Hall Two.
(For Juliet, whose anecdote designed these empty pages with her words).
May 15th, 2020.
Saturdays were for reflection. The six bunk room became more spacious when some of the roommates left for the weekend, especially the squatters. The bore their discomfort until the weekend. In the third series in Queen Idia hostel was a six man room where ten girls resided. The room had three springy bunks. The last one was broken and the two bonafide had to put their foams on the floor. They ended up sleeping with their heads close to where meals were prepared and woke up with bed sheets that had been blackened from dirt and coal from kerosene stove. Of course, there was a kitchen but no one risked cooking in the dirty lands of Queen Idia’s cuisine. One had to stay with the food at all times to avoid theft or sometimes the full disappearance of the whole stove and pots itself. The mattress used had slim foams and the loose springs made the bunks jumpy. It never seemed to fall no matter the weight it bore. Today, the room was half empty. Odegua, a bonafide in the room with three squatters had gone home to help her mummy in her restaurant at the busy ring road market. Fidelia had gone to visit her boyfriend Orukpe in Upper uwa. Her cousin Akhere was the only squatter around. Today, Akhere was taking a risk by cooking in the kitchen. She had tried it twice this week and she was successful in her quest. The first time she had attempted it, a roommate had objected to her cooking at night because of the heat it would generate and the stains on the bed sheets that were beginning to leave permanent marks. Frustrated, she had plunged herself into the kitchen, defying fear and odds. She came out successful. After a week of buying handouts, listening to boring lectures and copying assignments from hidden websites, the girls took their Saturdays for enjoyment. If there was no weekend party, home emergencies or night class preparations, they had Saturdays like this, free for discussion. They called it the weekends of gists.
Gists. The girls loved gists and their subjects danced sporadically from school stress, to sex, abortions, parties, examinations, boys, experience and family issues. There was always a shared experience or a contrasting opinion between them that sweetened the argument and made them oblivious to the passage of time. On some occasions, bonds had developed between some of them based on the intensity of the discussion shared. To them, these gists were life. It was the spice that turned boredom to delicious memories. In the discussion that brewed between them, they build bridges between their thoughts. Whenever one spoke, she made sure she provided a transparent window so that the others could peer and see the honesty in her words. On Saturdays like this, when they had riveting conversation that kept their tongues out of their lips hours after silence reigned, they threw themselves into a dark tunnel without light except rocks of gists that they could lean on.
Today, Akhere, Osas, Grace and Oseme were the only ones in the room. Lastweek, Akhere had almost been raped by some boys in Ekosodin, a space of houses and hostels in streets that were situated at the backgate of Uniben. Ekosodin had been a home of confra-guys and the likes in the past and represented a dangerous territory. Before Akhere almost got raped, she was always the author of Ekosodin gists. Being the ninth and last child of her parents, here eight elder siblings had all gone to Uniben. They deposited in her memory mountains of Ekosodin stories and myths and she came to Uniben with that knowledge. Akhere had the current affairs of cult tussle that had rocked Uniben soil. She knew the exact details of the ghost stories, the execution of the final year medical student that had tried to escape from initiation, the juju incidents at the university guest house, the date of the birthday party that turned into a blood bath, the cult fights and the war of 2012, the deaths of Capones and the innocents. The fragile hearts among them found it difficult to urinate after Akhere’s stories and many times, they had nightmares based on the pictures she painted for them.
The sun was throwing fire and fury and the east series of the hostel suffered the wrath the most. Osas, whose bed was closest to the window rolled away to the bed under her which had been untouched and cool since the owner had left earlier in the day. A girl was walking the corridor with nothing on except panties. Her firm breast rested on her chest as she sought for water to quench her heat. The veil of patience that the girls had put on in preparation for the gist was beginning to lose its color. Osas was the first to break the silence.
‘How many food Akhere dy cook for kitchen sef? Based on one or two, I suppose go mail letter to my mama for toilet but I no wan enter room when una dy do closing prayer for the matter’
‘Calm down. You sabi sey na weekend. She fit wan cook for today, tomorrow and warming for Monday’ Grace said without turning away from the book she was pretending to read.
‘E fit be that her owu kerosene stove wey she no wan change o’ Osas snickered. The bed she had moved to was cool and comfortable. She removed her brassier so that the breeze that was sneaking into the room could touch more parts of her body. There, she lay naked and stared at the ceilings imagining the twist of Akhere’s gists and counting the fading strokes on the ceilings.
‘Abeg you get small change make we arrange Nadia bread so that we go use am marry Akhere’s beans?’ Grace asked. Osas hissed and turned her head to the fading cream and peeling brown walls of the hostel. She also wanted to bury her teeth in the delicious aroma of Nadia bakery bread and massaged herself with the beans Akhere was preparing. But like Grace, she was on a budget.
Just then, Oseme walked in with a small paint rubber that she used in defecating. The hostel toilet was rarely neat and most of the girls, scared of infections defecated in plastic bowl. Some used polythene nylons and threw them out the window. This was called shotput. People who passed by hall two at night were very careful so as to avoid shotput nylons thrown at them.
In the past, Osas and Oseme had had arguments on where she kept her plastic bowl. She was the only one that kept hers inside the room even after the roommated had complained that the sight disgusted them. And today, Oseme had inadvertently put the bowl beside Osas’s bag. Their beds were close to each other. A deep furrow appeared on the forehead of Osas’s head in lines of anger as she dashed invectives at Oseme.
‘Dirty fool. Sebi I don tell you make you no dy stain my bag with your rubbish’
‘Abeg rest’ Oseme waved at her nonchalantly and this infuriated Osas the more. She was about to burst into a long round of curses when Akhere walked in.
‘Did you guys begin without me?’ she sat and used a dirty cloth on her bed to wipe her hands. She smelled of crayfish and Maggi spice. Oseme hissed and walked out.
‘Should we wait for her?’ Grace asked
‘Abeg abeg continue. She go watch highlight. She no wan hear gist before sef’ Osas said
‘Oya. Mastercraft do your thing’.
Akhere laughed at the name that Grace had designed for her because of her story telling gists.
‘I am sorry I came late. I was having trouble fixing the owu in the kerosene stove. I will need to get an electric stove before the semester ends’.
Grace and Osas exchanged looks and Akhere understood that they had made fun of her kerosene stove in her absence.
Osas moved back to her bed since the sun had retracted its burning hands. She wanted to get a full view of Akhere’s mouth. Grace kept the book she had been pretending to read. She concluded that she would pay for exam malpractice later. ‘Book wey no enter head go enter exam hall’.
‘So, last week sha. I went to a friend’s birthday bash in BDPA. It was very loud. Popular guys and babes in campus were present. You should have seen different drinks and foods. I think they put something in the drink and cake because I noticed I was getting tipsy. Everyone in the party was behaving weird. I was supposed to leave by seven sha but I completely lost track of time. You know I was having fun sha. When it was nine, the guy I went with suggested we leave. So, I checked the time sha and I realized that it was very late. I wanted to come straight to the hostel but he begged me to accompany him to his home in Ekosodin, Newton Street’
Akhere stopped briefly so the girls could digest the little piece of the puzzle she had given them. The girls knew how dangerous Newton Street was. At night, boys would pretend to be vigilante and hold electric torch and rob people of their phones. Osas’s friend, Jane had lost her phone in this manner. The boys had asked her to pay a sum of two thousand naira before they would release her phones. When she came back an hour later with two thousand naira and a face whose eyes were covered with sweat, the boys had left. Boys who were found empty handed were beaten to a pulp. Girls suffered rape sometimes or mild sexual harassment. It depended mostly on the generosity of the night guard they met. No one noticed that Oseme was at the door, fondling with the broken door knobs.
‘So, when we got to Newton street sha. He was behaving really weird. He asked me where my faculty was, I told him that I was a student of English and literature in the faculty of art. He said that it was a shock that we hadn’t met. When I asked him what he was studying, he said he was a student of management science. He said his faculty was close to art sef. Na there my ears pick up sey this guy na fraud. The guy was trying to knack me for road sef. I just dy scope am sey I dy on my period. It was almost eleven when we almost reached his home. I saw two guys forcing one girl like this in front of the house. One was holding her and one was pushing her into an apartment. That was when I ran away. I ran and ran. Even when my phone and begs fell down, I didn’t stop to pick it, I kept on running. Na so I run comot for Ekosodin enter campus o. Na God deliver me’.
‘I pity the girl they were raping. Did you see her face? You for try help am?’ Grace said
‘Miss Samaritan. What if she had tried to be a superhero and got raped herself?’ Osas chipped.
Akhere was preparing to go into the kitchen to check up on her food when Grace threw her one last question.
‘The girl. Did you see her face?’
‘No. I was too busy saving my life to notice anything’.
Akhere walked quickly and she didn’t notice Oseme beside the door. Oseme waited for some minutes before going downstairs to wash her hands and face at the only tap that was working. For the first time that week, she smiled going downstairs and laughed as she washed her face. She was happy that her secret was safe. Akhere hadn’t seen her but she had seen Akhere. Not today, but a week ago when the boys had dragged her defiant body into the room and taken turns raping her. She didn’t struggle. One of them had pointed a pistol at Akhere’s head. The same way they had done to Oseme. They had just finished having fun with Oseme when they pounced on Akhere. The girls were blindfolded and they were ordered not to make a sound. The room was covered in darkness save for one of the boys who held an android phone whose torch he had switched on. After they had had their fill, one of the boys spat at Akhere and laughed with the remaining two. They took her phone and her bag and left her there, crying, she didn’t notice when Oseme stealthily loosened her blindfolds and walked out the door. Oseme had listened to Akhere recreate her past, fearful that she had noticed her amidst her silence. Perhaps if she had cried, her presence would have been discovered. Oseme walked back into the room. Grace had picked up the book again and Osas was looking for a bed that the sun had not touched. Someone was playing Johnny drille’s Count on you with a loud Bluetooth speaker in the next room and Grace was bopping her head to the magical tune. Oseme removed her plastic rubber from underneath her bed and took it outside to keep at the corridor, where a pile of them laid.