resistance was aimed at achieving freedom for our people as it was paramount in securing the land from those who would seek to forcibly take it from the native owners. “We are at risk of extinction, brother,” he had said with great difficulty following the gunshot. “Our resistance is aimed at stopping it.”  I thought about the words resistance. There were now, too many questions I needed to ask him. Especially looking at him lying so sorrowful and broken on that bed, without his wrist bands and the colours which he had embedded in every light ray in his life. What was it that propelled him in his deep conviction that he and his group were capable of achieving the things he had told me they wanted to achieve? What was on his mind as the cattle men dug their daggers repeatedly into his flesh? Why was it so had for him to forget the war of many years ago and the heroes who had fought there in?

On the night of the shootings he had been so fascinated about the heroes that he couldn’t stop talking about them, especially when out of the necessity to give them hope as they lay writhing in pain and tears, rolling in their own blood and waste, watching their comrades die from the bullets of those who had killed millions of their kit and kin a few years ago, I started a detailed history of each of the men who had given their all during the great war. His eyes lit up from where he lay on the couch, wincing in pain from the wooden splinters, when I told the story of the junction, the great ambush at Abagana, and the story of Okigbo and his last poem, as he lay dying at Opi: when you have finished and done up my stiches, wake me near the alter and this poem will be finished... That was when, out of something I termed delirium Chike had promised to also lay down his own life like the heroes, a declaration which had drawn a strong rebuke from me, until a look at his face and the determination, the unyielding resolve in it, made me understand: that some people are too vested in an ideology for one to try to ask them why? His favorite heroes were Gossens and his boys who paid the price during operation Hiroshima at Onicha. I remembered his eyes and the light in them when I described a veteran’s account of that big battle that killed the mercenary, and the fight to retrieve his giant white body afterward. I relied now, on those memories as I tried not to focus too much on the little girl’s tears. I was reminiscing when the shrill voice of the young nurse broke my thought. “Doctor! Doctor! The patient is gasping! He is dying!”

I rushed to the ward to see Chike struggling for air. The ward was in a state of chaos as the people gathered around him, praying. His mother was in their midst, tearing at her hair and face. “My boy! My only boy!” The nurses were in a hurry, doing the things required at such moments to keep the hands of death away. I ran as fast as I could, my unbuttoned ward coat fluttering in the air as the stethoscope dangled here and there. My heart beat fast. I was worried that his people’s delay to move him to the teaching hospital as soon as I had stitched him up and stabilized him would now prove to be expensive. I quietly prayed that there would be time still because, I didn’t want him to die. He had already started calling me ‘friend’ and ‘brother’, already told me that he was a Chelsea fan; that he was in love with poetry, that he loved my ways; that he would own a dairy farm once it was safe to live in the forests of his village once again.  I asked the gods to help him, to help me. But alas, they didn’t hear me because when I got to the scene and placed a stethoscope on his chest, there was no sound coming forth from his heart. His skin was cold. His eyes were fixed in a cold stare into the limitless horizon. When I turned his body to take a look at his sides, I saw the paper on which his roughly written words, read “I wish I were a thousand men.” He was dead.

The shrill cries that followed the death tore through the ward, and the cold, and the furious winds which bended the pine trees that surrounded the hospital. The little nurse was the first to walk away into the nurses’ changing room where I was sure she had been to cry her pent up tears; I had seen the tears build up persistently because she had known Chike since they were children. I tried in vain to get hold of Chike’s mother and his sister who threw herself on the floor several times, crying “this is the end! This is the end!” I couldn’t keep his relatives who had come to see him from breaking into tiny pieces. I couldn’t even keep my own tears from falling. For in his startled eyes and trails of blood and mucus, in the sadness on his cold face, the sadness of dreams that would now never be realized, I saw every bit of the decades of pain on the shoulders of the people, our people. And for a moment, I wished for freedom from whatever it was that had consistently broken our people and made such faces as Chike’s, a regular in many clans in our land. I began to cry when the matron came to help me walk away from the scene. She had been with me on that bloody night of the shootings and had seen how it would tear me apart the days that followed. I was only glad to walk away until I saw the little girl walking towards me, asking for her brother’s colours and wrist band. “I want it, doctor. Please give it to me,” she pleaded in between sobs, her right palm outstretched, her eyes boring a hole through my heart.

I had to look at her for a while before I could pick up the fire which now, was beginning to overwhelm the pain in her eyes, increasingly washing it away. I watched as it dried up her tears and as the heaving of her shoulders consistently disappeared and in place of it, a straightened frame of sinewy bones. Her shoulders were suddenly broad; I could see the rippling of her biceps. “Why do you want it?” I asked, turning fully away from the matron to face her. I wanted to point her to the uniformed men sitting just a few beds away, their assault rifles looking so menacing and cold. I wanted to tell her about the increased spate of arrests of people having those colours on their bodies, in recent times, to tell her that she would be better off without her brother’s attachment to those colours but, her words stopped me as did the new stoic and firm expressions on her face. She had totally stopped crying and wiping her eyes now. It was hard to understand that she had been the girl whom a few minutes ago, was throwing herself on the ground repeatedly. Her calmness screamed at the utter despondence surrounding the rest of us in the ward. I didn’t even know when I dipped my hands in my ward coat and produced the wrist band and the colours. I watched her slip the blood stained wrist band into her wrist and folding the little flag into a triangular shape, walk briskly away from the ward.

Outside, the rain storm raged on. And our tears were drowned by the sound of breaking tree branches.

** *
File this story as fiction.

By Nnaemeka Ugwu. All rights reserved.
May, 2020.