The first night I spent in the prison where the Federal Government banished me, it immediately dawned on me that it was going to be a very lonely year. The prison was a picturesque little village in the backwaters of Osun State with fluctuating mobile network and thick forests that stretched as far as the eye could see. I hadn’t committed any crime, I was just one of the millions of Nigerian youths sentenced by the government to spend a year in the wilderness for committing the grievous offense of graduating from the university.
The remoteness of the location, the horrible network and the dilapidated condition of the school where I was supposed to teach weighed heavily on my mind but these factors weren’t what convinced me that it’d be a lonely year, it was something much different. Earlier in the evening, I’d taken a stroll through the town and while I stayed at the side of the road to avoid the livestock that walked like the road belonged to them and picked my steps carefully to avoid the pile of faeces that decorated the road, I took the opportunity to get a sneak preview of the calibre of human resources the village had to offer . . . (Okay, I was checking out the chicks) and I was very disappointed. A few friends who had completed their own prison sentences had gleefully informed me that babes in the more remote corners of Nigeria couldn’t take their eyes off the ‘Corpers‘ as we were affectionately called. All they needed was to see a man in khaki and you were free to plunder their treasure chests (pun intended). So, I had been understandably eager to view what the town had to offer with the intention of collecting my share of the spoils (don’t judge me) but what I saw made me shake my head in self-pity. Girls wearing wrappers with the classic ‘Simbi’ hairstyle were not what I had seen in my fantasy. However, those were all I could see. To make matters worse, they spoke the sort of English that would send my sainted primary school English teacher screaming in horror. I decided there and then that I’d rather join a seminary than ‘touch’ any of these girls. Of course, we all know how easy it is to make these sweeping declarations.
Now that’s enough background. Time for the nitty-gritty
For every rule, there is an exception and the exception in this case came in the form of a female named Morounkeji. Keji was a gorgeous, articulate…….. okay, that’s a lie. She was just average and her English was a bullet-ridden mess but at least she made an effort to speak English and she’d spent some time living in Ibadan. In addition, she was a hair-dresser so wasn’t carrying that ‘Simbi’ hairstyle which I hate so much. What I’m trying to say is that, compared to other girls in the village, Keji was a queen. So, I struck up a friendship with her(totally platonic o! I swear!). It wasn’t long before she got comfortable with me and got into the habit of coming to my room to chill and watch movies on my laptop. I read nothing into it until one cold, rainy Friday night when things took a crazy turn.
Ghen Ghen . . . . *dramatic theme music playing*
I was watching a movie on my laptop with Keji on that fateful Friday evening when heavy rain came out of nowhere. My roommate was hanging out in my neighbour’s room so Keji and I were alone in the room. Normally, whenever Keji comes over, I leave the door open because she’s a ‘good girl’ and we lived in a small gossip-infested village. I’d rather not have those villagers use my name to sweeten their gossip chewing gum. But due to the heavy rain that day, I had to close the door. Immediately I closed the door and returned to continue the movie, I got a huge surprise. In those few seconds it took me to close the door and come back to Keji’s side, she had transformed into a totally different person. She literally pounced on me. I’m not going to sit here and lie that I hadn’t thought about getting my hands on Keji (Of course, I’m not gay, folks); but so far, I’d done nothing to encourage her and I planned to keep my hands to myself no matter how many times I was tempted to make a move (honestly… cross my heart).
But today, that resolution went down the toilet. Immediately she pounced on me, I gave a few half-hearted protests (you know na, I had to *winks*) but she just kept coming so I did what any normal red-blooded male would do. I took control. Before you could say ‘Aragbesola’, hands were moving feverishly, buttons were being popped and zips were being drawn. It suddenly slipped through my foggy mind that my roommate was in the next room and he could walk in at any moment. I mentioned my concerns to Keji and she waved them away with the words “Tony is a ‘soji’ guy na . . . he’s not disturb us” (yes, those were her exact words). Anyway, to my hormone-impaired mind, her words sounded like wisdom from the very lips of Socrates himself and I promptly forgot about my roommate and went back to the infinitely more interesting job at hand.
The groping resumed and the mood was building again but the benevolent one who watches over innocents and stupid youths was not asleep that day because just as ‘the sh*t was about to get real’, the doorknob turned and we both froze. My roommate had come back because he left his phone in the room. As I got up and opened the door, Tony took in the disheveled state of the bed, the half-naked girl under the sheets and put two and two together. He smiled at her, looked at me with a smile and said in Igbo . . . “okwa e ma na nwa ahu di ime?” which loosely translates as “you know that this girl is pregnant, right?”
I was shell-shocked.
I gathered Keji’s clothes off the floor, handed them to her . . . And walked as far away from the room as my legs could carry me.
Epilogue
Apparently, Keji was pregnant but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure who the father was . . . she kept passing the responsibility between two guys in the area (good girl, abi?). I have no doubt that if I had ‘explored her frontiers’, I would have been a major player rather than a spectator in the drama that ensued when it finally became public knowledge that she was pregnant. I still don’t know how my roommate found out so early about her pregnancy, but I’ll be forever grateful to him for helping me dodge that bullet.
Needless to say, I stayed away from those village girls for the rest of the service year.
By Nonso ‘El Noni’ Udeh . . . Whew! That was close!
Follow him on Twitter @el_noni
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